Autumn News

Strong, confident and not afraid to make bold fashion choices

It’s a miracle! Desperate Men embarks upon our 34th glorious year of existence this September, having somehow outlasted other 80s monuments including Blind Date and Dynasty. To celebrate, here’s a few of the audition tapes we received when we first set the company up way back in 1980.

We feel pretty good for our age, as proven by the above photo of Jon stepping out confidently in his bathers at REVEAL festival in St Andrews Park this summer and Arts Professional using us as their cover girls in a recent article. Nevertheless, we have been looking to our roots as we plan our future direction.

As ever, we’d love to hear from you if we can help with any projects you’re fermenting – contact us on: office@desperatemen.com or 0117 939 3902

A Desperate biopic from the year of our birth.

SLAPSTICK AND SLAUGHTER

We’re developing a touring show that will explore the relationship between the imperatives of the arts and the politics of war – and vice versa. The year 1913 as the ‘cradle of modernism’ is our starting point, in which both flypaper, the fax machine, Surrealism and Suffragettes emerged to shape the future, as well as being the last year of pre-First World War innocence. The show will be more Dada than didactic, using absurdity and physical theatre and very much drawing on our street theatre origins. Watch this space for updates.

WYE VALLEY RIVER FESTIVAL

A very productive summer of Arts Council Wales-funded research and development has resulted in an exciting draft programme for the festival next year in May – we hope to create great and unexpected art worthy of the area’s rich history and stunning geography.

HERITAGE AND HISTORY

In July we led history walks at 18th Century Piercefield House, birthplace of the PIcturesque movement, to highlight this beautiful building’s plight for Save Britain’s Heritage. At Badock’s Wood in June we hosted a Woodland Party day of walks and performances at this local nature reserve, encouraging more local people to use the green space and discussing future visions for the wood.

STREET THEATRE AND BALLOON-TOSSING

We programmed REVEAL festival at St Andrew’s Park in Bristol in July – a stonking day of performance and street theatre from contributors including Fried Gold Theatre, Chris Bull and Ollie Rimski – and dished out a record number of balloons (300 per day) at the Bristol Harbour Fest Water Balloon Toss.

CIRCUS SPACE

Richard Headon acted as dramaturg for Circus Space graduate show Happy Families, directed by Billy Alwen, which opened in July at Jackson’s Lane, London and had successful outings at Bristol Harbour Fest and Bestival. The show picked up some great reviews from newspapers and blogs.

Chris Bull takes to the high wire at REVEAL aided by Ollie Rimski at the piano

COMING UP

September 21: Jon will be back at Ciencia na Rua (Science in the Streets) festival in Estremoz, Portugal, directing ‘Factor E’ by PIA Artistic Intervention Projects, a show based around generating electricity with bicycles.

September 24: NHS art programme Art for Life has invited The Film Crew to Musgrove Hospital to raise awareness of Art for LIfe’s design work with the public and staff and to open a dialogue about good and bad design. There’ll be free icecream too.

Late September: Richard returns to Circomedia to teach site-specific theatre

October: We’ll be at South West Music school’s residential course at Bicton College in October, working on stage presentation and audience communication with 10-18-year-old music students.

STUDIO

A Ship Of Fools theatre company are moving in with us to become resident in our studio – we look forward to sharing tea, biscuits and groundbreaking Bouffon theatre.

Yoga classes are ongoing on Tuesdays www.yogaprema.org and there’ll be a new Tai Chi class run by Gavinda on Monday evenings from 7pm – 9pm, starting September 23rd.

Slots are still available for rehearsal so get in touch if you’re looking for space.

NEWSLETTER

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