“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, and 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, high end and some lower-end 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.
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 a lot 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… We're proud SITELINES Associate Artists at South Street Reading.
"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 Webb 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.
Sophie has supported a range of multidisciplinary artists and has made strong connections and relationships with various arts organisations and independent theatre-makers across the Midlands and London. She has produced on large and small scale festivals with both national and international artists across all art forms. Festivals include Birmingham International Dance festival, Departure Lounge, Check In and U.Dance. Sophie has produced on projects and performances across a variety of arts organisations including, FABRIC, In Good Company, One Dance UK, Second Hand Dance and Open Door. Sophie has completed an MA in Creative Producing at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts and was one of the selected producers for Stage One’s Bridge the Gap programme in 22/23. Sophie is a proud trustee for Unanima Theatre.
Image credit is: Carina Simões
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.
Caitlin Evans is a freelance theatre-maker and producer. Founder of ShyBairn Theatre, devising live performance for social change. She graduated from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2019, launching ShyBairn after receiving Central’s StartUp and Enterprise Award.
Her professional experience to date includes: BURNOUT (Live Theatre, Theatre by the Lake, South St Arts Centre, Laurels Theatre, VAULT Festival); TALK PROPA (Camden People’s Theatre, VAULT Festival, The Pleasance) and Six Attempts to Swallow a Scream (The Old Red Lion, Theatre N16). Caitlin trained on a Production Placement with Paines Plough and as Production Intern at The Pleasance. She has been mentored by Katie Kerry (Society of London Theatre) and BREACH theatre. Caitlin is currently Company Producer at Modus Arts, a sonic arts company and NPO with Arts Council England.
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
Ranjit Atwal, Kirsten Burrows, Vijaya Fatimathas (Chair), Helen Hughes, 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...
We regularly collaborate with academics and universities to create our productions. Our creative teams, led by Artistic Directors Daphna and Terry are always inspired by these unique insights into specific subject matters. Some highlights from these collaborations include:
Side Effects: The Wellcome Trust funded our collaboration with Dr Ian Bates & PhD student Laura Obiols from London School of Pharmacy on the development of the production, which focused on social medicine. Through a series of interviews, Bates & Obiols research and knowledge fed into the development of the production. At London performances of the production Obiols interviewed audience members about their own use of medicine, which in turn fed into her own research outputs.
User Not Found: We partnered with Professor Lib Taylor at University of Reading who researched the use of social media within immersive performance. An AHRC-funded project, it was a collaboration between ourselves, University of Reading's Film, Theatre & Television Dept, Marmelo, John Troyer at University of Bath's Centre for Death & Society and South Street Reading. You can read more about the collaboration on the project's website.
In addition, Dr Alexander Lyon, a cardiologist specialising in Takotsubo ‘Broken Heart’ Syndrome consulted on the production. Dr Lyon helped us to develop a section of the performance that focused on how grief can affect the body. We hosted a post-show discussion with Dr Lyon that explored his knowledge of Broken Heart Syndrome.
De-commissioned Prison Project: For our production in development, exploring the LGBT+ experience within prisons we are collaborating with Nicola Carr at University of Nottingham and Ian Feis-Bryce at Royal Holloway on an academic research project investigating LGBTQ+ experiences in UK prisons. We are excited about this collaboration, which will both influence the development of our production and feed into Carr and Feis-Bryce’s current research through interviews and focus groups with people who have personal experience of the prison system.
Dante or Die Annual Report 2019-2020 - Download