Previous Projects

This short performance was the result of a week-long collaborative devising residency at The Everyman Studio Theatre, Cheltenham. A small group of local and national theatre-makers and actors came together under the Foulisfair banner to improvise fragments about memory and autobiography, using mask, movement, music and contemporary devising practices.

This was a 25 minute solo performance commissioned by Red Dog Theatre and performed at the Star Anise Arts Café Stroud March 2009 as part of a trilogy of theatre and dance, Sky Bound. It appeared in its early stages as part of Prototype at the Tobacco Factory Bristol, February 2009.

After spending her youth in the bright lights of the city a woman finds herself apparently identity-less in suburbia and decides to escape to her greenhouse where she creates an imaginary world in which to hide. But how long can this pretence last? Should she find her way back to the kitchen with its humdrum reality or risk being lost forever in fantasy? If humankind cannot bear very much reality, this quirky, lively and humorous piece explores what happens when we attempt to opt out of it.

This piece was devised in Leeds by the three founding members of Foulisfair. It toured as part of Midget Gems in West Yorkshire in autumn 2008 and formed half of Foulisfair's Double Bill at The Everyman Studio Theatre, Cheltenham in January 2009.

Daughters takes an unsentimental and controversial look at what it can feel like to be a daughter, exploring issues of rebellion and 'un-ladylike' behaviour whilst kicking against continued expectations of women as submissive, discrete about their bodily functions and instinctively, passively nurturing.

Canvas was first devised in 2006 for a Performance Art module of an MA Theatre course. It reappeared in Ladyfest Leeds 2007 and as half of Foulisfair's Double Bill at The Everyman Studio Theatre Cheltenham in January 2009.

Canvas is almost completely movement based and is a response to the work of female Performance Artists of the 1970s, particularly the Cuban artist Ana Mendieta. It questions the degree of control a woman has over her own identity and examines the extent to which attitudes of desperation, pragmatism and humour can unmake or reaffirm the marks and masks we wear.

Differing from our other work, this narrative macabre fairytale remains Foulisfair's only full length production and lacks the fragmentary quality of later pieces. It was first performed by the three founding members at the Banham Theatre University of Leeds, January 2008. A few months later an extended cast performed a second version at the Carriageworks, Leeds.

Influenced by the Symbolism and Expressionism movements of the early twentieth century (and by the eerie Metz advert with the puppet Judderman in the 1990s) The Girl Who Went Out Into the Cold... focuses on the experiences of a young girl who leaves home a frustrated teenager and returns home after a traumatic and transforming rights-of-passage experience.

This solo piece was performed at The Workshop Theatre Leeds as part of a double bill with Richard Blanco and at Headingley Community Theatre, 2007.

This autobiographical piece explores male influences from grandfather to lover on a woman's life, finding connections and building layers across time. Amongst more earthy personas archetypes of widow, goddess and crone are also explored in a performance that is marked by high physicality, humour and pathos.