Date: Mon 9 – 13 November
Time: 10.30am – 4.30 pm
Cost: Individual practitioners: £550
2 x practitioners joining together or as part of an ensemble: £1050
We have a fee for attending as an individual and a fee for those wanting to come in a pair. We are happy for people to come as individual practitioners or as part of ensemble groups
Venue: Longfield Hall, 50 Knatchbull Rd, London SE5 9QY
Led by : Toby Park, Spymonkey Co-Artistic Director & Carl Grose Playwright & Spymonkey’s Associate Artist
Suitable for all levels of experience, from novice to seasoned professional.
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Ever wondered how to write a Spymonkey show?
Yes! Us too!
Join playwright and associate artist Carl Grose and Spymonkey founder and co-artistic director Toby Park as they attempt to crack open the mysterious, maddening and utterly marvelous process of how to go about writing a show for Spymonkey.
Spymonkey worked for many years as a devising company. We took a huge step forwards in our creative process when we began working with a writer, and as it happens the first writer we ever worked with was Carl, for Oedipussy. It was a revelation, and we couldn’t understand why we hadn’t done it sooner! The writer brings so much to our intensely collaborative process: provocations for improvisation exercises, hot-seating, taking on the task of dramaturgical structure, of character arc, sifting and compressing the hours of improvisation, creative meetings with designers and directors and ridiculous conversations over tea breaks. And of course for the actual nuts-and-bolts of script-writing. Since then we’ve worked with a load of writers, but we keep coming back to working with Carl because he is brilliant and he understands Clown and our Theatre of the Funny.
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“It was held with playfulness, warmth and generosity from the start. It was truly experimental and made of strands of curiosity tugged at by different people. I felt so safe to play and to try things out before they are fully formed, to see what happens. All the pressure of performance was gone and it felt like a way to learn from the tutors and the other participants and to discover where my joy lies. I’ve done a lot of clown training where there’s a strangely aggressive flavour to it and this was the fruity antithesis of that. I loved it.”
– Writing Funny Participant, 2025
The facilitators and the participants were all generous. Everyone worked so hard on their pieces and shared the same level of genius on each others
– Writing Funny Participant, 2025
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We’ve created a new Resources page featuring recommended books to help you prepare for the workshop. Check it out here!
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Please contact Khai at education@spymonkey.co.uk
For more information about our bursaries, please click here.
Studied Drama at Hull University, and trained at Fool Time Circus School, Bristol, and with Philippe Gaulier and Monika Pagneaux in Paris.
Toby co-created all Spymonkey shows to date. He performed in Stiff (1998-2011), Cooped (2001-2019), Zumanity with Cirque du Soleil (2003-2005), Bless (2007), Moby Dick (2009), Love In (2010), Oedipussy (2012), Mrs Hudson’s Christmas Corker (2014), Every Last Trick (2014), The Complete Deaths (2016), Christmas Carol (2018), The Frogs (2024).
From 1994-97 he was co-musical director and actor with Karl’s Kuhne Gassenchau in Zurich; member of the Improbable Theatre Lifegame company (1998-2000) including an off-Broadway run.
Musical director and composer for: all Spymonkey shows to date; Guy Dartnell’s Would Say Something (1998); acro-dance-theatre Mimbre’s Sprung (2001), Trip-Tic (2003) and The Bridge (2007); site-specific pieces with Graeme Gilmour at Kielder Water Northumberland (2006) and Forth & Clyde Canal Glasgow (2007), and with Phil Supple/The Electric Estate for the National Trust at Cragside Northumberland.
Appeared in Sandi Toksvig’s Christmas Cracker starring Ronnie Corbett at the Royal Festival Hall (2009). TV appearances include Cirque Images’ 2003 series Solstrom for Bravo Cable Network and BBC2 Hyperdrive.
Director of Fabulous Bäckström Brothers, a clown opera in Helsinki (2014), and Big Bang Siegfried for Orchestra Hagen Germany (2016), Enter The Dragons for A&E Comedy (2017); co-director of The Flop for Hijinx Theatre Cardiff; Director of physical comedy for Chichester Festival Theatre’s Mack & Mabel (2015); RSC’s Merry Wives of Windsor (2018); Tartuffe (2019) and Jack Absolute Flies Again (2022) for National Theatre; Hello Dolly! (2024) for Michael Harrington Productions.
Co-director of Orpheus in the Underworld (2023, 2024, 2025) for Volksoper Vienna and Spymonkey’s Hairy (2023).
Carl Grose’s plays include ‘Grand Guignol’, ‘Superstition Mountain’, ‘Gargantua’, ‘Horse Piss For Blood’, ‘The Kneebone Cadillac’, ’49 Donkeys Hanged’ and ‘The No-Brainer’. For twenty-six years he worked with the internationally acclaimed Cornish theatre company, Kneehigh, as writer, actor and co-artistic director. Writing for Kneehigh includes ‘Tristan & Yseult’ (with Anna Maria Murphy), ‘Hansel & Gretel’, ‘The Wild Bride’, ‘The Tin Drum’ and ‘Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs)’ – a new Beggar’s Opera. He has also written for BBC TV and Radio, as well as the Young Vic, Soho Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and companies such as Told By An Idiot, Vesturport, Gyre and Gimble, o-region. He wrote the book and co-lyrics for Bristol Old Vic’s hit musical ‘The Grinning Man’, ‘Princess & Peppernose’, a short film directed by Joe Wright for Ridley Scott Associates and a new version of ‘Robin Hood’ for Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, and ‘The Cat & The Canary’ for Told by an Idiot & Chichester Festival Theatre.
Carl first worked with Spymonkey on ‘Oedipussy’ in 2012. His most recent work with the company was his adaptation of Aristophanes’ ‘The Frogs’ for Royal & Derngate Northampton and Kiln Theatre London. Carl and Spymonkey are currently collaborating on a new US project, to be announced in autumn 2024.
