User Not Found goes to New York with BAM!

NEWS NEWS NEWS!!! We are thrilled to announce that we will be making our US debut as part of BAM's Next Wave Festival. User Not Found will play at the Greene Grape Annex from 6 - 16 November. Tickets go on sale on 6 June for BAM Members and on 1 August for the General Public. We cannot wait!

Acknowledged as “the home for adventurous artists, audiences, and ideas,” the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) engages global and local communities with theater, dance, music, opera, film, and media. BAM Artistic Director David Binder’s programming for his first Next Wave features a range of remarkable artists, all making their BAM debuts. Binder said, “Next Wave is a place to see, share, and celebrate the most exciting new ideas in theater, dance, music, and especially, the unclassifiable adventures.”

Full details and tickets, when available, here. 

User Not Found: Spring Tour 2019

We loved doing our Spring Tour of User Not Found, visiting 8 cafes across 4 countries in just 4 weeks! The tour went to Liverpool, Newbury, Cardiff, Isle of Wight, Paisley, Hull, Norwich & Cork - 41 performances in total.

Thank you to all of our audiences, and of course our partners & venues at each location!

User Not Found premiered at the Jeelie Piece Cafe as part of the Traverse Festival 2018, and has now completed two UK wide tours in Autumn 2018 & Spring 2019 as well as a 2 week London run in May 2019. Read more about the show here.

User Not Found Reviews

We have been delighted with the reception by critics and audiences to User Not Found:

• “Written with a chatty poetic restraint by Chris Goode, this show is a beautiful dance of love, death and grief delivered via a single live performer (the phenomenal Terry O’Donovan), headphones and mobile phones.“ ★★★★
  Lyn Gardner in The Independent
• “A tender, intimate story of love and letting go.” ★★★★ 
  The Guardian
• "handles mourning and technology with fingertip lightness" ★★★★ The Sunday Times
• "There is surreal magic in the seemingly everyday details of this expertly crafted show... they light the room with the power of tactile, human connection." ★★★★★ The Skinny
• “A raw and magnetic performance... a gorgeous show about grief in the era of hyper connectivity“. ★★★★ 
  Time Out
• "This production is what theatre in 2018 should be - ambitious, contemporary and thought-provoking." ★★★★★ Broadway World
• “It feels like a privilege to listen to and watch O’Donovan so intimately.” ★★★★  
  The Stage
• “O’Donovan’s understated but deeply emotional performance generates an ethereal experience of astonishing power“ ★★★★★ 
  The Reviews Hub
• "It’s a reflective piece about dealing with death and living online – two different kinds of absence wrapped up in one." ★★★★ Matt Trueman in Fest

Take On Me

Take On Me has been nominated for Break Through Performance at the National Rural Touring Awards 2019. What an honour and a testament to our brilliant partners, amazing guest cast and our indespensible team of performers and production managers. 

Watch our Celebration Video, which commemorates our Take On Me 18-19 journey.

We're so delighted to have completed our Take On Me tour: from September 2018 - March 2019 we worked with 249 Guest Cast Members & performed to 1,482 people! A massive thank you to everyone who has been a part of it!

"It’s a moving, funny and ultimately joyful show about life at the deep end." - Read about the production in the The Guardian

The 2018-19 performances were a blast, with incredible Guest Casts in each location making each performance an absolute joy.

Another big thank you to our partners at each venue: The Lighthouse, Creative Arts East, Ideas Test, The Lowry, Ealing Council and South Street Arts!

The Lowry’s Young Theatre Makers

"Inventive, energetic and ambitious" - Circles and Stalls

Since January 2019 we have been collaborating with The Lowry’s newly founded Offstage Ensemble - a company of young theatre-makers to present their debut performance Bright Futures.

It’s a busy afternoon at Bright Futures…it’s performance review day for the junior sales team. Join them for a panicky, primal, perfect-score-attaining power hour – where the wannabe executives circle around the photocopier, ready to trip you up on your ‘Real Growth Initiative’ presentation and get lunch all down your ‘Client Impact Objectives’.

Directed by Clare Dunn, the company transform an unused office space into an original landscape of ambition, competition…and, er… complete professionalism.

More information on The Lowry's website

Bread Not Profits

★★★★★ "Some plays tug at your heartstrings, some, very occasionally touch your soul." - The Irish Times

Terry has recently returned from his hometown of Limerick, Ireland where he directed the celebrated new play Bread Not Profits. Performed in Cleeve's former toffee factory, Terry developed the project over two years with playwright Mike Finn. The production is inspired by the little known story of an all-city worker's strike that saw ordinary people taking control for an extraordinary ten days.

"in Bread Not Profits, Finn and the entire creative team, led by director Terry O’Donovan and supported by Emma Fisher, Zia Bergin-Holly and John Galvin, with original music by David Blake, use the Cleeves space to create something that is truly exceptional in both scale and content." - Read the full Irish Times review here

Hong Kong International Arts Festival

Terry & Daphna were at the Hong Kong International Arts Festival in March. They were facilitating artist workshops for Hong Kong based theatre-makers interested in learning how we make our site-specific productions. They also had the pleasure of mentoring theatre-makers who are developing new productions at the exciting Cattle Depot Artist Village.

User Not Found Playscript On Sale

We have published the playscript of User Not Found, which includes imagery from Marmelo's app design. We're really proud of it - and you can buy it directly from the brilliant publishers Oberon RIGHT HERE.