Starting Blocks offers the opportunity to create new theatre work with the support of Camden People's Theatre, as part of a peer network that encourages collaboration and engagement between participating artists.
Over ten weeks, the selected artists meet weekly to share practice, ideas and their developing works. They are also given space to develop their project and practice. The scheme runs from January to March 2016, allowing time for the participants to develop works-in-progress to be shown at CPT's prestigious Sprint festival.
This years artists and projects include:
Nebula by Marion Burge. Inspired by personal experiences of otherness and isolation, Nebula is a piece that examines the in-between-space of self identification and belonging through the lens of absurd space exploration and sci-fi fantasy.
Matador(a) by Susan Kempster and Adam Foster. Framed by the pomp and ceremony of bullfighting and inspired by a catalogue of entertainers who have died during performance, Matador(a) is a darkly funny meditation on empathy, death and snails.
Kinkens by Philippa Hambly Kinkens. Old Scots for the evasive answers to the questions of overly curious children. This is a show about not answering the question'what is the meaning of life.
Hush now, my darling by Elisabeth Carlile. A show about how to pass breast feeding down a generation. From mother to daughter: human to animal.
I feel most [...] when I am thrown by Tanya Singh. Performed for live and recorded eyes: an autofictional anti-monologue on fugitivity, moving frames, and the sounds aa, rd and kh.
"CPT is a force for good... We as a community need this desperately at this time."
Local resident
