“When Daphna and I were students we made a show in a skate park in South London. The words ‘Dante or Die’ were graffitied on the concrete. The graffiti inspired an improvisation during the on-site devising process that resulted in a show that saw me rollerblading in an elaborate pink ball gown. When we were searching for a name for the company we came back to that graffiti. It came from the space – and from local people who had painted it there. We wanted to make shows that had a ‘do or die’ feel to them, something that would remind us to always be inspired by the spaces around us, and by the people who occupy them. So we became Dante or Die.” – Terry O’Donovan, Co-Artistic Director
Since 2006, we have been creating original performances that have taken place in cosy cafés, an artificial ski-slope, hotel rooms, anonymous self-storage buildings and sweaty leisure centres... The list goes on. We've had the pleasure of performing across the UK and at brilliant international festivals. Creating performances for everyday spaces means that we have the chance to meet new people all the time, to be inspired by stories we wouldn’t otherwise hear, and invite people who might not otherwise, to go on a theatrical journey with us. We experiment with digital storytelling to make surprising experiences for screens.
As Co-Artistic Directors, Daphna and Terry co-create the productions. We put together teams of collaborators and participants specific to each project. They include playwrights and designers as well as leisure centre managers, neuroscientists and people from the communities that we’re working in. The creation process is usually a couple of years long, and involves dozens of people, knocking on a lot of doors and plenty of surprising conversations. Hundreds of participants have taken part in our productions, and we’ve run thousands of hours of development workshops and residencies in person, online and as far afield as Hong Kong.We create partnerships with arts organisations and local businesses and have had the pleasure of collaborating with organisations that we hugely admire such as Almeida Theatre, Traverse Theatre, The Lowry, BAM New York, Cork Midsummer Festival, Lighthouse Poole, Ideas Test, Greenwich + Docklands International Festival. We're proud SITELINES Associate Artists at South Street Reading.
COLLABORATORS
Over the years we have collaborated with incredible artists who have been integral to the development of our work. Anthea Neagle and Clare Parke-Davies co-founded the company with us; Anna Richmond collaborated on many projects and was an incredible Associate Artist for many years alongside Fiona Watson; producers Faith Rowley, Sophie Ignatieff, Kirsten Burrows & Lucy Atkinson were instrumental across years of work; composer Yaniv Fridel and movement director Ayse Tashkiran have collaborated since the very beginning. Each project page details the creative teams and casts we’ve had the pleasure to work with.
OUR TEAM
"Immense care is taken to create a feeling of intimacy. Under Daphna Attias’s direction, Terry treads around tables, his live monologue gently filtering into our ears."
- The Guardian on User Not Found
Daphna Attias is Co-Artistic Director of Dante or Die Theatre. She has directed all of the company's work to date. Most recently she co-wrote and directed the company's first interactive film Odds On alongside Terry.
She is also Artistic Director of Peut-Être Theatre, where she creates unforgettable early theatrical experiences. Her directorial work with Peut-Être includes The Dark, Tidy Up, Shh...Bang!, The Tin Soldier, Dare to Sea, Draw me a Bird, The Bug and the Butterfly & This is a That. In 2017 she received a prestigious Action for Children's Arts Members Award for her prolific theatre productions which now tour the world.
Her work has been presented and performed nationally and internationally at venues such as Almeida Theatre, Roundhouse, Royal Albert Hall, Brighton Festival, Southbank Centre, The Place, Royal Opera House, The Lowry, Barnsley Civic, The Arc Stockton, The Egg Bath, Polka Theare, National Theatre's Watch This Space, Drama Centre Singapore, Ziguzajg Festival Malta, Israel Festival for Children in Israel.
Daphna & Terry have worked in in partnership with University of Reading for over ten years, including developing research projects in conjunction with Dante or Die productions. They have collaborated with academics & specialists from London School of Pharmacy and Imperical College London and worked as guest lecturers at a variety of universities such as Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, Roehampton University & University of Salford.
"It feels like a privilege to listen to and watch O’Donovan so intimately."
- The Stage on Terry's acclaimed performance in User Not Found
Terry O'Donovan has worked as an actor, director and producer since 2005. As Co-Artistic Director of Dante or Die he has co-created all productions and performed in most. Most recently he co-wrote and directed the company's first interative film, Odds On. He specialises in creating intimate and immersive performances.
He recently directed the acclaimed new site-specific production, Bread Not Profits which the Irish Times described as "truly exceptional in both scale and content." On The Wire, Terry's original production for Irish company Wildebeest Theatre was nominated for Best Production in The Irish Times Theatre Awards in 2015. Other directing credits include The Secret Princess of Severndroog (Look Left Look Right commission for Greenwich & Docklands International Festival) and Blackout R&D (China Plate with Katie Lyons & Ella Grace).
In 2012 he co-founded TOOT (now TalkShow) to make Ten Out of Ten, an Ovalhouse commission toured throughout 2013 & 2014. Since then he has co-created Be Here Now and Focus Group* which have both toured the UK. The company has collaborated with a variety of organisations such as Shoreditch Town Hall, Cambridge Junction, South Street & New Wolsey Theatre to make accessible and challenging interactive work.
Daphna & Terry have worked in in partnership with University of Reading for over ten years, including developing research projects in conjunction with Dante or Die productions. They have collaborated with academics & specialists from London School of Pharmacy and Imperical College London and worked as guest lecturers at a variety of universities such as Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, Roehampton University & University of Salford.
Katherine Woodward is a theatre producer with 15 years experience in producing live site-specific and outdoor theatre experiences. Alongside this she has worked on a variety of community projects and in her most recent post with Theatre Deli she supported emerging artists develop projects through dramaturgical and producing support.
Katherine has worked with Coventry based company Imagineer Productions, supported Tanya Peters on outdoor events at Brighton Festival and has been mentored by Lucy Woolatt. She has created projects for city centres, disused department stores, abandoned buildings and The Tower of London.
Lucy Dear is a participation producer and theatre practitioner from London with fifteen years experience of working in the applied theatre field with a passion for using theatre as a tool for social change.
In the UK she has led projects at the Young Vic, Theatre Peckham, Poplar Union, Lyric Hammersmith, Unicorn Theatre, Kiln Theatre, The Old Vic, Southwark Playhouse, Bush Theatre, British Museum, Gate Theatre, Great Ormond Street Hospital, Chickenshed, Graeae, Green Shoes Arts, New Wimbledon Theatre, Tender, Battersea Arts Centre, Blackhorse Workshop. Internationally she has worked with Faust International and Dramatic English in Hong Kong and the Phillipines.
Lucy is creator of All In Your Head - an Arts Council funded project based on real women's stories of domestic abuse.
Fiona Watson is a London-based performer and workshop facilitator, specialising in physical theatre and site-specific work, exploring and creating new experiences for audiences who are not necessarily regular theatre goers.
She has worked with Dante or Die since 2016 when she joined the company for ‘Take On Me’, to play Lisa, revelling in scenes taking place in gyms, changing rooms and swimming pools around the county. Since then, Fiona has worked with the company on several projects. As a performer with Dante, she has worked with babies, cartoon fish and has been transformed into a cartoon octopus, as well as leading numerous workshops with divers groups of participants.
Fiona has worked in a variety of settings from pavement (clowning) to repertory theatre, including Birmingham Rep, Liverpool Everyman and Contact Theatre Manchester. She is a long-time collaborator with Tangled Feet Theatre Company as a performer, deviser and workshop facilitator.
She is looking forward to many more adventures with Dante or Die.
Image Credit. Kamal Prashar
Lucy Atkinson (Chair), Ranjit Atwal, Kirsten Burrows, Jack Finch-Harding, Helen Hughes, Ian Pope, Lisa Woynarski.
Making site-specific performances in different spaces opens up unexpected and exciting opportunities to create wide-ranging partnerships with organisations, businesses and communities, locally, nationally and internationally. We collaborate with local people wherever we work, whether that’s in our research phase, in rehearsals or spreading the word about seeing a show or getting involved. You can read more about this here.
The team at Dante or Die is passionate about developing audiences, and making our projects open to as many people in every community that we work. This includes a commitment to embedding BSL interpretation or captioning in all performances. Our participation and training initiatives nurture new talent, helping young people and those changing career paths to find employment in the arts.
The name Dante or Die comes from the site where Daphna and Terry first made a site-specific performance together in the skate park of Kennington Park many years ago. The grafitti containing the words Dante or Die are still scrawled there...
Our Approach to Environmental Sustainability
We are living in a climate crisis.
Dante or Die - like everyone else - is keen to respond and make theatre in the most sustainable way possible. We take responsibility for our choices - for the work we create and how we tour, for our practices and processes, for our impact on the world, we take care to always make what we do as green as it can be.
Whilst we will not solve the climate crisis alone, we can play a part in addressing it. Theatre can raise awareness, question, challenge, disrupt, and have impact all whilst entertaining audiences.
We can also share knowledge and working practices to support others, below we detail our aims and the practices we have implemented through our environmental policy to embed green practice throughout all of our activity.
We have three main aims:
-
Understand and monitor the impact of our work effectively
-
Reduce our impact (across resource consumption, emissions, energy usage, water, travel and waste)
-
Learn and share knowledge with our audience, partners and peers
The key ways we in which we achieve our aims are:
Making our Productions Green
We have created a Green Production Agreement for our creative teams as we know that to achieve our aims we must all work collaboratively together. The agreement is signed by all the creative team at the first production meeting of every project ensuring it is front and centre at the start of all projects. We know the desire to produce sustainable theatre is there and we hope that these guidelines provide a framework for that to be achieved.
Our basic principles are: we store set, props and costume whenever we can, so we can reuse and repurpose as we go. We hire, lend and give away to other theatres and companies to reduce the need to buy new.
We have created a hierarchy for building and sourcing set and props. First of all we look at what we have in stock, and if we don’t have the items we need, we look to borrow or hire them, and if that doesn’t work then we look to buy locally with the first port of call being charity shops, and if we can’t find any other solution then we buy online.
When it comes to touring where possible everyone will travel via public transport, if that is not possible e.g. due to rail strikes, we aim to hire a minibus to transport the whole team and where that is not possible the final option is to car share. We aim to make our shows as light as possible regarding set, lighting and sound equipment, however this can be challenging when touring site-based work and performing in non-traditional theatre environments.
The Theatre Green Book
Working together, theatre-makers of all kinds - freelancers and venues, companies and producers - have collaborated on the Theatre Green Book. Based on widely agreed values and strategies, the result is a shared standard for making work as a community, in the reality of the climate crisis. Dante or Die adopt Theatre Green Book standards and apply them to all new productions.
Measuring Our Impact: Julie’s Bicycle; and Sharing Knowledge
For every show we enter production data into Julie’s Bicycle CC tools. The Creative Climate Tools (CC Tools) are a free carbon calculator and Beyond Carbon impact tracker that enables artists and cultural organisations to track their environmental impact, record progress and make strategic changes.
Through using these tools we are able to create sustainability reports for each project.
You can see an overview of our impact for FY 24/25 included in our Annual Report