This document can be accessed online at zoyander.cc/portfolio
Table of contents
🎭 Interactive live theatre, hybrid in-person and online
Supported by: Arts Council England Project Grant, Sheffield Theatres Bank Cohort programme, Barrel Organ LIVE test night, Theatre Delicatessen’s Social Model & More Festival,
Edited video of test performance at Barrel Organ LIVE Barnsley
Edited video of test performance at Barrel Organ LIVE Barnsley
Intrapology is a narrative story-world explored through a series of online and hybrid interactive performances. Intrapology stories take social constructivism literally to the point of absurdism, building a multiverse of collective worldings and entangled ways of becoming. Over the course of the series, Intrapology will examine how worlds that were once shared become divided, and how to reconnect.
Performances:
🏬 Social art and placemaking project
Supported by: Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, University of Sheffield Transforming and Activating Places, Social Enterprise Exchange
Photograph of the Typeset CIC bookshop in 2021
In 2021-2022 I operated a vintage bookshop in Rotherham town centre, aiming to create a semi-social creative space in an economically-deprived town that is rapidly losing its “third spaces” and retail stores. I recruited a board of 4 directors, all of us local creative people with disabilities or neurodivergent conditions, and secured funding to run a series of creative events to bring people together after the easing of pandemic restrictions. This included a series of tabletop worldbuilding games, as well as writing workshops and a livestreamed discussion between local authors.
In 2022 we put the shop into storage for a year to allow the directors time to recover. In September 2023, we moved out of storage into an office space, and launched new activities and products including a monthly subscription to hand-curated collage materials called Keep or Cut Up Club.
Screenshot of user screens for Protocol Integration, from left to right: audience choosing dialog options for performer 1, performance script for performer 1, performance script for performer 2, and stage direction.
🎭 Interactive live theatre, hybrid in-person and online
Supported by: New Conversations (British Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Farnham Maltings, High Commission of Canada) and Sheffield Theatres
Unedited extract from recording of online performance
Unedited extract from recording of online performance
Shown here is an example playthrough of the interactive online play that I created in 2021, in collaboration with Canadian artist Dietrich Squinkifer. We aimed to create a participatory, live, interactive experience that centres awkwardness, drawing on our own experiences of two particular neurodivergent social behaviours: using scripts to navigate social situations, and infodumping. Both of these behaviours are shaped directly by the audience, which allows the audience to create and explore the comedy of social awkwardness.
I went on to adapt the same technology when working as a game consultant for Sheffield Theatres Young Company’s play ‘Maybe I Will’, and it will form the basis for my Intrapology series of interactive stories.
👾 Interactive documentary, videogame
Supported by: Arts Council England, Freelands Foundation, Space Studios London (European Regional Development Fund), Replicast Ltd.
Cis Penance is an interactive documentary allowing users to navigate a corpus of 45 interviews with UK transgender people, portraying experiences of deferment and waiting. I carried out these interviews in 2019-2021 through a series of residencies, remote and in-person.
I aimed to bring to the surface some of the non-binary and non-dual approaches to life and identity that emerge through trans experiences of queer time. To this end, I worked with transgender artists June Hornby and Liz Ryerson for the character designs and music (respectively).
Exhibitions