Fuel > Sound&Fury > Ether Frolics
in collaboration with Shunt artists Overview
Credits
Reviews and audience feedback
Future Plans
Show History
The team
Ether Frolics Your eyes are feeling heavy – heavy like lead.
When the surgeon’s knife cuts your skin, why don’t you feel pain?
Do you feel it but not remember it, and if you can’t remember it…did it happen?
Ether Frolics is a visceral, provocative, disturbing and sometimes comic theatrical journey into the history and contemporary practice of anaesthesia and questions of consciousness. Visionary theatre makers Sound & Fury (The Watery Part of the World) and David Rosenberg, Lizzie Clachan and Hannah Ringham of Shunt (Dance Bear Dance, Tropicana) lead the audience to experience their own consciousness – slipping away from them. Sound & Fury and Shunt’s combined storytelling creates a show that stimulates and provokes while invading the mind and stunning the senses.
Collaboratively created and devised by Lizzie Clachan, Mark Espiner, Tom Espiner, Dan Jones, Simon Macer-Wright, Hannah Ringham, David Rosenberg.
Original technical team Amy Griffin, Steve Taylor and Chris Umney
Current team ...
Performers Tom Espiner, Neil Haigh, Amber Sealey
Production Manager Chris Umney
Sound operator Ed Ferguson
Stage Manager Claire Teesdale
Scientific advisors A H Dickenson, Nick Franks, John WoodReviews and audience feedback
Pick of the Week Guardian, Observer and TimesCritics' Choice Time Out
Ours is not to reason why, only to imbibe this strange, unforgettable spectacle in giddy wonder Daily Telegraph
A work of genius…I remember every moment vividly. Knock-out. Independent on Sunday
Pick of the Edinburgh Fringe Observer
Superb – a triumph!!! The end was superb… Really exciting – please make more!
Audience member, October 2003Like David Lynch meets Laurel and Hardy in a surgeon’s lunchbox. Brilliant.
Timothy, October 2003Bang on. Great job. Top acting. Great sound.
Adam, October 2003Enchanted by the deadpan humour… Thank you for sharing this with us.
Jane & Will, October 2003This show is available for touring. For more information email info@fueltheatre.com
2005
October/November: The Junction, Cambridge; Norden Farm Arts Centre, Warwick Arts Centre as part of the This Way Up touring initiative
August: Smirnoff Underbelly at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as part of the British Council Showcase 2005
July: 3 week run at the Shunt Vaults, London
2003
Scratch performances in BAC’s OctoberFestThe team
For biographies of Mark Espiner, Tom Espiner, Dan Jones see Sound&Fury biog pageShunt - www.shunt.co.uk
Director David Rosenberg and designer Lizzie Clachan have with their company, Shunt, broken the mould of contemporary London theatre. Their most recent show Dance Bear Dance, performed in a railway arch in Bethnal Green garnered the company rave reviews and a Time Out Live Award. Their forthcoming show, Tropicana, is a co-production with the National Theatre. Their investigative and unconventional approach to theatre draws on the disciplines of fine art as much as performance, and is fused with their intense collaborative and collective devising process, where all creative partners have a voice in the show being made. Their work has excited and created a new audience for theatre in London.Lizzie Clachan
Co-founder of Shunt in 1998, Lizzie has worked with the company on all its productions: The Ballad of Bobby Francois, The Tennis Show, Sightings and Dance Bear Dance. Her designs have appeared at the Royal Court, the Royal Exchange, Manchester, Streets Alive, London Bubble, Theatre Venture, The World Famous, Oxford House and Big Fish Theatre.Simon Macer-Wright
Simon has lit some of the most interesting and inventive theatre pieces in recent years, not least for Primitive Science theatre company. His designs for their work include The Invisible College, Poseidon, Icarus Falling, Vagabondage and After the Hunt. Other credits include Harvest (Southwark Playhouse), The Real Inspector Hound and Black Comedy (Northcott Theatre, Exeter), The Eyes of The Kappa (The Gate), Macbeth and The Man Who Walked Through Walls (BAC).Hannah Ringham
Hannah has a BA hons in Fine Art and a distinction in Advanced Theatre Practice post-graduate course at Central School of Speech and Drama. Her extensive work in physical and devised theatre includes co-founder and performer with Shunt Theatre Co, Dynamic New Animation, Kabutar and most recently for BAC’s Christmas show Jason and the Argonauts. Double Act with David Rosenberg of Shunt has performed among other places at the ICA and as part of the LIFT festival. Hannah is about to start work with award winning Company F/Z on their new show Loser, which will premier in May at the Drill Hall. Film work The Itch written and directed by Glen Neath. She has worked at the Natural History museum handling specimens and exploring them with children. Her interests include Transylvanian folk music and Shakespeare; skills include sign language key stage 1.David Rosenberg
David is graduated from the University of Manchester, Faculty of Medicine (Mb ChB) and is currently a Senior House Officer (Flexible Trainee) in Anaesthetics. His surgical subspecialties include Priority, General, Plastics, ENT, MaxFax, Orthopaedic, Gynaecology, Paediatrics, Urology, Day Surgery, Transplant (Renal). Including transfer of the critically ill. As a theatre practitioner, he co-founded Shunt to pursue an interest in the role of an audience in theatrical productions. He is currently researching for Panic – The next Shunt performance - and pursuing research and development projects in collaboration with Rotozaza – investigating the use of new technology in staging and creating performance with unrehearsed guests receiving commands through headphones. For Shunt he has directed Dance Bear Dance – a site specific performance in Two East London Railway Arches based on The Gunpowder Plot and more current acts of terrorism which won the London Arts Theatre Production Award and Time Out Live Award 2003. “More exciting and surprising than anything you will see in the theatre this year.” The Guardian. “The whole thing felt like being inside the head of a drunken genius” The Daily Telegraph; The Ballad of Bobby Francois – The story of the Uruguay rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes in 1972.; The Tennis Show. An exploration of the etiquette and hierarchy of lawn tennis staged in a derelict barge house by the Oxo Tower - Time Out Critics’ Choice and nominated by The Evening Standard for a Creative Freedom Award.Chris Umney
Since graduating from the University of Brighton in Visual & Performing Arts Chris has worked in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic with the Divas Dance Theatre Company, and has toured the UK with numerous productions for companies as diverse as The People Show, Theatre & Beyond, Camille Thoman, Brighton Theatre Events, Quirk Productions, Facepack Theatre, Clout Dance Theatre & Intoto. In 2001 Chris toured to 24 theatres in The Netherlands with Swamp Circus Theatre. At the 1999 Edinburgh Festival he shared a Total Theatre design nomination with Rosa Maggiora (set design) for their work on Camille Thoman / Boardwalk Productions‚ Numb. He has worked as technical director and production manager for Sound & Fury for their March 2003 tour of the UK and their recent British Council visit to Skopje, Macedonia.
Funded by Arts Council England. Commissioned by Warwick Arts Centre. Scratch commissioned by BAC. Supported by BOC Medical.
