Concept Touring

Carla Nobre Sousa is co-artistic director of Alkantara, an international contemporary performing arts festival and residency space in Lisbon, Portugal. Her previous roles include programming assistant and festival coordinator at Alkantara, as well as several years working across international touring, artist development and festivals at Materiais Diversos (Lisbon). She holds an MA in Performing Arts Studies (Université Libre de Bruxelles) and a BA in English Drama and Theatre & Political Science (McGill University).

Low Kee Hong is the Head of Theatre, Performing Arts at West Kowloon Cultural District Hong Kong. He is responsible for formulating the district’s artistic direction for Contemporary Performance and Theatre. In this role, he created Hong Kong’s first International Workshop Festival of Theatre, an ongoing series on Scenography, a program on dramaturgy, international residencies with Scotland, New Zealand and Australia, new commissions with the Manchester International Festival and GREC Festival Barcelona. Since 2018, he is the co-curator of the Hong Kong International Black Box Festival with Hong Kong Rep. He was Artistic Director of the Singapore Arts Festival (2010-2012) and General Manager for the Singapore Biennale (2005-2010).

From the Summer of 2022 at Freespace West Kowloon, Silvia Bottiroli (currently Artistic Director of DAS Theatre and former Artistic Director of Santarcangelo Festival) and Low Kee Hong will co-curate a new platform built around Queering – a practice inspired by theories that re-examines and dismantles accepted frameworks of identity, power and privilege – as a political field and as a methodology: what does it mean to queer our practices? How can we operate within the artistic and cultural field as if it were possible not to be reactionary towards existing positions and protocols? How can curation participate in the creation of our common futures, responding to the needs of the many and supporting the multitudes that are active within civic society? How can we appropriate artistic institutions and transform them into the tools that are needed for a democratic participation in designing the cultural and social dimensions of the arts of the present time? The platform proposes many speculative futures and an understanding of curation as one of the attempts we can make to rehearse and trial the world that we would like to live in.

Kopano Maroga is a performance artist, writer and cultural worker. They are currently living in Brussels, Belgium and working as a curator and dramaturge at Kunstencentrum Vooruit in Ghent, Belgium. Their debut anthology of poetry Jesus Thesis and Other Critical Fabulations was released in December 2020 through uHlanga Press. They very much believe in the power of love as a weapon of mass construction.

LJ Findlay-Walsh is Artistic Director of Take Me Somewhere Festival, Glasgow’s international contemporary performance festival in Scotland. She is Senior Performance Curator of Scotland’s largest contemporary arts venue Tramway and curator of the biennial, Dance International Glasgow (DiG). Previous roles include Senior Producer of the Arches arts venue in Glasgow where she worked for over a decade on projects such as Behaviour and Arches Live festivals. She has worked across Europe as Co-Curator of Plateaux Festival in Frankfurt specialising in live art. She has held roles as Board Member of Articulation, (Scotland’s advocacy organisation for physical performance) and advisor to BSL Buzzcut, Glasgow. She has held various advisory roles through the Federation of Scottish Theatre and Erdlangen Festival, Germany. She is an ISPA fellow (International Society of the Performing Arts), holds an MA in Art History from the University of Glasgow and is part of Festivals of the Future a European cooperation project.

A performance-maker, actor and writer, Dickie Beau is best known for breathing new life into lip syncing through his distinctive “playback” performances. He has received multiple awards, including the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award, and Best Supporting Actor in the Off West End Theatre Awards. He played Ariel in Deborah Warner’s celebrated production of ‘The Tempest’ for Salzburg Festival, and has made several solo theatre shows which have toured internationally. His most recent solo show, ‘Re-Member Me’, premiered as a “haunting” of the set of Robert Icke’s production of ‘Hamlet’ at the Almeida Theatre before travelling to New York’s Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theatre, Melbourne Festival, and Perth Festival. In Australia, ‘Re-Member Me’ was nominated for a 2019 Helpmann Award.

Dickie is interested in using “playback” as a strategy for engaging with cultural history and archives, and as a mode through which to think through a range of themes relating to subjects such as: the function of nostalgia; the dynamics of identity; the presence of absence in theatre, art and the history of human image-making; the relationship between mediumship and the function of art; ways of feeling; the interplay of virtual technology with the living body; intimacy; and ideas of “inscribing” knowledge in/on space in such a way that considers alternative perspectives on authorship and reflects questions about the stability of material (and immaterial) carriers of knowledge in the digital age.

Dickie’s recent stage performances as an actor include playing Botticelli in ‘Botticelli in the Fire’ at Hampstead Theatre, and the Dame in the National Theatre’s recent production of ‘Dick Whittington’. Feature film performances include playing Kenny Everett in ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and the original inventor of lip-synching, cantomime artist Georges Wague, in ‘Colette’.

As a writer, Dickie is currently under commission to write a television pilot for an original drama series, and has recently made contributions to Attitude magazine and Tortoise. He is also developing ideas for a future solo show emerging from his a recent research fellowship at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

Dickie is an Artist Research Fellow at both Queen Mary University of London and Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre.

Peter McMaster (he/him) is an experimental performance artist, collaborator, facilitator/educator, father, ex-dog owner, current boat owner, lover of the underdog and fan of the amateur/less noticed practices. Works under his directorship span award-winning ensemble touring theatre works, long standing home village professional art group facilitation, solo and intimate performance practices, sited and community sensitive projects, artist to artist mentoring, consultation and long-standing collaborations with artists such as Hanna Tuulikki and Louise Ahl/Ultimate Dancer.

Peter is a member of the Take Me Somewhere Artist Constellation and has shown his work extensively nationally and internationally. Current works include The Village Artist, a long term professional art project for and with the small village of Bowling, West Dumbartonshire where he lives, Elephant a new solo performance for film in collaboration with artist Tim Etchells and Chaill/Lost a sited work on one of Scotland’s most remote and once inhabited Gaelic islands. Threaded through each facet of his practice is a tacit investigation of contemporary male-nesses and an attempt to hold, love, destabilise and understand this complex gender territory.

http://www.hydraarts.org

Giorgia Ohanesian Nardin is an artist, independent researcher and queer agitator of Armenian descent.  Their research is built of a collection of pedagogic and performative events that focus on experiencing pleasure as a form of resistance to systemic oppression by relating a queer/transfeminist approach to somatic practices.  Trained in dance, their work exists is the shape of movement, video, text, choreography, sound and gatherings, and deals with narratives of hostility, survival strategies, rest, friction, sensuality, healing.

Giorgia took part in LIFT’s podcast Plans For The Future.

Namatshego (Tshego) Khutsoane is a creative practitioner drawn to work of ARTivist/ARTivism orientation and sensibility that explores complex human and social issues. An experienced theatre-maker and educator Tshego has honed expertise enabling learning and engagement, in work across multiple performance and facilitation contexts, for more than a decade. Tshego enjoys involvement in site-responsive performance; collaborative theatre making/devising; intercultural and interdisciplinary performance and gender studies with a particular focus on Role, Expectation and Behaviour.

At present (April 2021), a part-time tutor in Performance Studies with the legendary Market Theatre Laboratory and Development Manager with The Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative – a pioneering performance focused social justice organisation, which in 2021 created a world-first WhatsApp #PhoneFestival (Message ‘Hi to +27 600 110 444 to experience).  Tshego is an MBA degree graduate and the recipient of the 2016 Johnny Clegg Scholarship for Creative Practitioners with Henley Business School of Reading University, with a qualifying LGBT+ focused study intersecting Business and Identity Matters, highlighting policy, culture and social factors influencing visibility/invisibility negotiations.  Prior studies include a Bachelor of Arts (BA) and Honours (BAH) degree with specialisation in Acting, Directing, Contemporary Performance, Applied Drama and Theatre through the (UCKR) University Currently Known as Rhodes; and a Master of Dramatic Arts (MADA) through The University of the Witwatersrand. Through various creative international collaborations and exchanges as Performer, Theatre-Maker and Facilitator, Tshego has travelled abroad to Ethiopia, Germany, Netherlands, Senegal, Switzerland, Zambia.

As Actor, Tshego celebrates a 2020 Best Production for Independent Fringe – South African Naledi Theatre Award, for No Easter Sunday for Queers (Market Theatre 20-25 August 2019) written by Koleka Putuma and directed by Mwenya Kabwe. Other standout performances include the widely toured and award-winning Animal Farm produced by ShakeXperience and directed by Neil Coppen. Mwenya Kabwe’s Afrocartography, and UBOM! Eastern Cape Drama Company’s Wreckage and Breed (Stand Bank Silver Ovation Award Winner) directed by Brink Scholtz, Door by Jori Snell and The Adventures of Little Nobody – Award winner at the 2010 Out the Box Festival of Puppetry and Visual Performance. As Director, Tshego has enjoyed National Arts Festival Standard Bank Ovation celebration for works, For Colored girls (2016) written by Ntozake Shange and ChoirBoy (2018) written by Terrel Alvin MacCraney. As Teaching-Artist, Facilitator and Project Director, Tshego continues to develop works that intersect in some way with Sex, Sexuality and Social Circles.

Born and raised in rural Massachusetts, Sacha Yanow is a New York City based performance artist and actor. Their recent solo performances are experimental and embodied portraits of the inner lives of archetypal family figures—the father in Dad Band, (2015), the grandmother in Cherie Dre (2018) and currently the uncle —as a way to connect to estranged personal and cultural histories. Drawing from theater and performance art, these intimate works use humor and physicality to explore aging, gender, desire, and Ashkenazi Jewish-American assimilation. They have been presented by venues including Danspace Project, Joe’s Pub, and the New Museum in NYC; PICA’s TBA Festival/Cooley Gallery in Portland; and Festival Theaterformen in Hanover, Germany. Yanow has received residency support from Baryshnikov Arts Center, Denniston Hill, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, SOMA Mexico City, and Yaddo. They received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and studied at the University of Capetown, SA for a semester. Yanow is a graduate of the William Esper Studio Actor Training Program in NYC.

Italian of Palestinian descent, Omar trained in Italy and then graduated from Jacques Lecoq International Theatre School in Paris in 2005. He’s based in London since 2009.

He was the resident Associate Director at the Bush Theatre from 2012 to 2019, where he commissioned and directed some of the theatre’s most successful shows.

As sole director for the Bush, his credits include smash-hit Misty by Arinzé Kene (Bush and West End), NASSIM by Nassim Soleimanpour (Bush, Traverse Theatre and world tour), Going Through by Estelle Savasta and Islands by Caroline Horton. As Associate Director working alongside Madani Younis, his credits include The Royale by Marco Ramirez, Leave Taking by Winsome Pinnock and Perseverance Drive by Robin Soans. Outside the Bush, he directed Olivier nominated show You’re Not Like The Other Girls Chrissy by Caroline Horton and co-created acclaimed site-specific show The Mill: City of Dreams with Madani Younis for Freedom Studios. His last show before the lockdown, Autoreverse, created with Argentinian performer Florencia Cordeu, opened at Battersea Arts Centre in February 2020.

Omar is currently living between Milan and London, developing projects with the Almeida, National Theatre, Royal Court, Collective Malouba and The Shed in New York.

Nassim Soleimanpouris an Iranian playwright and theatre-maker, and the Artistic Director of Berlin based theatre company Nassim Soleimanpour Productions. His plays have been translated into more than 30 languages and performed globally in over 50 countries. Best known for his play White Rabbit Red Rabbit, written to travel the world when he couldn’t, his work has been awarded multiple awards across theatre festivals worldwide. White Rabbit Red Rabbit had a 9 month Off-Broadway run casting celebrated actors like Whoopi Goldberg, Nathan Lane, Martin Short, Bobby Cannavale, Wayne Brady, F. Murray Abraham and Cynthia Nixon. By the time Nassim was permitted to travel for the first time in early 2013, his play White Rabbit Red Rabbit had already been performed hundreds of times in more than a dozen languages.

His most recent play NASSIM produced by the Bush Theatre in London premiered in August 2017 and won a Fringe First Award, followed by more than 300 shows in 12 languages across the world, including a five-month Off-Broadway run casting celebrated American actors.

A retrospective of Soleimanpour’s plays was held at the Bush Theatre in 2017 under the title Nassimplays.

While most theatres were shut due to a global pandemic, Nassim mentored 7 young playwrights to publish a book which could be read and performed at first sight around a fire. October 2020, produced by Boundless Theatre lit fires across the UK!

On March 13th 2021, to mark the anniversary of theatres having to shut down around the world, White Rabbit Red Rabbit was performed in 120 venues around the world – from a prison in Mexico to a local theatre in Pakistan – at 8pm local time.

Soleimanpour currently lives in Berlin with his beautiful wife and dog, and is busy finalising his new play for the audiobook platform Audible.

Persis Jadé Maravala has worked as artistic director of ZU-UK’s projects (London) since 2006. Her artistic work has won awards and nominations in the fields of interactive theatre, hybrid art and innovation. Her most acclaimed project, Hotel Medea, was the highest rated event by both public and press, becoming the standout hit of the Edinburgh Fringe 2011. She is the director and writer of Goodnight Sleep Tight, Binaural Dinner Date, Pick Me Up (& hold me tight), #RioFoneHack, East London Workers Party and Missing. She works at the intersection of games, performance and technology and believes post-immersive* approaches to dramaturgy can enable audiences to find new ways of engaging with one another meaningfully. Her work has focussed more recently on mediating relationships between strangers, particularly through the use of sound design and instruction-based performance. Her response to Covid-19 has been to create PlagueRound (an online interactive live game show) and Project Perfect Stranger, which has seen close to 250 strangers connected in intimate encounters across the world via their phones. Jadé is committed to reclaiming public spaces as sites for people to gather, as a way to reduce barriers to audience participation and to actively push for fairer and more equal opportunities for working class people.

Rhiannon Armstrong is an interdisciplinary artist making works with empathy, interaction, and dialogue at their core, often for unfiltered audiences. Conversation and collaboration are central to her practice: between makers of different disciplines, public contributors, and audiences.

Tim Spooner works in performance, collage, painting and sculpture. His work uses materials and objects in ways that reveal unexpected properties, aiming to open up perspectives beyond the human scale.