Little Cog: Staging Our Futures Disabled Artist Commissions Announced

Staging Our Futures is an imaginitive artistic
programe created by Little Cog to ensure that exciting new work by disabled theatre makers is created and is visible. It's more important than ever to champion and give a platform to disabled artists who are expanding the boundaries of how we work and what work is made.

Staging Our Futures has been created by Little Cog during the coronavirus pandemic, supported through Arts Council England Emergency Response Funds. This whole episode has come as a massive shock to everyone and to theatre particularly. We see

Image Description - Roll Up: Lisette Auton wears a circus ring mistress outfit with top hat. She is bent forwards and about to push her arms out, her face looks like it’s telling a secret. DIY Crip Cabaret - Photo Credit -Taken at the Disconsortia DIY Cabaret by Kev Howard.

 real difficulties and freelancers struggling and have nothing but solidarity. It has also been really impressive to see the very many responses both organisations and individuals have made. We are incredibly proud of the disability community who, again are finding ourselves disadvantaged and excluded from art and culture in its new digital form, have rallied and galvanised a brand new movement promoting accessibility, sustainability, visibility and equality.

As a theatre company, we were very concerned that a shut down of culture would mean that freelance disabled artists would be without work and a voice,and were committed to ensuring that our repsonse would be both to strengthen our organisation and our strategic role in the longer term, and also create artistic opportunities for artists through both Staging our Futures and Disconsortia's At The Table programme, with information on that to follow soon.

We've recently launched Funny Peculiar, written and directed by Vici Wreford-Sinnott and we are now delighted and excited to announce our three Staging Our Futures Commissioned artists.

We invited people to take part who  defy expectations, question the world we live in and deliver powerful performance work. We want to support vibrant and pioneering artists who make work that provokes, excites and engages audiences. So when we talk about the future - let's ensure we future-proof the work of disabled artists and the environments in which they make and share their work.

The creation of these commissions comes at a time of massive upheaval in the arts and theatre worlds, and at a time of crisis for communities of disabled people.  It is clear that there are calls for a change to a system that does not work for all. We want to change the system. We want to reframe the narratives around disabled people and our stories, and we want to give space to rethink what power means.

We are also delighted to announce and welcome the appointment of Robyn Keynes as Producer of the Staging Our Futures programme, who will be with the company until November, steering us through our various commissions, Funny Peculiar, a Masterclass Programme which includes materclasses by, with and for disabled artists and will present Disability Equality materclasses for the arts sector in the North East.

We're proud to introduce you to Lisette Auton, Miss Jacqui, Bea Webster and Robyn Keynes.

Image description - Lisette is a white woman with freckles and brown hair, she is smiling and looking up, she is wearing a black dress with tigers on it. Photo Credit: PaperBoat Photography - by Laura Tindall

Image description - Miss Jacqui is a Black woman with lots of curly hair. She is looking at the camera and is wearing a lemon coloured top. She is seated outdoors surrounded by trees and plants.

Image description - Bea Webster is a Thai-Scottish woman of mixed race. She is looking at the camera. She has dark hair tied back from her face and swept to one side. She is wearing a maroon top and blue jacket.

Image description - Robyn Keynes is a white woman with long fair wavy hair. She is smiling at the camera, seated in a restaurant. She is wearing a dark top with a zip up collar.

Lisette Auton

Lisette Auton does stuff with words: disabled writer, activist, poet, spoken-word artist, actor, theatre-maker and creative practitioner. She is an award-winning poet who is widely published and is known for her energised performances in the spoken word scene. Lisette is a Penguin WriteNow mentee and has completed her first novel. She was the 2019 Early Careers Fellow for Literature at Cove Park supported by the Fenton Arts Trust, and is on the TSS Publishing list of Best British & Irish Flash Fiction.

Lisette works with many creative collaborators to create unique and innovative cross artform works which have featured at MIMA, Kirkleatham Museum and online. She is currently Assistant Producer for Disconsortia's At The Table programme.

Lisette has performed at Northern Stage, ARC, The Southbank Centre and the Sage, in pubs, in a crypt, at festivals, indoors, outdoors, on a bridge and in a launderette. She uses her platform as a performer, writer and theatre-maker to make the invisible visible. www.lisetteauton.co.uk
 

Miss Jacqui
 
Miss Jacqui is a spoken word artist, songwriter, theatre-maker and facilitator.  She knows a lot about working with the cards that you are dealt. Especially because she is someone who always tries to challenge societal perceptions about what it actually means to be a black woman with a disability.

“When you are a minority in a minority in a minority, you have no choice but to stand out.” – Miss Jacqui

Miss Jacqui’s love for theatre started when her mother signed her up to an inclusive drama group when she was 13 to get her out of her introverted shell; and she never looked back. Miss Jacqui's love for Spoken Word/Poetry came about when she joined 'Poets Platform' led by Kat Francois. Miss Jacqui honestly believe that creativity is a universal language.

Miss Jacqui has worked with Halfmoon Young Peoples Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East, National Youth Theatre and Roundhouse just to name a few. Miss Jacqui has performed at various locations like the Paralympic Team Welcoming Ceremony as well as the Opening Ceremony.

“I want to break as many stereotypes as possible when it comes to me being a black woman with a disability.” - Miss Jacqui

Bea Webster

Bea Webster is a deaf actor who trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She is an actor, drag artist, writer and speaker on Deaf equality.

She is currently in rehearsals with the Royal Shakespeare Company for The Winter's Tale, and starred in Red Ladder's Mother Courage and Her Children, and Kaite O'Reilly's Peeling which toured in the UK last year.

Earlier in lockdown Bea took part in Vici Wreford-Sinnott's The Wrong Woman Discussions, featuring five disabled women performance makers talking about their experiences, transgressing expectations and bringing agency for disabled women to performance.

Bea is passionate about classical and contemporary texts in English and BSL, has contributed to BBC Social, has hosted several events, and has published a poem in both BSL and English titled Long Lost Lover, about her birthplace of Thailand.

Robyn Keynes

Robyn is a theatre producer and general manager with over nine years of experience across the subsidised, commercial and independent theatre sectors.

She has worked for companies including the National Student Drama Festival, commercial producers Smith & Brant, and new writing company HighTide.

She has produced plays, with a particular focus on new writing, alongside musicals, events and festivals.

The work produced from the commissions will be shared online on 1 November 2020, but we will be releasing artist profile features of all commissioned artists, staring with Lisette talking about her phenomenal Writing/Righting the Missing work - a piece looking at the world through a new lens, without fear. Lisette said of her commission plans, "I want it to be radical, wild, challenging, quiet, kind and brave. I want it to push me as a performer and a writer. I want it to be creatively accessible, built in as part of the creative process right from concept."

We'll be launching our Masterclass programme soon and you'll be able to see Funny Peculiar with Liz Carr, Mandy Colleran, Bea Webster and Vici Wreford-Sinnott broadcast online from 31 August 2020.