Conspiracy of Orphans
“I propose a conspiracy of orphans. We exchange winks. We reject hierarchies. All hierarchies. We take the shit of the world for granted and we exchange stories about how we nevertheless get by. We are impertinent. More than half the stars in the universe are orphan-stars belonging to no constellation. And they give off more light than all the constellation stars.”
John Berger, Confabulations
Showing at Gothenburg Fringe Festival 2023!
GEST (Gothenburg English Speaking Theatre)
6th September - 9pm
7th September - 7pm
8th September - 9pm
The show has no words and is accessible to a deaf audience.
tickets HERE
Conspiracy of Orphans tells a dark story of Europe’s unspeakable past, transposing verbatim stories of war through the prism of two children’s perspectives. The events they experience and the games they play become fused in Created a Monster’s typically hellish exploration of the surreal, the comic and human horror through corporeal and gestural mime, bouffon, clown and signboards (“Whoever Cries Will Be Shot”; “The Miracle”).
The show (based on the research of Nobel Prize-winning author Sveltlana Alexievich) has seen support from Rich Mix, Voila!, Akropoditi Festival, Tramshed and Arts Council England.
Researching sign language and the physical effects of trauma, we have sought to discover how the body speaks and how contact can be made before and beyond words. We hope this project can be used to bring communities - of different abilities, languages and histories - together through a new form of the old art of silent storytelling. Through consultation with Deaf Explorer, we have sought to make the show fully accessible to deaf audiences.
After four years of development we performed CoO again in 2022 (photos below by Carlos Reis) at Tramshed, our home in Woolwich.
In 2023 we returned to Tramshed and complete our final development phase for CoO, thanks to a generous grant from Arts Council England! We are travelling to Sweden in September to perform at Gothenburg Fringe Festival - tickets HERE.
Previous development
We performed a ten-minute scratch of Conspiracy of Orphans at Battersea Arts Centre's Freshly Scratched on the 19th October 2017, and in March 2018 completed a first week's r&d, finishing with a 30-minute showing at Omnibus Theatre.
In August 2019 we took residence for an R&D at Rich Mix, Shoreditch and performed Conspiracy of Orphans on the 15th and 17th November 2019 as part of Voila! Europe Theatre Festival. In 2020 the show was nominated for the Les Enfants Terribles Award, and subsequently programmed at Akropoditi Dancefest, thwarted unfortunately by the pandemic.
If you are interested in Conspiracy of Orphans, or just want to say hi, get in touch via our contact page.
