Bike Shed Residency

This June, Chris Goode & Company will be in residency at the brilliant Bike Shed in Exeter.

Chris Goode and an evolving group of collaborators will use this time to begin a new journey towards a large-scale work called Albemarle, that we’re aiming to make in 2014. Albemarle will be a multi-authored piece that aims to realise the glimpses of personal and social change that can be found in our dreams of utopia.

Throughout the residency, we will be developing and researching our ideas, and sharing some early material during a series of discussions and work in progress performances.

Alongside these glimpses of the new work at its earliest stage, we’re also presenting a selection of performances, readings and conversations, including some rare back catalogue work of Chris’s and new work by some of our collaborators. The Bike Shed have organised a range of tickt offers, to make it easier to see more than one event over the three week period. Booking and further details can be found here.

We hope to see you there!

Development work on Albemarle during the Bike Shed residency has been generously supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation.

Week One - guest Theron Schmidt

Welcome to Albemarle - Tuesday 11th June

Chris and Theron Schmidt introduce and discuss the origins and themes of Albemarle, the new work that CG&Co is starting to develop during this residency at the Bike Shed.

Stories From The Yearning - Wednesday 12th June

A compilation of some of the spoken word highlights from the past two decades of Chris’s activity as a theatre maker and poet, based partly on the work collected in his book A History of Airports.

a smith from a distance - Thursday 13th June

Chris and Theron perform a double-bill of works by performance writer a smith: all that is solid melts into air and commonwealth. These mid-length pieces gently and openly explore ideas around the role of theatre and congregation in the imagining and making of social change.

ABLE REALM - Friday 14th June

A one-off semi-improvised performance arising out of the week’s work so far on Albemarle and refracting through it some of the ideas, materials and desires that have characterised Theron and Chris’s work together over the last fifteen years.

Some People Will Do Anything To Keep Themselves from Being Moved - Saturday 15th June

A solo performance by Theron Schmidt. Drawing on political events, theatrical descriptions, and daily ephemera, this lecture-performance sits unsteadily at the tipping point between stasis and movement, between feeling and critique, between image and recognition. What is it that moves us to act?

Week Two - guest Jonny Liron

Thompson’s Live - Tuesday 18th June

A recording of a new episode of CG&Co’s theatre and performance podcast. Chris and three guests discuss ideas and work that they’re currently finding inspiring, stimulating or provocative. Come along and join in the conversation!

Language Thinks Language - Wednesday 19th June

Chris and Jonny present an anthology of experimental text and performance from a century of avant garde practice. Includes works by Michael Basinski, Samuel Beckett, Christopher Knowles, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono and others.

Howl / Ursonate - Thursday 20th June

Chris introduces and reads/performs two seminal works of poetic boundary-pushing: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the extraordinary Ursonate of Kurt Schwitters.

Critical Care: the work of Action one19 - Friday 21st June

An introduction to, and selection of work by, Action one19, the collaborative partnership of Jonny Liron and Chris Goode. The duo’s work focuses on the radical political dimension of the tensions between language and the pre-linguistic body, and on performance work that aims to create fluid structures for exploring sexual and social dissidence from a queer/anticapitalist perspective. Includes a screening of Where You Stand (2010). [Advisory: Nudity and sexually explicit material.]

Infinite Lives - Saturday 22nd June

A rare chance to see Chris perform a script-in-hand reading of his own solo play Infinite Lives, in which an aspiring sci-fi novelist becomes obsessed with a model on a gay porn website.

Week Three - guests Jo Clifford, Maddy Costa and John Hall

Jo Clifford – in conversation - Tuesday 25th June

Chris is joined by playwright and performer Jo Clifford, who discusses and reads from her work, with its characteristic notes of heartfelt lyricism and clear-sighted radical compassion.

The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven - Wednesday 26th June

Jo Clifford performs her own acclaimed and controversial solo. “Jesus is a transsexual woman. And it is now she walks the earth.” A play with music that presents her sayings, her miracles, and her testimony. And she does not condemn the gays or the queers or the transwomen or the transmen, and no, not the straight women nor the straight men either. Because she is the Daughter of God, most certainly, and almost as certainly the son also. And God’s child condemns nobody.

state of the person / address - Thursday 27th June

Who is writing? / Who is reading? An evening of poetry, conversation, and points inbetween, in which Chris is joined by poet and performance thinker John Hall.

Hippo World Guest Book - Friday 28th June

Chris’s 2007 solo show – reviled on first production, but now widely regarded as a classic of its kind – is a giddy verbatim odyssey through a real online guestbook, in which a fragile community of hippo enthusiasts is set upon by jokers, trolls and, eventually, spambots. Hysterical, alarming and ultimately weirdly moving.

You Are Now Leaving Albemarle - Saturday 29th June

Chris is joined by leading critic and blogger Maddy Costa for an evening of dialogue looking back over the past three weeks of the BikeShed residency – and forward into the future of the new show.