Outside the Frame

Who picks the subject? Who creates the frame? Who's in and who's out?

This project was supported by the Weston Culture Fund and built on a Digital and Improvisation Lab supported by Cultural Recovery Fund. 

An ensemble of artists delve into hidden histories and salacious stories through improvisation, autobiographical stories, spoken word, devising, movement, song and puppetry. Outside The Frame breaks away from the usual terms of reference and ways of telling and centres typically marginalised characters and stories.

The project is directed by Angela Clerkin and Adedamola Bajomo with an ensemble of women and non-binary performers whose skills cross cabaret, writing, visual art, design and performing.

THE LAB 

The project began as a digital laboratory with an ensemble working together over eight sessions. Working online, how do we create a spacious space to speak from? Where is the fun, the creativity, the outrageous, the intimate, the beautiful, the human, the theatrical, the unexpected and unlikely? The Outside The Frame Lab jumped about time zones – staying a while in the Victorian era, looping back into Elizabethan England and the beginnings of the British Empire, jumping forward to Windrush, and forward again to today. 

This zine captures some of the work which took place across the LAB and you can also watch our film which is available as an Audio described version.

📓 Outside The Frame E-Zine (easier reading version for people with visual impairments)

R&D: Telepresence Stage Residency 

To keep exploring shared creative space online we did a Telepresence Stage Residency with Brighton University. 

This technology places people in separate physical locations into the same shared digital space to create and perform. With a camera, greenscreens and three monitors in different locations across London our R&D ensemble played in a new digital space. This film is a recording of a live sharing performed at the end of the residency. 

“We really wanted it to still feel like theatre, and to me it did! … This experiment really opened up a design world for us online that feels right with the type of work we are developing. We used different techniques that combined the low-fi feeling of having wobbly theatre sets, alongside live-painting and amazing high tech video - creating an imaginative tool-box of possibilities for the future.” – Angela Clerkin 

Telepresence Stage is an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project led by the School of Art and Media at the University of Brighton, in collaboration with LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore and the Third Space Network in Washington DC. Find out more about it here.

If you want to hear more about Outside The Frame, get in touch with Kathryn Bilyard on kathryn@improbable.co.uk.

Lab team:

Co-directors (and performers): Angela Clerkin and Adedamola Bajomo
Ensemble: Aïsha Kent, Cassie Hercules, Ella Golt, Jess Gill, Julie McNamara, Sadie Sinner
Creative Archivist: Ess Grange
Guest Players: Matilda Leyser and Caroline Partridge
Ensemble portraits: Caroline Partridge
Wellbeing support provided by Olivette Cole-Wilson

Ensemble: