In Good Company and Derby Theatre are thrilled to announce their eight Artist Support Fund recipients for 2021, who will each receive a bursary of up to £1,000 to create new work.
The artists for 2021, and the pieces and projects they are developing, are:
Siobhan Cannon-Brownlie
Siobhan Cannon-Brownlie, a freelance theatre director, will create This Show is Rubbish, a one-act actor/muso family musical which aims to inspire the next generation of eco-warriors.
It tells the tale of a young girl called Zoe who runs away from home to tackle climate change, helped by a rubber duck and the audience.
Underneath this is the story of a mother and daughter, and how the very things that divide them could also be what unites them.
Olivia Rose Deane and Hana DeHart
Olivia Rose Deane (a performer from the Midlands) and Hana DeHart (actor, writer and accordionist) will create and perform Doomscroll, a theatre, film, and music performance written by William Breden, a piece which juxtaposes ‘Influencer’ culture with the experience of being a woman online and draws on devised material, real-life examples, and academic research.
Jana Aizupe and Selwin Hulme-Teague
Jana Aizupe (director, theatremaker and a dancer ) and Selwin Hulme-Teague (writer, director and theatremaker) will create Take Me Out, Put Me On, a theatrical expression of what a dress can mean to a person; the cultural complexity behind a material object; the feelings, memories, celebrations or grievances it can hold.
Alexandra Moxon
Alexandra Moxon, freelance theatre director, practitioner and choreographer, will create work that uses a framework of myth and ritual to explore how we live now.
By foregrounding the communal aspects of being in a dark room at the same time and place together, the piece will explore what collective outlet those rituals might provide that we are otherwise missing – be that cathartic, curative, or transformative.
The company recently won a Toast of Plymouth Award (2020) for their previous show, Our Blood is an Ocean.
Louisa Sanfey
Louisa Sanfey, a Derby-based freelance theatre director and dramaturg.
Louisa will create a piece around practical and creative research exploring the barriers faced by theatre makers with disabilities and/or chronic illness, and assessing how alternate working models might better support them to make theatre in the East Midlands and beyond.
Symoné
Symoné is a queer multidisciplinary movement artist, working between contemporary circus, dance, and text based in the U.K.
Her movement work is an integration of various skills, roller skates (both high heel and artistic) fused with multiple hula hooping, pole dancing, and voguing.
Symoné’s work is inspired by underground rave and queer clubbing culture, exploring party culture, human consciousness and power roles.
Paula Wharton
Paula Wharton, an actor from the Wirral and now based in the West Midlands, will create Mother Mercia.
Aethelflaed, wife of the Lord of Mercia, is helping her brother, the King of Wessex, defend the last Saxon lands from the Danes. She is respected by her enemies and loved by those she protects, but counsellors to the king in Wessex fear a woman ruling alone.
With her body and age betraying her, Aethelflaed knows if she shows weakness the king will be persuaded to take her beloved Mercia from her.
2047
2047 will be a response to the influx of Hong Kongers migrating to the United Kingdom due to the worsening political situation in the special administrative region.
The show seeks to: humanise an issue trivialised by the mainstream media and highlight the fragility of democracy and freedom, inform a British audience about the situation of the former colony and of the Hong Kong people and help to form a bond between newly arrived Hong Kong immigrants and existing British communities.
It is planned to tour the show to cities across the UK, particularly areas with growing communities of Hong Kong immigrants such as Liverpool and Birmingham.
Nur Khairiyah (In Good Company Interim Creative Producer) said:
“The Artist Support Fund is not just a kickstarter to artists’ ideas from a monetary perspective, it is there to encourage cross collaborations between artists and to form a community to support each other.
This year, In Good Company is thrilled to forge and embark on new relationships with diverse artists, of different genres, who have a wealth of different ideas, ranging from climate change, immigration and many other risk-taking work to spark a conversation.”
About In Good Company
In Good Company, the Midlands’ independent flagship, multi-venue, creative, professional and business development scheme for theatre makers, led by Derby Theatre, continues to evolve and provide more exciting opportunities for regional theatre makers and companies than ever before, including the Artist Support Fund.