Introducing Living Record Festival

Living Record Festival is a month-long Digital Arts Festival curating and presenting original pieces from a range of art forms by independent companies and freelance artists.

The festival is the brainchild of Ross Drury, International director and Artistic Director of ‘Living Record Productions’ an award-winning theatre company who have been creating vivid and dreamlike theatre since 2015. Partners and associates of the festival are Spun Glass Theatre, Chew Boy Productions, Fringe Review, Bedford Place, London Playwrights Blog and Dyspla. 

Living Record Festival looks to create a space for audiences to connect, review and experience affordable work from the digital sphere. It will be a fun, interactive online festival experience for all ages and walks of life.

Spurred on by the catastrophic effect Covid-19 has had on the theatre and live performance industry. The Living Record hopes to build a virtual space that supports professional development, networking, and artistic experimentation for artists and storytellers at all career levels and a financially accessible marketplace for theatre companies to connect with audiences and the wider arts industry. Its aim is to support independent companies, storytellers and artists, and to programme work which is purpose-built for a digital platform. To curate the identity of several individual digital spaces with a variety of pieces – guided by the audience, supporting the artists, and to present a provocative and entertaining broad church of experience, encouraging quality.

 

The festival will launch on 17th January 2021, tickets for any show will be no more than £15, with perks such as show gifting, interactive audience review pages, merchandise shops, a bar, personalised pages for each act and more! Follow the festival updates at: www.livingrecord.co.uk/ insta: LivingRecordProductions/Twitter: Living_Record.

 

We are very excited to announce our headliners:

 

The Noise Next Door

The Noise Next Door are the UK’s premiere comedy troupe. Twelve time sell-out veterans of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and one of the most sought after comedy club headliners, having appeared on a number of radio and TV shows. Taking audience suggestions, the cheeky and charming quartet, transform them into fantastically funny scenes and songs in the blink of an eye. 

 

 

Dempsey Bovell

Dempsey Bovell is an actor and budding screenwriter with a background in drama facilitating. Dempsey most recently appeared in the newly released ‘The Witches’, Channel 5’s ‘The Deceived’, the Elton John biopic ‘Rocket Man’ and BBC’s ‘The Missing’. Dempsey will be presenting his debut TV pilot ‘The Class’ which he has written.

 

 

Maria Ferguson 

Maria Ferguson is a writer and performer from Romford. She has been commissioned by the Royal Academy of Art,  Stylist and BBC Radio 1. Her debut solo show, Fat Girls Don’t  Dance, sold-out performances across the country and won the  Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Show. Her second show,  Essex Girl, was shortlisted for Soho Theatre’s Tony Craze Award and won Show of the Week at VAULT Festival 2019. ‘Alright,  Girl?’ is her debut poetry collection.

 

Elian Gray

Elian Gray is a London based producer and rapper who’s experimental sound manages to deviate from mainstream hip hop while still keeping in line with the genre’s more classic traits. Elian’s vocal style skips effortlessly between quirky humour and dystopian angst, packed with poetic imagery and wordplay. While his debut LP Awkward Awe marks Elian’s first outing as a solo artist, his skills have been honed through his involvement with numerous crews and bands, including Gentle Mystics, DefDFires and Undali. Elian will be sharing Readings from Awkward Awe experimenting with various digital tools.

 

 

Gemma Rogers

Gemma Rogers is a London based singer-songwriter and theatre-maker. Her debut album is being released under Tiny Global Productions early next year. Living Records festival features her new play using binaural sound and original music, this piece is about trying to find harmony in a world of clashing minor chords. 

 

                                      Rosie Rowlands

Rosie is a professional circus artist from London.  After graduating from the National Centre for Circus Arts her skills have taken her around the globe, from lavish corporate spectacles in Asia to Australia’s vibrant cabaret scene, to theatre tours across the UK. 

In 2015 she became a mother for the first time and has since been juggling the demands of parenthood with her career, thanks to her supportive family.  Unfortunately, due to this year’s pandemic, the circus industry has suffered immeasurably. Maternity services in the UK have also suffered, forcing expectant mothers to go through life-changing experiences without the care and support they need. Inspired by these recent events, and by her own experiences as she awaits the birth of her second child Rosie has teamed up with Feathers Of Daedalus director Joanna Vymeris, to create a short film (working title; The Childbirth Project) which explores the fear surrounding childbirth and celebrates the strength of the female body.

 

Skye Hallam

Skye Hallam is an Anglo-Indian actress from Kingston Upon-Thames. She graduated from RADA in 2016 and has since been working mostly in Film/TV. Her credits include; ‘The Crown’, ‘The Alienist’ and the upcoming film trilogy ‘Intrigo’ directed by Daniel Alfredson. ‘Heads or Tails’ is Skye’s writing debut and she’s very excited to be performing it for the first time at the Living Record Festival.

 

Katie Payne

Katie will be presenting a work-in-progress section of her new one-woman play My Mix(ed up) Tape with a live DJ set from DJ Glade. Katie Payne is an Actress and Writer. 

With over 12 years of professional acting experience – Katie is currently writing a series – in development with Kirstie Macdonald and Filmnation. She is also the MD of The Redbrick Studios – a successful casting studio in the heart of Shoreditch, London. “My Mix(ed up) Tape” is a brand new play about Phoebe – or “Pea” for short: because she’s always had a skinny body and MASSIVE head – this groundbreaking show is about female anger, misdiagnosed ADHD and finding out who you really are.

With a live DJ-set and sensory audio-visual graphics that transport you into the world of the play, this is Katie’s groundbreaking debut play.  My Mix(ed up) Tape is in development with Dirty Protest & RCT Theatres, with support from Arts Council of Wales and Lottery.