Staging Our Futures Commissions Showcase

        Brand New Work from
Bea Webster, Miss Jacqui and Lisette Auton

Image description - three portraits of disabled women. From left to right is Bea Webster a woman of dual heritage, Thai and Scottish who wears pantomine make up with rosy cheeks, heavy eyeshadow and bright lips. She wears a dressing gown with a towel on her hair and is holding a sign saying 'Best Panto Ever'. Then there is Miss Jacqui, a black woman with shoulder length afro hair and thin rimmed glasses. She is wearing a light pink hoody against a background of green leaves. Finally is Lisette Auton, a white woman with long brown hair, smiling and wearing a green t-shirt with dungarees.

Little Cog invites you to witness three brand new sharings of work, from three incredible artists.
(LINKS ARE IN THE ORANGE BOX TO THE RIGHT)

Little Cog is thrilled to have awarded commissions to three brilliant Disabled artists: Lisette Auton, Miss Jacqui, and Bea Webster, with support from Arts Council England. Each artist has used their commission in dramatically different ways to explore new ideas and to begin the process of creating brand new work. Their pieces ask big questions of themselves as artists, of the world, and also of us as their audiences, with a few giggles thrown in for good measure.

Bea Webster shares Dame Bevvy Crusher's Most Extraordinary Guide to Writing the Best Pantomime Ever, tbh. Miss Jacqui shares MMXX, and Lisette Auton shares Writing/Righting The Missing - A Choose Your Own Erasure Story R&D.

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.

Please book your free space for this special premiere of new work from these three talented artists using the link in the orange box to the left.

Our live event ensures a gathering, a time to meet the artists, view some of their work and hear them interviewed by Little Cog Artistic Director, Vici Wreford-Sinnott.

These commissions are part of the Staging Our Futures programme supported by ACE’s emergency response fund, to support artists in creating new work. We’ve also delivered the film Funny Peculiar, which received 4 stars in The Stage, and run a popular masterclass programme.

Meet the three artists and find out a bit about their commissions:

Lisette Auton does stuff with words – she’s an author, a poet, a spoken word artist, theatre maker and activist.
Lisette has used the space created by this open commission to explore, research and develop ideas for a new piece of theatre. Her work comes under the heading of Writing/Righting the Missing and all of her work seeks to make the invisible visible. 

“As a disabled person I have felt like a missing, I still often feel like a missing, I don’t want anyone else to feel the same.”

After a considerable time away from theatre making Lisette has decided it’s time to make a piece of theatre – she knows she wants it packed with radical kindness, for an audience to have their feelings stirred and stimulated and at the bottom of it all everything must be accessible.

She shares with us here the findings and experimentations of her commission including a video about an access toolkit, a video about the missing, an essay on who she might make the work for and some gorgeous photographs of her at work. This first phase has confirmed that she wants her audiences to have choices. We can’t wait to share this with you, and we can’t wait to see where it goes next!

Bea Webster is a deaf queer Scottish-Thai actor, writer and theatre-maker who graduated with a BA Performance in British Sign Language and English from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She is currently with the Royal Shakespeare Company and is a National Theatre of Scotland Playwrights Studio Mentee.

Bea has been very busy. She’s been thinking about representation around being a queer, mixed race, Deaf woman. And then she’s been thinking about Panto – and all of Panto’s, ahem, 'quirks'. 

Bea has made a short film which is a sort of fabulous guide to panto and she shares it from her drag persona Bevvy Crusher’s perspective. Panto has very much been back in the headlines lately with the Culture Minister investing in what he clearly thinks is one of the UK’s crown jewels. We can’t wait to see Bea’s take on it all. It's a two woman, one cat extravaganza!

Bea communicates in both English and British Sign Language.

Miss Jacqui is a spoken word artist, poet, actor and recording artist. 
Her piece is called ‘MMXX’ – a powerful, poignant and punchy elegy for 2020 full of reflection and dynamic hope for what comes next. It is an incredible reminder of just what we have all faced and come through in this one epic year.
​
Miss Jacqui invited the amazing singer Delicia in to collaborate with her and together they sound amazing – the two have wanted to collaborate for a long time and not had the opportunity until now. We are so proud to have commissioned this work and can see more work developing (and if we're honest - there is a whole show which could be built from this amazing work).

Miss Jacqui said: “I always like to challenge societal perceptions, like what it actually means to be a black woman with a disability. I make poetry and music that makes people see the world differently, so that I inspire and make people feel comfortable about being themselves.”

​Jacqui's track, MMXX, will be released and available to download on a range of digital platforms soon - check them out please!

Access: The event will take place online and we’ll ask for your access requirements upon booking, and can ensure BSL, audio description, transcripts and captions are included. ​

These Staging Our Futures Commissions are supported by Arts Council England, produced by Little Cog.

Film Details & Links

Age Recommendation 16+

Content Awareness

Strong language, satirical approaches to disability discrimination and pantomime stereotypes, many of the difficulties and challenges the world has faced in this calendar year.


Accessibility

There are captions, transcripts and audio description.

Donations

Watching is free of charge but please consider making a donation to Little Cog. You can do that here.

DONATE HERE

 Watching

No need to book - all links are now live !!!

CLICK LINKS BELOW

DAME BEVVY CRUSHER PANTO

WRITING/RIGHTING THE MISSING

mmxX