Cast-Off Drama Current info and forthcoming events

Cast-Off Drama - A Theatre Company of Life-Models, Street-Performers and Itinerant Artists.

About us...
Registered office: Cast-Off Drama,Studio 3, Artspace, Bates Mill Queen Street South, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK. HD1 3DX
Tel: 01484 685948
E-mail: ninakane@btinternet.com
Artistic Director: Nina Kane

Formed in 2002 Cast-Off Drama is the recognised pioneer of 'life-modelling theatre' offering new roles to life-models as perfomers and to artists as 'notators' and audience members. In addition to life-modelling theatre, we work with street theatre and community theatre, creating powerful, people-centred productions.

Based in Huddersfield, England, under the artistic direction of Nina Kane, Cast-Off is a theatre company of life-models, artists and street-performers working with itinerant and community art in galleries, studio theatres, community centres and outdoor locations. We recognise life-modelling and life-drawing as interdependent art forms involving both model and artist in dynamic creative exchange. We see life-modelling as a theatre-based art form, and the life-drawing space as a space for theatre. We have an active commitment to arts reseach and offer a varied programme of education work in schools, colleges, universities and community spaces. Please note, we have no connection at all, past or present, to the Cast-Off Drama amateur dramatics group in Oldham.

About 'Life-Modelling Theatre'...
Centrally, our work develops the performance potential of the life-model offering high-quality theatre productions, workshops and events for a life-drawing and street-theatre audience. Drawing on fine art, old stories, music, literature and circus history, we explore the drama of the body in art through physical theatre, mask-work, singing and storytelling. We explore everyday clothing, masks, costume, nudity and non-nudity, working closely with artist-notators who act as 'mirror' and 'outside eye' to the process, but also through 'model-only' rehearsals and workshops. Concurrently, we investigate conventions of stillness, silence, nudity and heightened spectacle occuring in the life-drawing space. Using integrated theatre processes we seek emotionally-literate negotiation of such conventions to generate a theatre of the body which plays to the strengths of the individual model-performer. At heart is a desire to understand and engage practically with moments of spontaneity, instinct and ritual occuring in the life-modelling/life-drawing exchange. See below for details of our production method.

Education Work... Complementing our developments in life-modelling theatre, Cast-Off offers exciting and challenging workshops and projects in conventional theatre using physical theatre, improvisation, new writing and mask. Our workshops offer space to investigate 'the theatre of the body' using props, costume, 3-D making and percussion in addition to role-play, narrative and song. We have a strong track record of developing life-drawing and theatre projects within schools, colleges and universities.

Community Theatre... We have an active commitment to community arts and are experienced at working in groups in a variety of community settings. If you are a community organisation and want some drama for your group or local centre, please contact us and we will develop anything from a day-workshop or a programme of events that suits your needs and is affordable to you.

Sister Organisations - WILMA and Ocarina Nina:
Cast-Off Drama developed a number of small initiatives under its wing in the early years, and these have developed into strong projects in their own right, operating separately from the company since 2006. We nevertheless retain close working links with the following - WILMA (Women Into Life-Modelling Arts), a network and advocacy service for female life-models, and Ocarina Nina Street-Theatre & Singing, a street-theatre company providing singing walkabout characters for festivals. We wish them and their participants well, and will continue to update Cast-Off Drama
blog-watchers on their progress!

The Olympics
We look forward to some years of exciting grassroots sports activities in our communities and advocate the following:

- the development and regular maintenance of public sports facilities across Britain
- free swimming, gyms, spas, saunas, tennis courts and ice-skating for all
- continued action tackling racism on the football terraces
- the reversal of the sale of school playing fields
- a nationalised network of riding schools and the development of urban farms for horses; open provision for horses on common land
- the opening of all empty development land plots for tennis, hockey, shotput, javelin and other sporting events

and finally, we view the Olympics as an opportunity for Britain to up the status of women's professional sports on a par with men's in terms of public interest, viewing time, training opportunities and salaries.

As a very small arts company, we immediately noticed the effect of the Olympics on our work in 2006 - it has affected our direct applications for public funds for productions, and our indirect sources of income through workshops and partner-working (ie. commissions by other publicly funded venues, groups, festivals, etc). In the autumn of that year, therefore, we decided to take an 'in-breath' and focus our energies on performance writing and new script development building on our processes of life-modelling theatre techniques, audience dialogue, installation and site-specific engagement.

REPERTOIRE:
For full details of our repetoire and works-in-progress, please click on the side heading that says Repertoire of Audience Works. Repertoire pieces include:

Cleansed by Sarah Kane (2009 - 2012)

Devised / scripted works:

Faun - commissioned by York Art Gallery and put on as part of the William Etty Retrospective (2011)
Padre - based on the work of Francis Bacon (2012)
Panoptican (2009)
The Green Children of Wolfpit - community script (2009-)
Bride-Cake Bride-Bones (2008 -)
Wallpaper...Roses...Reposes (2008 -)
The Striped Dress (2008 -)
Pull My Daisy (2007 -)
Between Stars (2006 -)
Poisson D'Argent (2006 -)
Beads (2003 - 2006)
Proscenium Memorial (2004-5)
Chime Chimera (2003)
The Bath (2002)
Will you, Won't You...Join the Dance?! (2002)

For indepth details of our work and production processes, please click on the main company info link or scroll down to the bottom of the blog. In the meantime, enjoy reading our latest news and hear about our current work below!

Latest News / Current Projects:
Faun- commissioned by York Art Gallery for the William Etty Retrospective

Performance in the Gallery Space based on selected works from the exhibition Wednesday 16th November 2011

Composite Bodies - a life-model workshop open to members of the public, 23rd November 10am - 3pm, York Gallery Studio

All events are free of charge to the public. Many thanks to York Art Gallery for this commission. Faun will tour to other UK galleries in the Spring and Summer of 2012.

Summer 2011:

Modelworks at Leeds Art Gallery

There are three remaining dates for Modelworks this term.

Saturday 25th June - Family Day - Sounding Out Bacon - a vocal and movement response to works by Francis Bacon!
Saturday 9th July - Working from Jack B Yeats The Mystery Man - mask work with Christine Smith and Nina Kane
Saturday 23rd July - String Installations - Chris Hinchliffe and Nina Kane.

Sessions run from 1-4pm. Hope you can make it! Many thanks as ever to Leeds Art Gallery.

Sounding Out Bacon

The Sounding Out Bacon vocal and movement session went very well. Two distinct scripts have emerged from this process and will go towards a new work - Padre - to be developed for the Light Night event and the Exhibitions Group in October 2012.

Spikenard
Many thanks to those who attended the Spikenard sessions at Leeds Gallery this weekend and who donated perfumes. It seems smell can take us to whole new ways of seeing. Stories were told, memories exchanged, there was reading and nude performance from the Song of Songs, and the gendering of fragrances yielded interesting questions.

Some of the things we liked....Cedar Wood by Goya of Bond St - 'slapping it on the cheeks, strong rum and Christmas'....Hypnotic Poison - 'sugar spun candy sweet'...Miss Dior Cherie - 'old-fashioned Spangles and way too many Dolly Mixtures'...Indian Ginger and Orchid - 'fizzy, dizzy with a hint of school corridors, rubbery underside of old plimsolls' ...Aveda Chakra 1 - 'definitely date and walnut cake, a whiff of smoked leather...' We enjoyed the project so much, we are repeating it, starting with a Spikenard 2 Family Day in the Gallery space on the 25th June as partof Modelworks. Please keep sending us your old perfumes,colognes, aftershaves, etc. Watch this space for new dates.

An extra thank you from Artistic Director Nina to...Neil Chapman, our friend in Japan, whose near-lifetime passion for perfume, and copious facebook discussions on the subject, have inspired this performance project.

>Spikenard - at Leeds Art Gallery

On the weekend of the 11th and 12th June, there will be a Cast-Off Drama performance weekend - Spikenard - exploring perfume and smell in arts-making, and working from the gallery's collection. For this, we need lots of perfume - if you have any old bottles of scent lying around - whether this be sprays, oils, perfumes, etc - that you are willing to donate, please contact us (07800 861351), or just bring them along. Also, if there are any still in use that you are willing to lend a spray or dab of, that'd be lovely too. Any will do, male, female, androgynous, unisex, weird and wonderful or everyday! Just follow your nose.

Modelworks

Modelworks kicks off on Saturday 7th May with a mask performance - Keen - based on The Lady of Shalott. We will be intervening in the space of the Ziff Gallery (Leeds Art Gallery) weaving webs, playing with mirrors chanting loudly, singing and keening. All welcome to watch, draw, sing or weave. All welcome!


Following some wonderful workshops from Chris Hinchliffe and Liz Pollard last term, we are extending our project of opening up the Studio sessions for facilitation by others. If you have a model-related or drawing / making / art history idea that you would like to explore, and would like to have a go at running a session using the gallery's collection, please contact Nina to discuss it further and let us know your preferred date (22nd May, 9th July, 23rd July). She will happily model for your session, be a sounding-board or just be on hand to set up, make teas, etc! Nina - 07800 861351, and e-mail: ninakane@btinternet.com

In other sessions, we will continue to work on our collective project The Green Children of Wolfpit.

Saturday 7th May - 1-4pm: Family Day (Gallery space)
Sunday 22nd May - 1-4pm: Studio
Saturday 11th June - 10am - 4pm - Studio Spikenard - on perfume and art. All-day.
Sunday 12th June - 1-4pm Spikenard - on perfume and art (afternoon)
Saturday 25th June -1-4pm: Family day (Gallery space)
Saturday 9th July - 1-4pm: Studio
Saturday 23rd July: 1 - 4pm:Studio

All sessions are at Leeds Art Gallery, are drop-in and free of charge, materials provided, but please bring a donation to help towards costs.

The Modelworks Exhibitions Group, a DIY community of artists who have gathered around the project in recent years and host exhibitions from work created in the sessions have secured an exhibition space for the whole of October 2012, at Leeds Central Library First Floor. This exhibition will co-incide with Leeds Light Night, and we hope to form part of that year's programme. Work from these sessions can be submitted towards this exhibition. For further details, see Cast-Off Drama's blog in coming months.

Modelworks forms part of Cast-Off Drama's education and performance initiative at Leeds City Art Gallery. We have enjoyed a happy and creative relationship with the gallery and its collections for the past 9 years, and are grateful to them for their continuing support.

Recent:
'A Blank Slate?: Woman as Tabula Rasa in Art' - Liz Pollard
Saturday 26th March 2011, 1-4pm, Leeds City Art Gallery

Modelworks is happy to welcome artist Liz Pollard to the Leeds Gallery this weekend with a workshop on Woman as Tabula Rasa in Art. The session will explore this theme through contemplation of nude statues around Leeds city centre and within the gallery. In particular it will focus on those works that use the female form allegorically. The session will involve a talk from Liz on the subject and drawing from a life-model.

Biography:

Artist Liz Pollard works mostly in traditional print media. After a BA in Fine Art Printmaking and Photomedia at Norwich School of Art and Design (now Norwich University of the Creative Arts) she completed an M.A. in the Fine Art Department at Leeds University in 2000 in Feminism & the Visual Arts., then set up her studio space in Norwich and supplementing her art practice with part-time teaching at Norwich School of Art & Design.

Liz creates work using a wide range of printmaking techniques, from simple mono-printing and relief prints to multi-plate etchings, using photographic references, sketches and drawing to develop her ideas. Sources of inspiration include a lifelong fascination with the hidden world of domesticity and the rituals involved in our daily lives. Completing an M.A. dissertation on ‘Women, Madness and Cleaning’ left Liz depressed, with a large collection of J-Cloths and rubber gloves and a strong aversion to housework to show for her efforts.
Influences range from 17th-century Dutch genre painting, Chardin’s still-lives and interiors, Japanese wood-block prints, the Ealing Studios films, to contemporary video and performance artists and to memories of her mother – housekeeper par excellence!

A trip to Hong Kong in November 2002 was a rich and rewarding experience, and has led Liz to engage with ‘Eastern’ aesthetics from a ‘Western’ point of view. Creating collages of her own relief prints and mono-prints combined with Origami and Khadi papers, these works play with the concepts ‘Oriental’ and ‘Occidental’, and toy with abiding clichés about East and West. The fusion of colours and pattern is intended to reach beyond cultural and geographical borders.

In an Easterly Direction, an exhibition in Colchester Library’s Les Livres Gallery in March 2004, continued to explore Liz’s interest in oriental art and culture, the dynamic of line and space as well as printed textiles. Printmaking is often a delicate, complex process, juggling initial ideas with technique. Her works reflect this ongoing ‘battle’ - a balancing act between the colourful collages and the spare, linear works in which the white space of the paper (as in Japanese calligraphy) is just as positive as the marks upon it. Liz began creating her banners, backed with imitation rice paper, as a way of bringing print out from behind glass and frame, a chance for viewers to engage with the tactile qualities of handmade papers. Initially, it was a novel way of displaying prints produced by Braintree Community Art Group in the Dome Gallery, Braintree, as part of ARTfresh 2002, and grew from there.

Modelworks is run by Cast-Off Drama in partnership with Leeds Art Gallery.

Cleansed by Sarah Kane

Wok continues on our exploration of Sarah Kane's Cleansed at the Leeds Art Gallery. On Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th February, Nina Kane and Kerry Ely will be collaborating on aspects of the script with a specific focus on tights, stockings and stitching. Anyone with an interest in life-drawing, theatre, performance art or feminism is very welcome to come along and draw, watch, discuss the process. We will also explore Edward Bond's Saved. Kerry is a theatre performer, director and Burlesque artiste, and we are very excited to be working with her again.
(Saturday 10am - 4pm, Sunday 1-4pm, Studio, Leeds Art Gallery).

The weekend with Kerry follows an excellent one earlier this month between Paul Ashton and Nina on Cleansed. We focused on gender and clothes-swapping and a wonderful time was had by all. Paul is a body and tattoo artist, a painter and a life-model but prefers the term 'Creative' to describe his art. We are very much looking forward to working with Paul again on this.

Work on Cleansed will continue until 2012.

Cast-Off Drama commissioned for the William Etty Exhibition, York Art Gallery, November 2011.

York Art Gallery will be holding a major exhibition of Etty's work from 24 June, 2011 to 22 January, 2012, which will be the first comprehensive reassessment of his art for more than 50 years. Cast-Off are delighted to have been invited to participate both in the exhibition programme and in the conference accompanying the events. We have been commissioned to create a performance piece from the works 'giving voice' to Etty's models in the gallery space. We will also be running a Contemporary Life-Model Studies workshop for students at York University through our Education Programme. Artistic Director Nina Kane will present a paper for the conference on 'Developing Performance in Response to Gallery Collections' - details on this to follow. We thank York Art Gallery for their commission, and are very much looking forward to being involved in this wonderful event.
Gallery Performance: 16th November
York University Student Workshop: 23rd November
Conference dates tbc.

Modelworks at Leeds Art Gallery

The Modelworks programme at Leeds Art Gallery is mid-way through its Spring term, but there are a couple of dates left for those interested in coming to work from the collection. (see archived news below for fuller details of this project).

We would like to thank Christine Hinchliffe for a fantastic workshop on Sound a couple of weeks back.

Remaining dates this term:

Saturday March 12th - International Women's Day Celebration: we will be joining with the Gallery to celebrate this important annual festival, and will be performing a response to the current Henry Moore exhibition, with a focus on his female forms. We will be working in the lower gallery spaces, and all are invited to come and draw / watch, etc. (1-4pm, Leeds Art Gallery).

Saturday 26th March - Modelworks with Liz Pollard. A big thank you to Liz Pollard who is our guest facilitator for this session. Liz will be exploring 'Woman as Allegory' and will focus on the C19th 'lamposts' of nude women around Leeds City Centre.

Modelworks is changing the way it works and is inviting participants who have attended regularly for the last 5 years to devise and facilitate their own guest session in collaboration with Nina who is happy to be model / sounding board / teamaker as required! If you would like to facilitate a gallery session, working from the collection and exploring an aspect of life-model / life-drawer practice or history, please contact Nina. Next term's dates will be available soon.

We will continue to develop our community script The Green Children of Wolfpit in collaboration with artists attending the Modelworks project.