Spanning three striking parts, Trilogy was a venture into modern-day feminism. This performance triple bill examined and explored the joys and complexities of being a woman today and involved over 50 locally recruited women who took part in a naked, wild, celebratory dance.

The Future of Death / part 5 took place at the Storey Gallery in Lancaster in October 2009. It was made by performance company A2 and commissioned by Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster (funded additionally by Awards for All). This was an evolving performance installation in which 38 local people, ranging in age from 3 to 75, gradually buried each other with earth, following workshops exploring the inter-relationship between Living & Dying.

London based A2 Company is a collaboration between artists Anton Mirto & Alit Kreiz. Together they create contemporary performance, installation projects, & educational events exploring new personal, social & emotional language forms, which aim to interrogate & reflect the human experience.

“Their performances are, in effect, a kind of living gift” The Times

In August 2009, Talking Birds ran a 5-day
intensive school in Morecambe's highly charged Winter Gardens. The week shared and exposed some of Talking Birds’ strategies for making site-based performance and the group experimented with some new ideas. Exploring both Victorian and contemporary theatre tricks, the week culminated in an immersive and evocative installation generating spooks and hauntings and things that go bump! Participants attended from a range of artforms including performance, visual art and sound/music.

An informal showing took place on 30th August 2009.

In April 2009 Nuffield Theatre associate artist Neil Callaghan worked with a group of 10 gifted young performers from the Dukes Youth Theatre. Supported by Neil, MA student Ele Kinchin-Smith and Nuffield Projects Officer Alice Booth, the group created From Where I’m Standing, a performative meditation on what the site of the city of Lancaster might contain many years in the future, perhaps even after humans are long gone. The project, which will now be made into a short film, forms part of the Dukes' Postcards to Africa project. Through working with professional creative practitioners, this initiative aims to get young people to celebrate their lives, homes and surroundings and look at how these things affect them in their daily lives.

In the Spring of 2007, Nuffield Director Matt Fenton proposed not to programme anything for a year. This has resulted in a number of exciting new projects that raise interesting questions about programming, artistic taste and diversity.

Our Autumn '07 season was programmed by 12 invited artists including Tim Etchells, Lone Twin, Kazuko Hohki and Adrian Howells, and was a huge success with many shows selling out. Spring '08 was programmed by a group of 7 locals who responded to an ad in the local press: Jill Anderson, Janice Bradshaw, Cressida Graves, Anne Greenwood, Cliff Laine, Carol Ostermeyer and Franklyn Weber. They did a fantastic job and we were delighted with the programme they put together (which included shows from the likes of Vincent Dance Theatre, Abattoir Ferme, Ockham's Razor and Maresa von Stockert).

Practice Reflected provides an opportunity for artists to reflect formally on their practice, often for the first time in an academic/artistic context, and to invite responses from other practitioners, writers, critics and academics.

Events are open to the public, students, artists and academics, and take place alongside new performances supported or commissioned by the Nuffield Theatre. Events include artists’ letters, lecture demonstrations, happenings and performances as well as more traditional critical papers and discussions. Sited within Lancaster Institute for Contemporary Arts at Lancaster University, the Nuffield Theatre is ideally placed to facilitate these events, and draws on a wealth of research, practice and creative industry specialisms from across the University and nationally. Full details are available at www.cascpp.lancs.ac.uk. Recent events include:

Goat Island: Lastness, raiding the archive, and pedagogical practices in performance (Mar 08)

I Can't Go on Like This: Approaches on Lone Twin and Related Practices (Feb 07)

Between You and Us: A Symposium with Uninvited Guests (Nov 06). Full papers available now from www.uninvited-guests.net and via downloadable word document

Middle, End, Beginning: Adventures in narrative in contemporary performance (Oct 06)

give what you can, take what you need by Rajni Shah and collaborators took place in St. Nicholas Arcade, Lancaster, on the 26th and 27th November 2008. This performance intervention, originally commissioned by the Nuffield and Manchester's Futuresonic Festival, playfully explores notions of community and conversation through gift exchange. Passers-by were greeted by a large dinner table, where various other members of the public may be seated at any one time. Newcomers were invited to take part by accepting a gift, entering into a relationship with the gathering for as long or as short a time as they chose.

Responding to the theme of Making Space, lead artist Leentje Van de Cruys (herself pregnant at the time) worked with 3 local pregnant women to create Nine, a performative response to the emotional, physical and artistic changes that take place during the 9 months of pregnancy. Performers Hannah Robertshaw, Kate Mercer and Sophie Bassett completed a two-month devising process leading to an inevitably one-off performance in October 2007, a touching visual theatre piece combining text, film and dance.

Visual artist Jenny McCabe and Choreographer Vicky Van Mechelen were commissioned as part of the Nuffield’s ‘Making Money’ programme last year to make Public Embrace. In 2007, we commissioned them to develop and extend the project. They brought together a group of regional and national artists with a wide variety of skills (dance, video making, performance, music and sound) for the dance-film project, Morecambe Dances. Again encouraging public engagement with dance on Morecambe promenade, this ambitious piece focused in on different features along the prom where local dance groups and passers-by are seen breaking out into routines and improvisations including a pushchair conga, a tap dancing duet and synchronized swimmers on dry land. The film was premiered on a giant outdoor screen on the prom itself, with food, dancing and a party. This event drew in a substantial crowd, including much walk-up from interested passers by.

'Hammer & Tongs' was the first phase of development for the touring performance 'The Trampoline Orchestra', by North West based artist Ben Faulks and collaborators. In September 2007, Faulks spent two weeks in the Nuffield Theatre with ten performers, four professional trampolinists and several trampolines (including four olympic sized ones), exploring the idea of using trampolines as musical instruments. By rigging sensors to a number of trampolines the group used each bounce to trigger samples, noises and notes, transforming themselves into a highly physical orchestra, intent on devising a unique set of audio-visual compositions. See more info on The Trampoline Orchestra: www.lanwest.org/archives/directory/hammer-tongs/

In May 2007, the Nuffield organised a day long event for children and their parents, comprising a dance workshop for 7-9 year olds led by dancer/choreographer Niki McCretton (with a showing for parents), a space-themed lunch, an arts and crafts workshop and culminating in a late afternoon showing of professional children’s show, 'Mutnik: The first Dog in Space' by McCretton. From the children, Esme said: “I liked being a soldier and picking up the dogs” and Ella enjoyed “all the turning round in space” whereas Louis “liked the rocket”. Charlotte who was picked to play the part of Mutnik said “I liked the part when I was the star of the show at dancing.”

This project took place in April 2007, and was the first in a series of proposed collaborations between young people at the Dukes Youth Theatre, Lancaster, and Nuffield Theatre associate directors. The director for this project was Swen Steinhauser, and he created the devised piece, Unless Supernatural Grace Intervenes: St George Vs the Dragon, with a group of ten children between the ages of 11 to 16. The result was a beautiful, delicate piece of dance theatre, quite unlike anything the participants had hitherto been involved with. Participants: “It was nice to be trusted to do something like this” and “It was a lot of fun, hard work, but we got a lot out of it, I really enjoyed it” and “because we used our own movements and stuff, it’s a bit more closer to yourself in the end.”

In March 2007, Rajni Shah worked with Nuffield Projects and Artist Support Officer, Alice Booth, to create a performance in response to Lancaster and Morecambe, sited in a local shopping precinct. Members of the public sat and had tea and conversation with Rajni, and were each presented with a gift.

In February 2007, young people from Lancashire took part in the making of a short dance film. The development and filming of the project took place at the Nuffield Theatre February 14 and 16, and was led by internationally-acclaimed Union Dance - one of the UK’s most accessible and exciting dance companies. Union Dance has a distinctive approach that mixes contemporary dance, martial arts and urban styles, in a way that is very appealing to a young audience. The young people, who had no previous experience of working with professional dancers, were signed up to the Entry to Employment Scheme at Lancaster & Morecambe College. One of the young people who took part in the Union Dance project said: "We learnt stuff without realising it. You got to the end of the day and you realised that you knew all this stuff but it didn't really feel like learning because it was so much fun.” The film was shown as part of our e-campus film series broadcast on screens in the Nuffield complex and around the university campus.

In March 2007, the Nuffield Theatre hosted an alternative hair dressing experience in Byrons Hair Salon, Lancaster. Among the usual activities of the salon, the transvestite alter-ego of artist Adrian Howells, Adrienne, met with one audience member at a time for an intimate performance experience.

In September 2006, young company Deer Park were supported by the Nuffield and the Forestry Commission to be in residence in Grizedale Forest in Cumbria to create a performance trail through the woods. The final piece was attended by around 50 locals and Nuffield audience members, who undertook a long walk under cover of darkness guided by the company and forest rangers. The piece included a number of small performances as well as a torch-lit picnic. The project has since transferred to a forest in Bristol, supported by Arnolfini.

In May 2006, French choreographer Herman Diephuis worked with 10 participants of a wide age-range with no performance experience to take part in D'après JC, a duet chronicling the birth, life and death of Jesus Christ, as part of Dance Umbrella on tour 2006. Shifting from tableau to tableau, D'après JC captures the statuesque curves and subtle gestures of the works of the great Renaissance artists.

In 2005, three organisations – Ludus Dance Agency, the Nuffield Theatre and Beaumont College – collaborated on Transformations, a project that generated an innovative creative environment in which disabled graduates of Beaumont College were teamed with professional dance artists from the North West. Wheelchairs, hoists and lifts, normally the signifiers of disability, were refigured as creative, playful, even aesthetic objects. Through targeted training, which the group undertook together, and by bringing together young people with extreme physical and learning needs with highly trained dancers, the project aimed to reverse some of the normal modes of participatory practice, disrupting boundaries between choreographer/mover, artist/participant, observer/maker. Please also see attached report for more information on this project.  

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Artists Niki McCretton and Kathy Hinde worked with local grandparents and grandchildren over 9 months in 2005. This led to a site-specific theatre piece on Morecambe seafront. Featuring a Mobility Buggy Ballet, a Ghetto Blaster Symphony and a series of intimate performances, the work culminated in massive film projections on the facade of the Midland Hotel (now re-opened after restoration by Urban Splash). The show explored the special relationships that skip a generation, uncovering a wealth of experiences, and an openness and honesty that was funny and moving.

Relative formed the research stage of a new professional multimedia show from Niki and Kathy, exploring the themes of working with the participants in Morecambe. The show toured extensivley in 2006, including a series of workshops with grandparents and grandchildren across the UK.

To celebrate their 60th anniversary, Arts Council England asked 9 artists to design bespoke travelcard wallets. The wallets were used to increase involvement in the arts debate - ACE's first-ever public value enquiry. The artists include Tim Etchells, Jeanette Winterson, Bernardine Evaristo, Ty, Michael Clark, Tracey Emin, Adam Sutherland (pictured), Jyll Bradley and Ante Schiffers.

To receive a free wallet, email info@nuffieldtheatre.com with the name of the artist and your name and address.

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