Following an open call for proposals, and a selection process including local residents, Camden People’s Theatre and Old Diorama Arts Centre are thrilled to announce the recipient of our collaborative To The Streets outdoor performance commission. (And for the project, we’re looking for local people to help make and perform the show!)
The recipient of our To The Streets commission is the wonderful Emergency Chorus!
This is the second year of Developed on Drummond Street, a partnership between neighbouring arts organisations exploring new ways of making work in Camden, with and for Camden residents. Old Diorama and CPT will support Emergency Chorus in 2023 with their new creation: Town Criers.
Who are Emergency Chorus?
Emergency Chorus is the collaboration between Ben Kulvichit and Clara Potter-Sweet. Since 2017, they have been making performance which straddles theatre, live art and dance. Their performances collide disparate source materials to form collages of text, choreography, music and image. Emergency Chorus are interested in the continuing state of crisis we find our world in, and the difficult task of imagining and creating radical futures. Their work often feels ambiguous, playful, fragile, strange, appealing and troublesome.
About Town Criers
Town Criers will be a short, playful outdoor performance, created by Emergency Chorus in collaboration with a group of 5 Camden residents. They will form a ‘choir of town criers’, complete with traditional costumes, bells and scrolls of paper, and shout, on the streets, at the tops of their lungs. But this group of town criers won’t perform the role as usual, instead performing a sly and funny subversion of tradition.
The performance will be created over a series of evening and weekend workshops, in which we will explore the power of the human voice, how we use it, and what we might want to say to an audience. We invite you to be Camden’s custodians for the day: to open your lungs and make yourselves heard.
Paid opportunity for locals to get involved with the piece
We're looking for 5 local people who live in Camden to help make and perform in the piece. This is a paid role. It will be performed at two summer outdoor festivals in Camden in July, with the possibility of adding a third.
This opportunity is for anyone who is curious, adventurous and open to exploring new skills in performance. Anyone who wants to address their hopes and fears for their communities and the world at large, and is excited at the idea of making some noise.
Town Criers is open to people living in the borough of Camden, with priority given to those from the communities surrounding Euston / Regent’s Park ward where ODAC and CPT are based. All ages and experience levels are welcome: you may have no previous performance experience, or be a professional actor, or anything in between.
For full information on the Town Criers call out, please visit the Old Diorama website.
