SPILL Festival 2007 Brochure (cropped)

2–22 APRIL 2007

Welcome to SPIll

London’s first international festival of experimental theatre, live art and performance showing the work of exceptional artists from around the world at a range of great sites across London.

SPILL is all about ideas and, without exception, all of the work in the festival has something to say… or ask... or suggest… No-one is claiming to have any answers, but as difficult times demand complex responses so the artists presenting work in SPILL are each involved in new ways of looking, of thinking, of trying to speak about the world we all inhabit and share; even when it’s challenging; even when it’s difficult.

Alongside three weeks of live work from some of the most influential performance makers of our time, SPILL is also an exhibition, a symposium, and a series of feasts. I look forward to hearing your responses to the festival, and warmly welcome you to SPILL 2007.

RobeRt PacIttI aRtIS tIc DIRectoR

April 5, 12, 19 April

2–22 April

tHe spill Blue ZOne

Across SPILL we’re bringing you free downloadable goodies direct to your mobile. ‘SPILL bluecasts’ will take place throughout the Soho Theatre and are available simply by setting your handset to receive information via bluetooth. Not only are the downloads free of charge but they’re also quick to arrive on your mobile. So all you need to do in order to take home your very own piece of contemporary performance is turn up, tune in and download. It’s the only good reason to be blue this SPILL!

2–22 April

SPILL questions traditions of theatre, art and society. The festival contains work which may be challenging to some people and SPILL seeks to nurture a culture of open discussion around this.

andré massenO ‘i’m nOt here’ Or ‘the dying swan’ eve BOnneau ‘bOdy’ is the first wOrd i say HanCOCk & kelly tattOO

tuCa mOraes Overpainting: terminal statiOn

eve dent COlleCted wOrKs

emma wOluKau-wanambwa

untitled (tHe vaults, tHe institute)

sHeila gHelani COvet me, Care fOr me

THE SPILL BAR AT SHUNT

BARBICAN

tickets: £12

book now: Barbican Box Office 0845 120 7536

SHUNT

tickets: £15 / £10

book now: Soho Theatre

Box Office 0870 429 6883

TOyNBEE STUDIOS

tickets: £10 including food

(£5 for New Work Network members)

A range of alcohols and soft drinks will also be on sale at affordable prices

book now: Soho Theatre

Box Office 0870 429 6883

SHUNT tickets: £15 / £10

book now: Soho Theatre

Box Office 0870 429 6883

Doors open at 5pm

SHUNT

tickets: Day Pass £30 / £20

book now: Soho Theatre

Box Office 0870 429 6883

Guest artists include: Françoise Berlanger, Eve Bonneau, Hancock & Kelly, Tuca Moraes, André Masseno, Valerie Renay, Priya Mistry, Sylvain Reymond, Unreasonable Adults and more

SOHO THEATRE tickets: free

SOHO THEATRE

tickets: £15 / £12.50

book now: Soho Theatre Box Office 0870 429 6883

BARBICAN tickets: £12

book now: Barbican Box Office 0845 120 7536

SOHO THEATRE

tickets: £50 / £30

(£25 New Work Network members)

book now: Soho Theatre Box Office 0870 429 6883

SOHO THEATRE

tickets: £12 / £10

book now: Soho Theatre Box Office 0870 429 6883

BARBICAN tickets: £12

book now: Barbican Box Office 0845 120 7536

SOUTHBANK CENTRE tickets: £13

book now: Southbank Centre Box Office 0871 663 2500

SHUNT tickets: £15 / £12

book now: Soho Theatre Box Office 0870 429 6883

tHe pit

BarBiC an

Wednesday 4 April

Thursday 5 April 7pm

tickets: £12

book now: Barbican Box Office 0845 120 7536

raimund HOgHe (germany)

saCre – tHe rite Of spring

Igor Stravinsky’s ‘Le Sacre du Printemps’ continues to inspire renowned choreographers. Now, together with the Belgian performer Lorenzo De Brabandere, Raimund Hoghe, longstanding dramaturge with Pina Bausch and internationally successful with his unique stage language, has developed a new, contemporary and minimalist interpretation of the ballet classic: an initiation ritual for two men. The production follows Stravinsky’s dynamic, infectious music without directly translating its tempo into movement: two dissimilar men create a common sphere in which they both approach and repel each other.

“Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote of throwing the body into the fight. These words inspired me to go on stage. Other inspirations are the reality around me, the time in which I live, my memories of history, people, images, feelings, the power and beauty of music and the confrontation with one’s own body which, in my case, does not correspond with conventional ideals of beauty. To see bodies on stage that do not comply with the norm is important - not only with regard to history but also with regard to present developments, which are leading humans towards the status of design objects. It is important to be able to work and to go your own way - with or without success. I simply do what I have to do.” Raimund

Hoghe

Raimund Hoghe was born in Wuppertal and began his career by writing portraits of outsiders and celebrities for the German weekly newspaper “Die Zeit”. These were later compiled in several books. From 1980 - 90 he worked as dramaturge for Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal, which also became the subject matter for two more books. Since 1989 he has been working on his own theatre pieces for various dancers and actors. 1992 saw the beginning of his collaboration with the artist Luca Giacomo Schulte. In 1994 he produced his first solo piece, “Meinwärts”, which together with the subsequent “Chambre Séparée” (1997) and “Another Dream” (2000) made up an award-winning trilogy on the 20th century. Hoghe frequently works for television on projects such as “Der Buckel”, his 1997 hour-long self portrait. He lives in Düsseldorf.

photo: Rosa Frank

sHunt

Saturday 7 April

Sunday 8 April

Monday 9 April

Tuesday 10 April

Saturday 14 April

Sunday 15 April

Monday 16 April

Tuesday 17 April 3pm, 6pm and 9pm

Audience size is limited to 12 per show

tickets: £15 / £10

book now: Soho Theatre Box Office 0870 429 6883

Julia Bardsley (uk) trans- aCts

“Sheer magic… you could revisit this piece over and over and always find new dimensions, new insights.” The Glasgow Herald

An accident at the cross-roads between video & live presence. A smash up at the intersection of performance & the script. A Director & Actress splayed across the dissecting table, waiting for the Understudy to walk on & corpse…

Forging an intimate dialogue between the audience & the performer, the artist & the creative process, the live presence & the visual art object, ‘Trans-Acts’ sees Julia Bardsley continue her exploration of visual and theatrical modes with long-term sonic collaborator Andrew Poppy.

Act One: an exhibition prologue of pinhole photographs, flick books & projected suicides.

Act Two: the artist undergoes a further transformation, assuming the role of the Director, part animal, part human, part male, part female.

Act Three: an attempt at transcendence, concerning a battle of doubles, the desire for the horizontal & the seduction of the curtain. There are accidents & miracles, displays of beautiful wounds, dreams of damage done by the tongue & the gun, a shadow with ‘magic’ written on its eyelids and falling in reverse.

All is witnessed in close proximity by an audience of twelve.

Julia Bardsley has worked as a film & video maker, visual artist, performer and theatre director. As co-director (with Phelim McDermott) of dereck, dereck Productions, works include ‘Cupboard Man’, ‘Gaudete’ and ‘The Vinegar Works’ (Almeida). She has directed at the Bush and National Theatres, ICA and Donmar Warehouse. As a result of a three year NESTA Fellowship, she created the ‘Trans-Acts Trilogy’, premiered in 2005.

wOrld premiere a spill COmmissiOn

Kira O’reilly (uk) untitled (synCOpe)

“I like to think Kira’s work is... not beautiful but sublime.”

Lois Keidan, National Review of Live Art Programme

On the back of a seaside postcard she had written to me: “when you fall into syncope, you never know in what shape you might return: with wolf’s paws, the tail of a serpent, a bark at your lips, a pelt or fur… One never knows.”

Wish you were here…

Kira O’Reilly employs performance, video, installation and, more recently, biomedical and biotechnical practices to consider the body as material, site and metaphor in which narrative threads of the personal, sexual, social and political knot and unknot in shifting permutations. The work is explicit, sometimes uncomfortable, and seeks to question rather than provide easy answers. By asking the audience to take a risk, a sense of intimacy is established, creating a direct and immediate dialogue of tender exchanges.

It could be thought of as a dance of sorts… I’ll do it once. And then once again. For each one of you. Together.

sHunt

Saturday 7 April 6pm and 9pm

tickets: £15 / £10

book now: Soho Theatre

Box Office 0870 429 6883

Kira O’Reilly is an Irish artist based in the UK. Since 1997 her work has been exhibited widely throughout Europe, Australia and, more recently, China, where she performed at the DaDao festival in Beijing. In 2004 she was an artist in residence at SymbioticA, the art science collaborative research lab at the University of Western Australia. She has been the recipient of awards from the Wellcome Trust, Arts Council of England and Artsadmin.

photo: Manuel Vason

Two days of live performance and installation events showing at the Shunt Vaults.

The programme consists of 7 companies showing work each day from 5pm onwards.

4 of these pieces are live performances of between 40 minutes and 1 hour each.

3 of the pieces are durational installations for you to view at your leisure.

Artists in the programme are:

André Masseno

Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa

Eve Bonneau

Eve Dent

Hancock & Kelly

Sheila Ghelani

Tuca Moraes

sunday& mOnday 8–9 april

sHunt

SPILL Sunday 8 April

SPILL Monday 9 April

Doors open 5pm

tickets: day pass £30 / £20

book now: Soho Theatre

Box Office 0870 429 6883

sHunt

SPILL Sunday 8 April

SPILL Monday 9 April

Doors open 5pm

tickets: day pass £30 / £20

book now: Soho Theatre

Box Office 0870 429 6883

andré massenO (BraZil)

‘i’m nOt here’ Or ‘ the dying swan’

A man is among balloons, a birthday cake and a microphone. This man is haunted by memories. Historical memories are embedded in him… A male choreographer, a female dancer and a bird. Over ninety-nine years the bird dies once again. They are shadows of that man. He didn’t choose these partners but they follow his thoughts and questions. He knows them very well, but they don’t...

A dance commentary developed in dialogue with Michel Fokine’s 1907 choreographic piece ‘The Dying Swan’, which was created specially for dancer Anna Pavlova, ‘I’m Not Here’ or ‘The Dying Swan’ operates at the blurred intersection of dance, theatre and live art. Marking out an unsettling, fragile ground both with and across the performer’s body, it serves as an important point of departure to consider significant questions of identity, representation, gender and the legacies of performance.

André Masseno is a Brazilian dancer, actor, choreographer, costume designer and stage director. He has created a number of solo performances fusing dance, theatre and live art – ‘ana/grama’ (1999), ‘Explicit Lyrics’ (2002), ‘Baleia’ (2004) and ‘I’m Not Here’ or ‘The Dying Swan’ (2004). He has also collaborated widely, both as a movement researcher and director, and performs regularly for Brazilian choreographer Dani Lima. In 2003 he worked on ‘Finale’ with Pacitti Company in Rio de Janeiro.

photo: Raquel Rocha

eve BOnneau (franCe/Belgium)

Eve Bonneau uses the body as live matter in constant transformation; as an organism – with its flux / reflux of interior rhythms - which the artist then ‘grows outwards’ until they arrive in shared space. She describes this process as “the passage of experience from the body into the performance, of an organic world becoming a social body”. In ‘‘Body’ is the first word I say’, Eve Bonneau approaches nudity with the eyes of a child, as if caught in a game of multiple perceptions. Through interaction between the performer and a live video relay, the body and its image interrelate in constant dialogue. This is an intimate performance for limited audiences.

Eve Bonneau is an artist based in Brussels. Before beginning her solo career she studied at the P.A.R.T.S. academy under Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Rosas.

Supported by CIFAS, Bains Connective, Nadine and La Malterie

sHunt

SPILL Sunday 8 April

SPILL Monday 9 April

Doors open 5pm

tickets: day pass £30 / £20

book now: Soho Theatre Box Office 0870 429 6883

‘bOdy’ is the first wOrd i say

photo: Eve Bonneau

wOrld premiere

HanCOC k & kelly (uk)

tattOO

In the drawing room, a conversation begins… What is your most revealing memory? Where in your body can you feel it, and what would you do to my body to make me feel it too?

Taking as its starting points the live tattooing of Traci Kelly and the artists’ attempts to locate and hold their audience’s most revealing memories, Tattoo is a touching call to arms, a desire to embrace all that cannot be held or forgotten and a series of prayers, read to the sea.

Where does one body end and another begin?

During the performance Kelly will continue to have the length of her back tattooed in a pattern drawn from the wallpaper of Richard Hancock’s childhood home. The tattoo will form a permanent exhibit, a visceral exchange of memories from one body to another, while Hancock and Kelly embrace and embody the memories of those that have been lost along the way, making a new work with its origins in the hearts and souls of past audiences, lost lovers and forgotten friends.

Since 2001, Richard Hancock and Traci Kelly have collaborated on poetic and visceral works of live art and performance, as a duo and in collaboration with others, across the UK, Europe and Mexico. Since 2005, Hancock and Kelly have been engaged in an ongoing series of solo performances, each responding to the work of the other. In November 2006, they premiered the performance installation Iconographia alongside their photographic collaboration with Manuel Vason, at greenroom, Manchester. Their new company work, Tattoo, will be drawn over four cities in the UK across Spring 2007; beginning at SPILL and continuing in Birmingham, Nottingham and Bristol.

sHunt

SPILL Sunday 8 April

SPILL Monday 9 April

Doors open 5pm

tickets: day pass £30 / £20

book now: Soho Theatre Box Office 0870 429 6883

photo: Hancock & Kelly

tuC a mOraes (BraZil)

Overpainting: terminal s tatiOn

In ‘Overpainting: Terminal Station’, a dramatic synchonicity of dance, theatre, the plastic arts and multimedia experiment, Tuca Moraes explores the spatially provocative inflatable installation created by artist Susana Queiroga. Overpainting is a process in which the application of a thick layer of tint or transparent shellac over a finished painting allows the paint applied underneath to stay visible and reflective. Queiroga’s installation, when it wraps us in its reddish outer skin, has a similar effect and reminds also of another overpainting: our own body and its rose-red interior. It reminds us of the pulse of Art, of an embodied sensuality, of life.

Fusing this with the texts and testimonials of people living on the edge, ‘Terminal Station’ seeks to look beneath the surface of things, to uncover the lived experience all too often hidden.

A Brazilian actress and producer for 22 years, Tuca Moraes has been working since 1992 with the award-winning theatre company Ensaio Aberto. Her most recent work was the television drama series ‘Sim, eu posso’, a partnership with the Brazilian Government, which aims to teach literacy to adults.

sHunt

SPILL Sunday 8 April

SPILL Monday 9 April

Doors open 5pm

tickets: day pass £30 / £20

book now: Soho Theatre

Box Office 0870 429 6883

photo: Suzana Queiroga

Eve Dent ‘Staircase’

eve dent (uk) COlleCted wOrKs

Influenced by ideas of embodiment in relation to environment, Dent uses live performance and photography to create body installations that arise out of interactions with architectural structures and spaces - installations exploring the threshold between bodily self and material thing.

She creates images in which all or part of her body is fitted into the very fabric of a room or environment, usually presented live as performed installations, but also existing as photographic works. Often her body is almost completely hidden within the recesses or constructed spaces found within a building: the space under the floor or the flue of a chimney with only part of the body visible. Or she is squeezed into holes or gaps in the material structure - her physical contours against those of the architecture.

Her most recent work in this vein has been the ‘anchor series’, an ongoing body of site-specific improvised works, which began in 2003. Philosophically, this work is based around the idea of the body as a medium through which the hidden poetic life of a site or building, particularly those that may be unseen or overlooked, is expressed.

For her Spill presentation, Dent will present a gallery of collected works: older images will sit alongside her most recent explorations and works in progress. This most recent work seems to herald a move towards placing the body or bodies within a larger landscape and a movement from solo work to work with others. In her own words, “conceptually it feels there is a subtle yet dramatic shift, a shift from merging towards emerging.”

sHunt

SPILL Sunday 8 April

SPILL Monday 9 April

Doors open 5pm

tickets: day pass £30 / £20

book now: Soho Theatre Box Office 0870 429 6883

photo: Ming de Nasty

emma wOluKau-wanambwa (uk) untitled (tHe vaults, tHe institute)

In an original SPILL commission, Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa will create a unique installation in the Shunt Vaults. Making art in a variety of different media and for a diverse range of contexts, in her recent work Wolukau-Wanambwa has been exploring how we, as human beings, construct our environments and how we form our views of the world; and what, in so doing, we see and do not see, remember and forget.

Such investigations will now be applied to this singular London location, a covert landmark in the heart of the city. Drawing her inspiration from the vaults themselves – from their architecture, their uses, and from the discarded traces of human activity that are to be discovered throughout its public and private areas - WolukauWanambwa’s work will take viewers into areas of the vaults that have never before been open to the public. It will encourage them to encounter the building anew and to contemplate its ‘life’.

Artist Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions include: ‘Wandering Star: British-Korean Landscape’ (Gana Gallery, Seoul, South Korea), ‘For One Night Only’ (Camden Arts Centre, London) and ‘The Kinship International Strategy on Surveillance & Suppression’ (Conical Inc. Gallery, Melbourne, Australia). Between 2004 and 2006, she was the holder of an Arts Council London Emerging Artist’s Award.

wOrld premiere a spill COmmissiOn

2005

sHunt

SPILL Sunday 8 April

SPILL Monday 9 April

Doors open 5pm

tickets: day pass £30 / £20

book now: Soho Theatre

Box Office 0870 429 6883

Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa ‘Afromatic’ sponge, hair, glue

wOrld premiere a spill COmmissiOn

sHeila gHelani (uk)

COvet me, Care fOr me

Will you wear me? Will you care for me? Will you covet me? Will you love me? Will you let me be part of this history of yours, this so called history of yours, this history you own, the history of the world?

Sick to death of being placed ‘outside’, ‘Covet me, care for me’ is an attempt to produce and stage a series of covetable ‘mongrel’ objects, with the intention that they will be wanted, taken home and looked after by the viewer…objects to be talked about, placed in pride of place and, above all else, desired. The work is about dissemination, about rejoicing in cross fertilization and encouraging the viewer to consider that often it is only after ‘a drop of this and a pinch of that’ are mixed together that what they might care for is able to emerge.

Sheila Ghelani originally trained in contemporary dance and worked as a choreographer, dancer and teacher for several years before making the crossover into Live Art/Performance. She also works collaboratively, is a longstanding member of Pacitti Company and a Blast Theory Associate artist. She has toured and performed nationally and internationally for both companies and regularly lead artists’ workshops for Pacitti Company in the UK and abroad. She also teaches in Academic contexts.

sHunt

SPILL Sunday 8 April

SPILL Monday 9 April

Doors open 5pm

tickets: day pass £30 / £20

book now: Soho Theatre Box Office 0870 429 6883

paCitti COmpany (uk)

tHree duets

‘Three Duets’ is a video installation with sound work and objects. On film Robert Pacitti performs three separate duets, one each with Sheila Ghelani, Juliet Robson and octogenarian Angela Rodaway.

With Ghelani, the pair enacts a series of unusual rituals in adjacent identical hallways, seemingly suspended somewhere between the institutional and the intimately personal. Pacitti and Robson appear durationally in a succession of static outdoor shots to camera. These tableaux are gently subversive - they belie truths about the physical and sexual identity of each performer - and as such these innocent faux family portraits become highly volatile games. The third duet presents fragments of story and memory as a projected pulsing text, a deliberate attempt to describe the friendship of a younger man and older woman based not on difference but on shared politics, activism and belief.

‘Three Duets’ is a game of looking which challenges assumptions around difference. That the three are shown at the same time, alongside a deteriorated puppet theatre on a plinth, subtly begins to piece together musings on life, death, sex and transformation.

sOHO tHeatre

Tuesday 10 April

Wednesday 11 April

Thursday 12 April 12pm - 7.30pm daily

tickets: free

photo: Pacitti Company

sOHO tHeatre

Tuesday 10 April

Wednesday 11 April

Thursday 12 April

Friday 13 April

Saturday 14 April 7.30pm

tickets: £15 / £12.50

book now: Soho Theatre

Box Office 0870 429 6883

fOrCed entertainment (uk) exquisite pain

frOm a text By

sOpHie Calle

‘Exquisite Pain’ is a story of love and loss, devised and performed by one of Europe’s most outstanding experimental theatre groups. A man and a woman tell stories of ordinary and not-so-ordinary heartbreak. The woman repeatedly recounts the story of the end of an affair; each time remembering it differently, finding new ways to both remember and forget what happened. The man tells stories from many different people; each a snapshot of sorrow that takes its place in a growing catalogue of suffering, break-ups, humiliations, deaths, bad dentistry and love letters that never arrive.

Based on a project by the renowned French conceptual artist Sophie Calle, ‘Exquisite Pain’ marks the first time that Forced Entertainment have worked from ‘a text’ - in this case words and images from an artist whose extraordinary work blurs the boundaries between visual art, performance and real life itself. This simple and intimate performance explores how language, memory and forgetting move to contain, preserve or erase events; how people come to terms with trauma.

“The marriage of Calle’s text with Tim Etchells’ minimalist, utterly uncompromising production is heaven-sent...I cannot recommend it strongly enough.” The Guardian

photo: Sophie Calle

françOise Berlanger (Belgium) pentHesilea

‘One of the true surprises of this years festival’

Christophe Slagmuylder Artistic Director, KunstenFESTIVALdesArts

The unconquered Amazon Penthesilea is struck in the heart with an arrow of love fired by Achilles. She desires him and… tears him apart, devours him and then succumbs herself. Based on the text by Heinrich Von Kleist, ‘Penthesilea’ is a work about the shock of falling in love and the subsequent violence of loss. It explores the strength of words and the (de)composition of language. Working with her brother, visual artist Marcel Berlanger, two sound artists and a scenographer, Françoise Berlanger plunges us into the cruel and haunted consciousness of a woman at war with herself, as her flesh and her mind falter with fatal effect. A half-woman, half-animal body, the stage is her abyss.

Born in Oran, Algeria, Françoise Berlanger now lives and works in Brussels. After studying physical education and physiotherapy, she moved into theatre in 1989. After mask work and extensive performance across Europe, she decided to direct, joining the young Belgian director and writer Jean-Christophe Lauwers in 1999. She has also worked closely with musicians and visual artists. Her first piece of dramatic writing, ‘L’oeuf blanc’, was selected for the Enfin seul (4) festival in Brussels in October 2006.

tHe pit

BarBiC an

Wednesday 11 April

Thursday 12 April 7pm

Post show talk – 12 April

Françoise and Marcel Berlanger in conversation with Lyn Gardner

tickets: £12

book now: Barbican

Box Office 0845 120 7536

photo: Thierry Monasse

studiO

sOHO tHeatre

Friday 13 April

Saturday 14 April 8pm and 10pm

tickets: £12 / £10

book now: Soho Theatre

Box Office 0870 429 6883

unreasOnaBle adults (australia)

tHe l ast tO see tHem alive: sex, slaugHter & tHe City

How do you meet Mr Right in an age of Serial Killers?

‘The Last To See Them Alive’ explores what it means to be the victim and/or victor in the game of serial murder and serial monogamy in the big city. An unsettling mix of monologue, music, song, video confession, direct audience address and live acts of transgression, it embodies women’s fear and desire for the city, through their internal map of city-space and the stories of women’s experience as depicted in the conflicting narratives of the television series ‘Sex and the City’ and ‘Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.’

Creating a dynamic space for engagement between performer and audience at the intersection between violent desire and the desire for violence, it is a romantic suspense, a seduction, an invitation to watch a crime unfold. And it asks us: is it ethical to take pleasure in the deaths of others for the sake of entertainment? Why are serial murder and serial monogamy so addictive? Do serial viewers create serial killers and, if so, who are the victims?

Unreasonable Adults is an Australian performance/media collective. Recent major online works have been presented in Brazil and commissioned by Artrage/Sex-Adultshop.com. Previous works include ‘The End of Romance’ and ‘Sweet/Nothing’, both durational live performances for site-specific locations around Australia; ‘Stereopublic’ (1999-2002), ‘Shy Boy’ (2001), ‘Peculiar’ (2003) and ‘Outside World’ (2004). ‘The Last To See Them Alive: Sex, Slaughter & the City’ was first developed in residency at the HotHouse Theatre, Albury, New South Wales in May 2006.

Supported by Arts SA and Performance Space, Sydney.

wOrld premiere

paCitti COmpany (uk)

Civil

“A seamless flow of beautifully crafted, intelligent images”

Christopher Hewitt, Live Art Magazine

In 1996 Robert Pacitti travelled to New York to meet and spend time with the author and raconteur Quentin Crisp, in order to produce a new work that took Crisp’s infamous autobiography ‘The Naked Civil Servant’ as its starting point. Exploring issues of liberty - and disobedience - ‘Civil’ integrates live performance, film, slides, original sound materials and music. Since Crisp’s death the piece has undeniably shifted, and a work that set out to explore shared aspirations and joint activism now reads as a series of images and ideas placed in relation to notions of legacy.

For the past 15 years the internationally acclaimed Pacitti Company has been making award winning performance work for a range of theatre, gallery and site-specific spaces worldwide.

tHe pit

BarBiC an

Saturday 14 April

Sunday 15 April 7pm

tickets: £12

book now: Barbican Box Office 0845 120 7536

sOutHBank Centre

Sunday 15 April 3pm – 9pm

Southbank Centre, Purcell Room

tickets: £13

book now: Southbank Centre

Box Office 0871 663 2500

fOrCed entertainment (uk) and

On tHe tHOusandtH nigHt

A six hour durational performance where the public are free to come and go as they wish throughout the performance.

A line of eight performers dressed up as Kings and Queens in cheap red cloaks and cardboard crowns tell a story which somehow, in its many dips and turns, seems to include many, if not all, of the stories in the world. The performance remixes everything from film plots, to religious stories to traditional tales, jokes and myths, through to personal stories, scary stories, sex stories, banal stories and children’s stories. Over six hours the performers compete, interrupt, exaggerate - their improvised storytelling moving between tiredness and hysteria, absurd vulgarity and surprising tenderness.

‘And on the Thousandth Night’ was created in September 2000 for Festival Ayloul in Beirut and draws on one section from Forced Entertainment’s epic twenty-four-hour performance ‘Who Can Sing A Song to Unfrighten Me?’ commissioned by and first performed at Southbank Centre in 1999.

‘And On the Thousandth Night’ is big, lively, intelligent theatre, made with the simplest of tools.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

photo: Hugo Glendinning

paCitti COmpany (uk) grand finale

“The most unusual and unsettling theatrical experience currently in London” Lynn Gardner, The Guardian, on the 2001 production

For ‘Finale’, Pacitti Company join forces with sensational Swiss cult electronica band Velma to bring you one from the heart: a series of highly visceral performances shown in intense, site-specific locations. Abstracting the 1867 émile Zola novel ‘Thérèse Raquin’, ‘Finale’ dispenses with narrative structure and character in order to prioritise the themes of the book - deception, lust, spite and domination. Elements of installation, video and photographic work serve to further blur the boundaries between gallery and stage, activity and page. This is theatre full of sexual obsessions and jealous distractions played out against the hypnotic repetitions of Velma’s minimalist soundwork. Pacitti Company revel in the dirt of Zola’s text and, true to form, ‘Finale’ is compelling and explicit, uncompromising and cruel.

’Finale’ was originally made and toured in 2001 and since then has been crafted as a site-specific piece to reside in spaces that have their own resonance and sense of history. In this process Pacitti Company work with guest practitioners, local to wherever ‘Finale’ shows in the world, in the capacity of workshop participants and guest performers. For ‘Grand Finale’ Pacitti Company will remake this award-winning work with artists from elsewhere – many also within the SPILL programme – who have previously performed in the piece before in sites local to where they live. This new, composite international cast will spend the last week of SPILL undertaking a workshop, process again behind closed doors, before closing SPILL 2007 with two large scale, site-specific performances throughout the Shunt Vaults.

“I simply applied to living bodies the analytical method that surgeons apply to corpses” émile Zola on ‘Thérèse Raquin’, 1867

sHunt

Saturday 21 April Sunday 22 April 8pm

Guest artists include: Françoise Berlanger, Eve Bonneau, Hancock & Kelly, Tuca Moraes, André Masseno, Valerie Renay, Priya Mistry, Sylvain Reymond, Unreasonable Adults and more.

tickets: £15 / £12

book now: Soho Theatre Box Office 0870 429 6883

photo: Pacitti Company

sOHO tHeatre

Thursday 12 April

Friday 13 April 10.00 to 5.30pm

tickets: £50 / £30

£25 New Work Network members

book now: Soho Theatre

Box Office 0870 429 6883

spill sympOsium

What are the possibilities of radical, contemporary performance: what forms can it take, where can it be located, what can it do and who can it be for? A gathering of international artists, producers and commentators will discuss different strategies of performance making and presenting and new ways of activating audiences.

The SPILL Symposium hopes to unpack some of the baggage associated with ‘experimental’ and ‘radical’ theatre and performance practices, look at the kinds of work we would like to see in our cultural centres and consider why these kinds of work are important and whom they might be important. The two day Symposium sets out to consider different ways of working with the production, presentation, distribution and discussion of contemporary theatre and performance practices, and to propose new models for a more sustainable future.

The first day of the symposium will be structured around conceptual issues: polemics and presentations asking what kind of forms contemporary theatre and performance can take, what are the lineages of such work, who are they for, where can they be located, what can they do and say, what can be said about them, and why they are important?

The second day will be structured around more practical discussions,: case studies and models of practices around these questions, particularly in relation to the making and touring of contemporary work, to the sharing of existing models and to the propositions of future strategies for cultural frameworks, critical dialogues and new audiences.

Confirmed contributors include: Claire Macdonald, Cindy Oswin, Marisa Carnesky, Adrian Heathfield, Tom Trevor, Ju Row Farr, Gregg Whelan, Judith Knight, Angharad Wynne-Jones, Hannah Hurtzig, Christine Peters, Helen Marriage, Stella Hall, Rose Fenton, Tilmann Broshart, Tim Etchells, Phelim McDermott, Karena Johnson, Simon Casson, Leslie Hill, Lois Weaver, Louise Jeffreys, Lyn Gardner, Keith Khan.

The Live Art Development Agency is the leading development organisation for Live Art in the UK. The Agency offers a portfolio of Resources, Professional Development Schemes, Projects and Initiatives for the support and development of Live Art practices and discourses in London, the UK and internationally. The Agency is committed to working strategically, in partnership and in consultation with artists and organisations in the cultural sector.

Produced in collaboration with the Live Art Development Agency. www.thisisLiveArt.co.uk

photos: Pacitti Company

spill feasts

Working in partnership with the New Work Network and Artsadmin, SPILL cordially invites you to supper…

Each week of the festival we will be hosting a feast in the oak panelled Courtroom of Toynbee Studios.

These meals provide an opportunity for audience members to converse with artists from the SPILL programme in a relaxed manner. It’s going to be fun, it’s going to be interesting and it’s going to be tasty.

Menus will change weekly and seating is limited – so early booking is essential.

tOynBee studiOs

Thursday 5 April

Thursday 12 April

Thursday 19 April

Doors open at 9pm

Dinner served 9.15pm

Carriages 11.30pm

The Courtroom, Toynbee Studios

tickets: £10 including food (£5 for New Work Network members) A range of alcohols and soft drinks will also be on sale at affordable prices book now: Soho Theatre Box Office 0870 429 6883

spill festival Bar

Throughout SPILL a festival bar will be running at the Shunt Lounge, set deep in the tunnels under London Bridge Station. By special arrangement with the lovely folk at Shunt, a ticket to any SPILL event will get you in to the bar free before 11pm and once inside its open late.

Perhaps the true heart of the festival, this is the perfect opportunity to discuss performances you’ve just seen with friends and strangers - to keep up to speed with the Future Classic exhibition - or simply to turn up and hang out. There’s even the odd surprise event or two lined up…

Entrance is through a little door on Joiner Street inside London Bridge Tube Station, London SE1. Just look for the SPILL logo!

The Shunt Lounge is a Members Bar.You don’t need membership during SPILL, but it’s a good place to visit all year round. Check membership out at www.shunt.co.uk

sHunt lOunge

Throughout SPILL Festival open till late tickets: free before 11pm with ticket to any SPILL event

funded by:

tHe spill team

Robert Pacitti

Daniela Paolucci

Di Robson

Mark Webber

Festival Director & Curator

General Manager

Consultant Producer

Production Manager

Paul Donaghy Volunteer Co-ordinator

Carla Tommasini

Kiel de Valera

venue partners:

project partners:

The SPILL Festival is sponsored by the Ibis London City Hotel and

Directors Assistant Internship

Marketing Internship

Jonny Hey Management Assistant

Jo Hughes

London Calling

Website Design

Distribution & Bluetooth

MadeInEarnest Design

Arthur Leone

PR

The SPILL Festival of Performance is produced in house as an initiative of Pacitti Company: www.pacitticompany.com

SPILL has been made possible by the kind support, dedication & commitment of the following organisations and individuals – we thank each of them

patrOns

An anonymous patron

gOld friends

Srinivasan Gopalan, Sanjiv Yajnik friends

Manick Govinda, Jeremy Goldstein, Judith Knight, Blast Theory

paCitti COmpany BOard Of trustees

John Nicholls, Manick Govinda, Gill Graham, Robyn Durie, Ju Row Farr

tHanks tO:

Louise Jeffreys, Hannah Bentley, Kate Beard & all at the Barbican / David Rosenberg, Luke Cooper, Heather Uprichard & all at Shunt / Mark Godfrey, Lisa Goldman, Jo Cottrell, Kelly Duffy & all at Soho Theatre / Julia Carruthers, Debbie Butler, Danielle Fairweather & all at Southbank Centre / Judith Knight, Gill Lloyd, Toynbee Studios & all at Artsadmin / Lois Keidan, Daniel Brine, Andrew Mitchelson & the Live Art Development Agency / Sophie Cameron, Hannah Crosson, Philippa Barr & Board members of New Work Network / John Nicholls, Roland Henry, Sonia Noy, Tom Hunter & all at London Calling / Claudia Amthor-Croft & the Goethe Institut / David Micklem / Natasha Davies / Sarah-Jane Rawlings / Bia Oliveira / Emma Stenning / Helen Cole / Louise Amor / Paul Donaghy / Andrew Sidford & Krista Nyberg at MadeInEarnest / Manuel Vason / Rick Judah & Man Around / Penny Mills, Ana Gross & Audiences

London /Andrew Brumwell / and all the artists, supporters, volunteers, friends and family who have helped make SPILL 2007.

(All details listed correct at the time of going to print. Pacitti Company disclaim liability for any loss or damage incurred from reliance on material contained herein.)

supported by Man Around Travel

BarBiC an

Barbican Centre Silk Street

London EC2y 8DS

www.barbican.org.uk

Tube stations: 1 Barbican, 2 Moorgate

sOutHBank Centre

Southbank Centre

Belvedere Road

London SE1 8XX

www.southbankcentre.co.uk

Tube stations: 1 Waterloo, 2 Embankment

sHunt

20 Stainer Street London SE1 9RL

www.shunt.co.uk

Tube station: 1 London Bridge

tOynBee studiOs

28 Commercial Street

London E1 6AB

Tube stations: 1 Aldgate East, 2 Aldgate, 3 Liverpool Street

sOHO tHeatre

21 Dean Street London W1D 3NE

www.sohotheatre.com

Tube stations: 1 Tottenham Court Road, 2 Oxford Circus, 3 Piccadilly Circus, 4 Leicester Square

pOlitiC al and sOCial mOvements

(Civil rights, feminism, identity politics, carnival, etc)

pOpular Culture

(Film, television, music, publishing, the internet, etc)

visual arts

(Plastic, conceptual, performance, digital art, etc)

live fOrms

(Theatre, dance, street art, performance poetry, etc)

alternative spaCes

(Ritual, body modification, radical theory, drugs, etc) ?

future ClassiC a spill exHiBitiOn

Future Classic is a participatory exhibition that will run throughout the SPILL Festival. Onto a wall map placed deep within the Shunt Vaults audiences are invited to submit key influences that they feel are important to the development of contemporary performance praxis. Over the festival period these influences will accumulate to become a new collective map charting the activities of people and times that have somehow forced change and, in doing so, become pivotal to the furtherance of performance making - either deliberately or otherwise.

These page shows influences added by Robert Pacitti, Festival Director & creator of Future Classic

‘Das Triadische Ballett’ (The Triadic Ballet) Oskar Schlemmer

COUM Transmissions, & thee temple ov psychic youth

Genesis P. Orridge

‘Nelken’ Pina Bausch / Tanztheater Wuppertal

‘The Last of England’ Derek

‘Giulio Cesare’ (Julius Ceasar)

Romeo Castellucci / Societas Raffaello Sanzio

‘Thérèse Raquin’ émile Zola

‘Twin Peaks’ David Lynch

Jarman

Leigh Bowery & Taboo nightclub

The Black Panther Movement

ACT-UP

Yoko Ono & Fluxus

Kira O’Reilly