New Year, New Workshops!

We’re pleased to announce our workshop dates for the new year. We’ll be teaching for a week in March at The Royal and Derngate in Northampton, a week in March at Toynbee studios and for three weeks in May at Worthing Theatre and Museum. We’ve altered our application process slightly

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Orpheus rehearsals get underway at the Vienna Volksoper

We start work directing our opera production at the Vienna Volksoper this week. Orpheus is designed by Julian Crouch and conducted by Alex Joel, choreographed by Gail Skrela. We’ve been cooking this show up for a while – we began talking to new artistic director Lotte de Beer nearly two

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Spymonkey opera

We can finally reveal a project we’ve been working on for a while: a Spymonkey opera! Jacques Offenbach’s ‘Orpheus in der Underwelt’, opens January 21 2023 at the Volksoper Vienna, part of incoming artistic director Lotte de Beer’s inaugural season. Directed by Toby Park & Aitor Basauri, design by Julian

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Spymonkey Would Like To Meet…

Making new connections for ongoing professional relationships. We have been awarded an Arts Council Project Grant for a new piece of work called ‘Spymonkey Would Like to Meet…’. It’s not a show, or a workshop, or a training opportunity but we hope it will inform all of these in the

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Spymonkey & Black Lives Matter – Statement and Action Plan

INTRODUCTION Lockdown has given all of us a lot of time to think. And there’s been a heck of a lot to think about. George Floyd, BLM, British empire & slavery, Reclaiming the Streets, grinding social exclusion, Brexit fallout, peak Trump (?) and resurgent xenophobic nationalism, all with the incessant

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Spymonkey’s Stephan Kreiss dies aged 59

Spymonkey’s friend, longstanding collaborator and irrepressible clown genius Stephan Kreiss has died. He passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on Monday 16th August, following a short illness. Spymonkey’s close collaboration of the core creative ensemble made up of Toby Park, Petra Massey, Aitor Basauri, Stephan Kreiss and designer Lucy Bradridge has

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Dear Conservative Government

We would so love to know how to plan for 2021. No deal is going to make it impossible for us to exist, as a major part of the company is non-UK. Some have Leave To Remain, but some of us are not eligible for that, as they’ve always been

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NEW Spymonkey Online Professional Development Programme

Business workshop and project ideas MOT for theatre-makers. Hello from Spymonkey on lockdown! We are excited to be bringing you a series of workshops and online discussion groups to lift spirits, develop skills and help you to move forward with your current works-in-progress projects. We will host a series of

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Thoughts from a clown student in isolation

by Josie Cerise, Spymonkey 2020 bursary recipient ‘Naïve enough to start, stubborn enough to finish’ Ross Edgley, an extreme athlete’s mantra before starting a new physical challenge. I started my ‘clowning journey’ (how very yoga) 12 years ago, I was a naïve acting student who thought I would be really

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