We involve people who offer different skills, perspectives and world-views to create art that is an experiential process of ‘research in action’.
For the past five years, the key collaborators at 21Common have been award-winning artists Gary Gardiner, Lucy Gaizely, Ian Johnston and the late Adrian Howells, who died in 2014.
Recent work includes
Dancer (a recipient of the Unlimited Commission 2014, Made in Scotland Showcase and Total Theatre Award Nominee 2016)
Dancer is performed by Ian Johnson and Gary Gardiner, although neither are trained dancers. They just both love to dance in public. They are compelled to dance at any time of the day or night, indoors or outdoors, come rain or shine. They are happy to dance in a club, in the street, in a tunnel, in Morrison’s, on a kitchen table, in the shower or even on the roof of a black cab. Sometimes their dancing jerks and thrusts, sometimes it floats and is ethereal, sometimes it is blazing with outrageous camp and sometimes it is simply silent and completely still. Dancer forces the audience to confront uncomfortable truths about visibility, opportunity and experiences.
The Ballad of the Apathetic Son and His Narcissistic Mother ( supported by Imaginate)
Raedie and Lucy are Mother and Son. They both REALLY love the singer Sia. They love her music, her videos and especially her hair. They love the way it moves in a choppy, black-on-platinum swivel. This high-energy performance exposes the inherent narcissism that is at the centre of motherhood and how this becomes a burden to the child embarking on adulthood. It shares something of Lucy and Raedie, past and present. It discovers their new dynamic.
These works have already toured to GAM, Santiago, Chile 2017; Nøtterøy Kulturhus, Ibsenhuset, Skien, Bølgen Kulturhus, Larvik and Drammens Teater, all Norway 2017; The Place, London 2017;Southbank (2015), Fierce Festival,(2015) Battersea Arts Centre (2015), People’s Dancing Festival ( 2015), Behaviour Festival (2015) and the Bounce Festival, Belfast.(2015).
