Out of Character: Speaking Ourselves

Directed by Gemma Alldred

Subsequent additional direction by Gina Vickers

2011 / 2013 Create 13, York St. John University

2013 ongoing performances

Speaking Ourselves is Out of Character’s second mental health themed show. This performance has gone through various permutations and developments since work began on it in 2011 with founding director Gemma Alldred. It’s progression to a final show has been the least linear due to alternate projects arising (including Henry IV with York Theatre Royal) and changes within the company, most notably Gemma leaving to pastures new and Gina Vickers arriving to take on the director mantle.By the time of Create 13 at York St. John University, the company had a more finalised performance, although audiences may have been aware that some of the material had been performed in various guises and progressions previously.

Travel Survey Tony

Performance

“Days Like These”

2012 – MA Independent Performance Project, York St John University

Inspired by David Hare’s Play plenty, performed when I was at school and 17, this performance explores memory and what happens when we refuse to let go of our past, ‘it’s as though it’s all been written out on the page for us to play, only we’re falling between the lines’.

Left Luggage

2011 – Create ’11 Festival, York & The Little Festival of Everything, Coxwold

A tale of loss and remembrance researched through the act of taking the train. The story folds narrative, autobiography and testimony.

Live Art Therapy

2010 – York St John University Artist Studios, York

Interactive Installation and workshop led performance.

Play Me

2010 – Space 109, York

Curated evening of performance works. Organised and scheduled by a collaboration of artists presenting individual works. I contributed performed texts including found text, play script and original writing.

York Youth Mysteries

2008 – York

Collaborations and directed works performed in and around York’s historic streets and buildings.

A Nice Cup of Tea

2008 – Perform Festival, York

Installation and autobiographical performance exploring the parallels between the female body and colonialism.

Angelus Novus

2007 – Reflect on This Conference, York

Previously created with a larger group of artists, in this instance we were asked to re-imagine the piece for the conference.

Underwear

2007 – Perform Festival, York

An intimate performance exploring female sexuality and identity through autobiographical performance.

Sex and the Studio

Couldn’t resist that title as it flowed off my finger tips onto the screen… no delete button for that instant outpouring.

I’ve been in the studio re-membering Underwear as part of my current research which I’m calling ‘Make again. Make new.’ Its been an interesting few hours and it was good to get started, starting is hard and looking back feels hard to do as well…. but as I noted in my journal, process is messy and hard and difficult, these are the signs that it is a process and so it’s necessary otherwise something may well be wrong.. best not worry and just accept mistakes will be made.

Thinking of archive and archaeology, wondering what a museum exhibition of Underwear would look like, can I dig back past the layers of time and re-present for us to explore then, now.

Live Art Therapy

Live Art Therapy | An Exploration of Fear | An Exploration of Exclusion

Live Art Therapy is a durational, interactive installation which asks if we can find an answer to the question, ‘what is live art?’.

Participants are invited to view materials, contribute to discussion and to create for camera their own stills and write description for work they might make and call ‘live art’.
Live Art Therapy becomes a show all of its own in which it becomes less clear who is artist; an effort to make Live Art the sort of work anyone can feel part of.

‘The Meloncholy of Van Gogh in the Shadow of Gauguin’s Nosferatu’

Performance created and documented by audience participants

A performance work looking at the little known episode of how Van Gogh lost his ear whilst working under the vampiric Gauguin.
A meditation on the fall out between two well known impressionist painters.

where to now?

It’s August.

I promised myself July off, which I did to some extent. I performed in a children’s theatre piece at a festival near Birmingham. Does that count as working?

I keep thinking about trains. About trains and suicide. About the ripple effect of the attempt to end a life that results in delayed trains. The end of one life, ‘the incident’, results in a thousand others missing connections, returning home late, not reaching that interview.

I keep thinking about what happens when you leave the luggage on a platform and get on a train. Where do you go when you’re ready to move on?

I keep thinking that I’d like to blow the dust off ‘underwear’ and re-discover what it meant and might mean now – would you like to watch?

Play Me

In this room, with us tonight is a lady.
And that lady is a child.
This child becomes a lady.
This young girl becomes a lady.
But not on her own.
She needs your help to make this transition.
She is asking for your help.
More than that she’s begging, begging for your help to turn her from a child, from a young girl into a lady.

No. No she’s not. She is not asking for your help.
You don’t realise it but she’s not asking for your help.
Yes.
The young girl never asks for your help but you do it anyway.
You never asked. You just assumed and did it anyway. Based on what you thought, you knew, you assumed the young girl was a lady.

No-one blames you.
No-one’s blaming anyone.
But I want you to know that it’s your fault.

I blame you. I could blame myself but I don’t. I blame you. Well it’s better than blaming myself isn’t it?

This isn’t my fault.
You left me out.
This is your fault.
You left me out.

The Lady Text, Gemma Alldred, 2010

Play Me: A Collaborative evening of Performance

Out of Character: Homespun

Homespun

Directed by Gemma Alldred

May 2011: Create 11, York St. John University

Homespun was a performance on the theme of ‘home’, and was a collaboration between Out of Character and the Converge students from the Working Towards Performance course.

More information and performance photos can be found on the blog that was created during the process:

homeandaplay.wordpress.com

Out of Character: Tales from Kafka

Adapted and Directed by Juliet Forster

July 2010: York Theatre Royal

“I think you cope quite sensibly with the difficulty of living…We tremble in the balance, we don’t fall, we flutter even though we may be uglier than bats”

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Franz Kafka. Drawing on a rich vein of early writing and less well-known short stories, this entirely new play presents a layering and interweaving of eerie dreamscapes. It is shot through with Kafka’s hallmark foreboding and alienation, absurdist humour and struggling humanity.

-York Theatre Royal publicity leaflet-

Tales from Kafka was our first collaboration with Juliet Forster from York Theatre Royal. The play was based on a collection of short stories by Franz Kafka. Juliet directed us through a combination of adaptation and group devised work based on the source material.

The show was a surprise success for the company. All three nights at York Theatre Royal’s Studio sold out.