We received over 100 applications for the open call commissions and the standard was exceptionally high. So high in fact that we were initially offering 4 commissions, but we have now committed to six. We are also excited to be supporting an additional 9 projects or artists that applied to still create their work either as part of or beyond the season, so have found a way to support 15 of the applicants in total. Thank you to everybody that applied, the range and quality of ideas was so impressive that it was a near impossible task for our team to shortlist.
The season will celebrate rebels; people who shake things up and make positive change. It will feature disruptive, radical, rebellious work about politics, protest, breaking the mould and celebrating difference. We are encouraging artists to experiment with form as well as theme, and the season will feature work across all art forms; music, theatre, spoken word, circus, cabaret and of course work that doesn’t fit into these boxes. The full season will run from 11 April – 1 June 2019 and will be announced in February 2019.
Our six Rebels commissions are:
Drawing The Line
Hidden Track Theatre
Everyone is invited into a large, clear space. The walls are lined with spare parts, materials, stuff. The floor is empty. Then you draw the line.
Drawing the Line will invite audiences to build nations from scratch; they’ll name it, design its flag, build its cities; they can vote to change their nation’s rules, compete for resources and negotiate with the other nation. Or they can simply sit and watch. All audience interaction will be optional! This interactive storytelling experience questions the divisiveness of nationhood and global citizenship – what brings us together? And what drives us apart?
Starting with nothing, together, we will create a world that could exist nowhere else.
“We’re so, so excited to be a part of the Albany Rebels Season alongside such exciting, radical, political new work. As well as being in the company of such wonderful shows and artists, we’re really looking forward to performing for and playing with the people of Deptford, and hope that they like us and look after us! Even if we are being a bit… rebellious.” Elliot Hughes, Hidden Track Theatre
Whose Eyes Are These Anyway
Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan
A poetic intervention set amidst a jarring soundscape focused on disrupting the binary of “oppressed” and “liberated” that is shoved onto Muslim women. The performance begs the question of whether liberation for Muslim women really does lie in making our bodies and selves publicly available when we are simultaneously demanded and derided in the public eye. What does it mean for this performance to exist and for you to see it in a theatre when Muslim women are so much a spectacle in society more broadly, and you may not be so excited to go talk to all the Muslim women living on the council estates in your borough? What does it mean for one Muslim woman to try to speak for herself in that context? Can her words ever be her own?
“I am absolutely thrilled to be taking part in the Albany Rebels Season – its the first time I’ve ever had the opportunity to go full throttle in terms of being able to be as disruptive and unsettling in my work as I want to be. Retaining some degree of palatability is usually a requirement in the arts, but this season is a chance for me to bare my deepest fears and suspicions of both my audience and myself in what will likely be the most intimate but also most outrageous work I have produced.” Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan
The Land’s Heart is Greater Than Its Map
ivo theatre
An audio walk which will will transport you to an unnamed metropolis; the only city that exists twice; once on earth and once in heaven; Yaboos.
The world is not a given. The world changes based on descriptions and projections of it. The Land’s Heart is Greater Than Its Map questions who has the authority to give a coherent narrative of a city and how we are able to come into contact with the ‘real’ essence of a place.
Passing by seemingly familiar objects your guide will bring the distant closer and make absence feel present by constructing inaccessible parts of a mysterious city within your home town.
“Presenting this piece at the Albany is a chance to develop the piece where it sits best – in a venue with heart, an emphasis on continually discovering their relevance as a venue and artistic innovation. As the piece is about identity & belonging and who has the authority to narrate history I feel it particularly pertinent that I will present this in the streets around my home, at my local theatre.” Olivia Furber
Motherhoody
Anna-Maria Nabiyre and Jess Mabel Jones
A series of creative workshops engaging in conversation and creation around the ideas and expectations of motherhood. As two women in our 30s we find ourselves on a reproductive precipice. More and more women are engaging with the choice of motherhood rather than its inevitability – statistics show that conception results are the lowest they have ever been in all age groups apart from those 40 and up and that more births happen outside of marriage or civil partnership. Evidently women are rebelling against their biological predispositions and the traditions of motherhood yet it still feels we are far from talking honestly and openly about being mums.
“We are so excited to take part in the Albany Rebels Season and can’t wait to team up with the Albany, Canada Water Theatre and Library and a host of incredible women to get to grips with this vital subject.” Jess Mabel Jones
Debtford
Cecil B Dyslexic, K3mp, Kaner Flex, Arnold Chukwu & Special Guests
Debtford will be a combination of different forms of expression, based a lot around the area we were brought up in. Everyone involved will be from Deptford, New Cross or Lewisham.
There will be dance and lyrical responses to gentrification, racism, addiction, cultural and class appropriation and much more. Spoken word, dance, rap, poetry, trap, digital punk.
In a time where there is a lot of attention on South East London as a desirable place to live for those who can afford it, we will tell our story of what growing up before the “regeneration” was like, and who it is really benefiting.
“We’re looking forward to being able to have space to expand an idea, something we think there’s a lack of unless you have the money to afford it. To being able to work alongside people who care about our idea and be given the resources necessary to grow.” Willem McLaughlin
This commission was specifically for a Learning Disabled Artist and is in partnership with Mind The Gap.
The Kissing Project
Carolyn Defrin & Abigail Boucher
Favourite kiss? Funniest kiss? First kiss? Last kiss? Impossible kiss?
The Kissing Project will pop-up around the Albany and Deptford this Spring to explore how stories about kisses and kissing might rebelliously infuse love, tenderness and care into current fear-driven social landscapes. Riffing on the playful concepts of kissing and photo booths – UK and US artists Carolyn Defrin and Abigail Boucher will collect audio stories and take photographic portraits of local people that will then feature in a public installation in summer 2019.
“We are particularly excited to work with The Albany on this project because of their dedication to making strong socially impactful work for the local communities in a variety of theatrical ways.” Carolyn Defrin