Welcome to our workroom

comedy

Taking comedy seriously

I have a feeling that when you’re making comedy, it's harder to get people to take you seriously. Via Aristotle and Buster Keaton, here's my theory why...

process

Travelling without moving

Thinking about inward-looking islands, and what the last year has taught us about actively making space for international encounters.

The Networked Condition

Invisible Flock interview: The Networked Condition

'The Networked Condition: Environmental Impacts of Digital Cultural Production' is a collaborative research project exploring digital arts through an environmental lens. Here we chat to Invisible Flock.

Carbon efficient

How we made our website use 50% less energy

An outline of the technical steps we took on our site – in case anyone else is thinking about tweaking theirs in the name of energy efficiency.

process

Making shows, taking care

Devising online has made us all think more about how we care for the folk we're working with... here's some stuff we've learned.

audience

6 things I learned from digital work and 6 things I learned from remote work

Reflections on transitioning from a theatre director in a theatre to a digital experience maker in my kitchen.

audience

Convenience culture and exclusive events

At a time when all kinds of performance are available at the click of a trackpad, it isn't 'liveness' that we should be talking about. It's event-y-ness.

digital entertainment

Queerness, video games, and escaping reality

Co-writing Fast Familiar's latest show got me digging into the stories of LGBTQIA+ gaming – as well as my own.

audience centric

Putting the play into theatre

What do we really mean when we talk about playable theatre, immersive theatre, interactive theatre and the like? And what do we hope to get from works in these categories?

audience

What kind of art do we want right now?

Sometimes we make art to prod the belly of corporate greed; sometimes we make art to frolic with elves at the North Pole. Both these things are fine – and necessary.

critics

13 things I’ve loved and loathed in online escape rooms

This year we've ended up spending countless hours locked into online puzzle games – and made our own. But what's so good about them? And what's... not?

A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

Is Aristotle proud of me?

How do you live a good life? What does flourishing mean? Is it dirty if work is part of it? Maybe the ancient Greeks know...

audience

Hello, you’ve reached tech support

Reflections on using bespoke homemade technology for a live online show.

Algorithms

A new villain: the Cybergoat 🐐

The past weeks have highlighted the disparity between the accountability of digital systems and that of their creators. Now is the time to educate each other and demand transparency, before algorithms become the ultimate scapegoat.

access

Describe your current appearance in one sentence...

When Rachel chaired a panel recently, she asked speakers to describe their appearances for the audio transcription. It was really hard. Here, she and Al try to unpick why – and how to change that.

process

10 things we learnt about access (in the broadest sense) while making The Evidence Chamber

We wanted to share what we learned, in the hopes that it will be of use to other people trying to make for digital space in an equitable/ inclusive way. We got some things right and some things... less right.

process

Six crime novels that inspired our new show, The Evidence Chamber

This summer we're inviting audiences to become jurors at a murder trial in our new online courtroom drama. We made the show in collaboration with real-life forensic scientists, but also took a lot of inspiration from fiction – here are six books that really stuck with us.

expiration

Reviewing the situation

I don’t think that I had noticed this before: in the Guardian, book reviews are written by other authors. Theatre reviews are not written by other theatre makers. Why?

Carbon efficient

We made our first carbon-neutral project 🎉

Big goal: accomplished. But how? Here’s a not-too-technical breakdown that might contain some useful stuff you can apply to your own digital adventures.

process

New forms, old boxes

So theatres are shut - I don’t know if you’d noticed. Some people are making for a new architecture - the internet. But do we have the language to talk about these new forms?

inspiration

What I have learned from Bob

A couple of weeks ago my friend Tom sent me a Guardian article which attempts to list and rank Bob Dylan’s 50 Best songs. Many things about the list annoyed me.

process

A work-in-tbc

Last week, I gave myself a reading week. One of the books I read was Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini. Please read it, it’s really very brilliant.

process

Collaborating with Scientists

I was recently asked about what my experiences have taught me about partnerships between artists and scientists. I found it a really interesting question to reflect on because we have made quite a lot of work in collaboration with scientists.

process

Truth and Lies

There’s an introductions ‘game’ -one of the less awful ones- called ‘2 truths, 1 lie’ - in which you say three things about yourself and the other people in the group have to guess which is the lie. The way to win is to tell a lie that is plausible.

Environmental impact

Making The Justice Syndicate more carbon efficient

Early last year, I released statistics detailing the environmental impact of The Justice Syndicate. For the last four months, I have been exploring the different ways in which we could further reduce our carbon footprint.