After being a student of comparative literature I was hungry to engage in every aspect of live story telling.
I joined the company as an actor but after two years of devising and brain storming I became artistic director of Kaboodle Productions which continued to tour the UK and elsewhere until 2002. More and more I became interested in the content of the stories being told and inventing a style appropriate to each story.
Below is just a sample of the shows that we toured between 1980 and 2002. We worked as an ensemble trying out everything in rehearsal, often using improvisation, music and design to find a show, as much as an existing text. The ensemble was constantly reshaping, I was especially keen to give young people from all backgrounds and cultures opportunity to bring their talent to an independent theatre vision. It was also important that the company was open to people who may not come from the traditional training route to the theatre.
1979 / 1980
Mr Roland's Medicine
Inspired by the Browning Poem Child Roland To the Dark Tower Came.
A gothic thriller with a full church organ sound played live.
London, Munich, Edinburgh,
English and German Tours.
1980 / 1981
Inside Story
Antonin Artaud, Charley Chaplin's Mother, Joan of Arc Don Quixote, and some guy on the barrel organ. A celebration of the unreasonable, performed in institutional pyjamas, with an axe, a piece of
wood and a tin bath.
London, English and German Tours.
1980 / 1981 / 1982 / 1985
No Waiting
Two men at the end of a road robbing one another of food and dignity.
A comedy with a cabaret style ending. Live music.
Manchester, English Tour, German Tour, Edinburgh, Baltimore USA
1986 / 1987 / 1989
Rasputin the Forbidden Story
A floor cloth, a glass screen and an old fridge.
A picaresque fantasy that followed the fictional survival of the Russian pilgrim from his assassination to the ghettos of Berlin to the clubs of Paris, to the stiff collars of England to the Ice
Cream Parlours and voodoo rituals of New Orleans. Live music played an assortment of roots guitars.
English tour, Philadelphia, Baltimore, San Francisco, San Diego, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and German Tou
1987
Woyzek George Büchner.
Played by two performers.
A female psychiatrist picks the mind of a man accused of killing his loved one.
Performed with members of the Krysler Orchestra.
English tour and Berlin City of Culture.
1989
Delivery Man
A co-production with Loudmouth Mime of Liverpool.
A prodigal son story about drug culture made in consultation with organisations for drug dependence. Rotating glass doors using music from Jaco Pastourius and Charlie Parker.
Liverpool and national tour.
1992 / 1993
A Threepenny Story
The veterans Story. A political satire in the style of English Popular theatre and music featuring the cult band from Liverpool: The Wizards of Twiddly.
GEMS Cultural Singen Germany and produced for the Liverpool Festival of Comedy. Germany, Liverpool and national Tour.
2000 / 2001
Soho Story
The Immigrants Story.
Story of pop roots and racial tension, told in songs.
London Young Vic run and Liverpool. Also Touring and Theatre Factory, Brussels.
OTHER WORK Includes:
1995
Miss Julie
By Augustus Strindberg, relocated to the plantations of Lousiana, where breeding was everything. The breeding of the Aristocrats versus the mulatto culture. Music
by Duke Ellington. Nominated best production Liverpool Arts Awards. Unity theatre and Everyman theatre
1995
The Caretaker
By Harold Pinter. The Liverpool Everyman Theatre
