Daedalus Theatre Company – Page 12 – Theatre can go where politics and the media cannot

Going Beyond East

By DaedalusAdmin on Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Left to right: Farah Naz, Shamim Azad, Paul Burgess and Sef Townend. Photo credit: Indigo

East‘s behind-the-scenes organisational team met at Rich Mix to plan the next stages of the project. What started as a simple, short-term community storytelling project (led by Daedalus and Bishwo Shahitto Kendro, and supported by Rich Mix, the Arts Council and Apples and Snakes) has grown. With further support from the Arts Council plus some crowd-funding, we’re now making an online archive of our stories (and some songs) and working out how to support our storytelling group’s desire to do something longer-term, while also dealing with several offshoots of the project, including our work on radical history (which will probably now be treated as a separate project) and possible work with local schools and community centres. Oh and the events we’re planning as an offshoot of A Season of Bangla Drama. They’ll be in April. Watch this space…

All of which explains why the meeting was about three and a half hours long. We got through a lot of tea, but were very restrained and shared just one piece of cake between us.

Events Major Projects Partners and Collaborators Research and Development

Radical History: project definitely underway

By DaedalusAdmin on Monday, November 16, 2015

Thanks to Ovalhouse, the Arts Council and private funders, we had our first proper development period on our collaboration with The Black Smock Band: an undertaking which emerged from our East storytelling project but which seems to be taking on a life of its own. Temporarily known as The Radical History Project, it looks at the texts, oral and musical, left behind by our radical forbears and the mythology of English radicalism they created, while also searching out contemporary and local stories of struggle. We had a very productive week – well, it’d be shameful not, given the incredible wealth of material we have to work with. Our research so far has focused on the Diggers movement, but since we were working just yards away from where the Chartists gathered, we looked at them and at the challenges facing the area today. In fact, a modern-day version of the enclosures is taking place, with social housing being replaced by private developments.

The end-of-week sharing at Ovalhouse cafe seemed to go down well. There was even some dancing. And lots of helpful feedback – thanks everyone!

The team was Alex Swift, Andy Bannister, Dan Cox, John Bryden, Rhiannon Kelly and Paul Burgess.

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We’re still sorting out the documentation but, in the meantime, here’s a photo (credit: Kanatip Soonthornrak). And the project will be back for further research and development soon…

Events Major Projects Partners and Collaborators Research and Development

Radical History at Ovalhouse

By DaedalusAdmin on Tuesday, October 20, 2015

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Protest and rebellion are as English as rainy bank holidays, cream teas and plundering foreign countries. But plenty of people would have us ignore the great radical moments of our history.

As part of our commitment to exploring the potent mix of local stories and history, we have joined forces with The Black Smock Band – London’s premier gay socialist folk band (as far as they know) – to take a look at how out forebears fought the power, and what their stories mean today. By rediscovering the songs and ideas that helped change our country, we hope to find where all this turbulence and disorder could lead us today. We’ll be at Ovalhouse so you’ll also hear local stories of resistance, past and current.

This work-in-progress performance will start as a gig. If all goes well, it will end with the revolution we’ve all been waiting for.

November 6th, 9pm, Ovalhouse cafe, free

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Ovalhouse website event

See you there!

The Company

We’ve become a charity, and that means…

By DaedalusAdmin on Tuesday, September 22, 2015

You know where this is going.

It’s taken ages. The Charity Commission. HMRC. Many, many forms to fill in. Lots of help from the awesome ITC. But we got there.

Now, probably, most people looking at this site are penniless artists. We don’t expect those people to give anything, of course (unless they really, really want to). But there may be people in a position to help. Why? We have to apply for funding for each project. It’s a lot of work and sometimes we’re successful, sometimes we’re not. Either way, project-by-project funding only goes so far. We don’t only want to exist when we’re doing a specific project. We’ve got the ongoing projects like the Radical Performance Reading Group and the East storytellers, and there’s all the research and development that needs to happen before we’re ready to start writing funding applications…

So if you can throw some pennies our way (or even throw some pennies our way on a monthly basis) here’s an attractive purple button to take you to our fund-raising page…

Thank you!

Events Participation

Daedalus Radical Performance Reading Group #8 Postcapitalism

By DaedalusAdmin on Thursday, September 10, 2015

DRPRG.8 – Postcapitalism: A Guide to our Future by Paul Mason
Date: Wednesday 21 October
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: Studio 180, 180 Lambeth Road, London (if you can’t make it in person you are very welcome to join us by Skype – drop us a message here with your skype name and we’ll call you when the group starts)

Facebook event here.

Events Major Projects Participation Partners and Collaborators

East social

By DaedalusAdmin on Monday, August 31, 2015

Members of the East storytelling group got together for an informal gathering yesterday, to catch up on on news, share food, discuss our plans for the future and – inevitably – tell some stories. (To those members who couldn’t make it – you were missed and we look forward to seeing you next time!) We’re currently between formal projects and waiting for the results of a funding application, but thanks to BSK, our main partner for East, we could meet in a local community space to keep the momentum going. All being well we have a creative few months ahead, including making a video archive of the stories we’ve told so far. Fingers crossed for funding. More information to follow as it happens…

Oh and it’s never too late for new people to get involved! Drop us a line.

Here are some photos.

Partners and Collaborators The Company

The Arches has closed

By DaedalusAdmin on Wednesday, June 10, 2015

The Arches went into administration today. The press release with all the details is here.

This is terrible on a great many levels.

It means the loss of an incredible venue which kick-started a a huge amount of careers and provided a fantastic starting point for a great many companies (including us, as our first professional piece, Selfish, was an Arches commission). It’s a loss for Glasgow of course, and Scotland, and for UK arts touring. It’s also a blow to a whole model of working. The Arches was an exemplar of the idea that a venue could generate a commercial income and use that to fund brave and experimental work. But now we can see that such a fine balance is impossible without proper support and joined-up thinking from the authorities. It’s pretty shocking, really, that such a vital arts venue could be lost because of the intransigence of the Glasgow Licensing Board.

Partners and Collaborators Research and Development

Alex provokes

By DaedalusAdmin on Friday, May 22, 2015

Here’s a great provocation from This Thing Called Artist Development at Ovalhouse by Alex Swift.

The full title of the talk is “Samuel Beckett’s First Play Was Shit And It Took A World War For Him To Write A Good One (and he was 40 before he did) or Artist Development Programmes are a Form of Disciplining Reified Ideology Reflecting the Underlying Structures, Practices and Brutalities of the Late-Capitalist, Neo-Liberal Economic Base, And, You Know, That Can Fuck Off.”

It’s sort of about artist development but it’s also about, well, you know, the world. And stuff.

Partners and Collaborators The Company

The Arches is under threat

By DaedalusAdmin on Saturday, May 16, 2015

The Arches in Glasgow was the venue that had the courage to give Daedalus its first proper, professional gig, and the result was that we made and premiered Selfish there (show here, with Onur Orkut).

The Arches has a unique model: it’s a very successful club but uses the profits to fund new and often very experimental arts projects. It’s an inspiring place to work, in spite of the slight whiff of stale beer after club nights! It’s also an essential part of our arts ecology – so many artists and companies have started there, or broken new ground while working there.

And now it’s in danger, due to a licensing dispute with Glasgow council. Here’s a link with all the details and a petition: please sign it!

The Company

Some images from our past life…

By DaedalusAdmin on Saturday, May 9, 2015

Our artistic director Paul has been going through old folders as it’s the 21st anniversary of the first Brasenose Summer Arts Festival – originally set up by the same generation of students who also founded the King’s Hall Trust for the Arts and Daedalus. Of course, he also came across old flyers for productions we did when Daedalus was a still a student company. It had very different aims then, as it was about scripted drama, but many of the same underlying values. Anyway, here are a selection!

Meanwhile, the festival, now called Brasenose Arts Week, is still going strong!

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