Ruckus Part I & II

As an actor training company we continually strive to deliver exciting and developmental learning opportunities to our actors in training and this devising project is no different. As the artistic director of Fourth Monkey I am delighted to be able to welcome founding members of award winning Shunt to work with our students. 

Shunt is established within the British arts community as a groundbreaking creative collective and for almost twenty years they have been delivering theatre and events that have kept them at the forefront of the London arts scene. 

Having gained my own first experience of their inspiring and innovative Shunt Lounge, an eclectic space of diverse performance and installation works back in 2004 I am enjoying a little of a personal renaissance having them in the building! The Shunt Lounge genuinely blew my mind and redefined live performance for me, something that also reaffirmed my own training experiences in the 90’s that had somehow been lost through the conventionalism of my professional career at the time. This experience coupled with my own historical training experiences subsequently informed and gave life to elements of the training and vision of Fourth Monkey today. To namely explore and challenge convention in all it’s forms. This is what creates groundbreaking art and that, in my humble opinion is what art and performance should all be about. It is a personal delight therefore to have the company working with our students twelve years later and I am sure the learning and broadening of their understanding of creative process will remain with them long beyond this project and well into their professional lives. 

Shunt are a company that shares the ethos of Fourth Monkey in pushing boundaries, breaking theatrical conventions and challenging audiences with work that both matters and resonates and we are delighted and privileged to have them working with us. 

This devised season is predominantly about process; the process of creation, collaboration and delivery. The productions are scratch and by definition experimental, yet to be able to share this work as the first public sharing within training our first year students are thrust forward to celebrate their collaborative creativity prior to embarking on a month’s long training residency in Italy. 

Devised work is incredibly hard, but having a creative voice we feel important and as with all of our students across our training programmes we hope you join us in celebrating the voices of the theatre makers of tomorrow.

We hope you enjoy the devised season of work.

Steven Green

Artistic Director  

A note from the directors: 

'Is gender innate?' This is one of the central questions both companies have explored in creating the shows you will see. This question and many others that relate to ideas of nature and nurture and what makes us human in the world we live in today. We have interrogated ourselves and our own thoughts and developed the stories that arose. At the centre of this process we have considered what it means to meet our audience. So hello! Thank you for coming and we hope you enjoy the show.

Please note there is an age guidance of 16+