Welcome to Extant

In Development

Photo of audience sitting in theatre seats waiting for show to start.

Extant maintains on-going research, consultation, planning and project development. Here are some highlights of our up-coming developments…

Haptic Theatre

With support from the Technology Strategy Board, Extant is partnering with The Open University and Battersea Art Centre, to embark in 2010 on a phase of research that combines Theatre, haptic technology (science of the tactile sense) and eventually a test audience.

The project brings together Extant’s Director Maria Oshodi, Adam Spiers robotics engineer at BRL, Peter Bosher, sound designer, Lynn Cox visual artist and the computing department at The Open University. Together the team will research, build and install at Battersea Art Centre, an exploratory theatre environment to test and evaluate a haptic navigational hand held device.

Writing Stage

In the spring of 2010 Extant will be running Writing for Performance series of workshops led by writer Alex Bulmer. The workshops will be for visually impaired participants of all experience wishing to explore different styles of writing that can lead to performance. The project will end with an opportunity for the work developed in the workshops to receive a rehearsed presentation to an invited audience.

Youth Theatre

In Autumn 2009 Extant ran a successful drama workshop for 16 visually impaired teenage members of Blatchington Court in Brighton. We hope to continue our connection with this group in the near future as they showed much enthusiasm and talent.

Early in 2010 Extant will be working in partnership with The Wallace Collection Manchester Square to run a series of drama workshops with groups of visually impaired young people from East London. We will use exhibits in the collection as a basis for creating and analysing the drama created.

In Summer 2010 Extant is planning it’s first Summer School to be held for the visually impaired young people we have worked with over the last 18 months in our youth theatre projects in different schools and groups. We will be offering two weeks of training and fun leading to an end of project production in a theatre setting and will be providing transport for the young people who wish to attend.

Resistance

Extant has now produced a DVD on the making of our first national and international tour, ‘Resistance 2005’. The DVD is broken down into 15 short chapters that tell the story of the creation, Setting up, rehearsals, access, tour management, production highlights, Peter Brook’s involvement, taking the show to France and an interview with a surviving blind resistance fighter. The menus are accessible with audio labels, and each chapter can be selected and viewed individually if chosen, or watched collectively in two parts. Please contact us for more details on obtaining a copy.

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