Productions – old
Diverse City is available to advise and collaborate on your productions – from inclusive practice, representative casting, diversity friendly rehearsals and accessible marketing, we’re on hand to offer your production what it needs.
Supporting Productions – old
Producing work that is representative and inclusive isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s also an essential part of applying for funding. Ensuring that your company is holding up the highest standards for inclusion can feel daunting, but it’s absolutely possible! We can help you by offering your team training, coming on board to collaborate directly in the room, or offering your ‘offstage’ team advice and support remotely.
You can see for yourself what is possible in our own diverse company Extraordinary Bodies (held in partnership with Cirque Bijou), which has been creating bold, radical, joyous work for the last decade. To see what we’ve achieved so far with the companies we’ve worked with, have a look at our portfolio below!
“Always thought provoking and considered, never judgemental. Diverse City’s method of getting under the skin of an organisation has increased diversity awareness throughout our venue. Everyone can contribute at all levels and in many, many ways, making diversity a priority in everything we do.” – Theatre Royal Plymouth.
Just some of the ways we can support your company:
- Inclusive rehearsal room
- Representative and diverse programming
- Accessible marketing
- Drawing in a diverse audience
- Accessible auditioning
- Representation onstage
- Diversity backstage
- Audio description and BSL interpretation
- Working with venues to ensure accessibility
Ready to lead the field onstage, off stage and in the audience?
Click below to get in touch and ensure that your cast, company and audiences all get the best out of your work.
Partner Productions
The Elephant Man by Lee Lyford
We co-produced director Lee Lyford’s take on The Elephant Man with Bristol Old Vic and Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Diverse City’s Joint Artistic Director, Jamie Beddard, played the main character of Joseph Merrick and the company supported learning around improved access for artists and audiences.
The Other Life I Lead
An electrifying journey into the depths of self-discovery, resilience, and unapologetic authenticity.
Step into a world of unfiltered authenticity, where the rules are rewritten, where labels and limitations are left behind. The Other Life I Lead is an electrifying queer/crip night out celebrating the most alive and unfiltered versions of ourselves.
Featuring original music by Harry Bassett, this groundbreaking gig-theatre experience fuses movement, circus, poetry, and music into a powerful force that challenges the masks we wear in society. We dare to ask: When can we reveal our true selves? When do we feel the need to conceal? Why do we live fragmented lives when a whole life should be within reach?
The Other Life I Lead transcends boundaries and celebrates the rich tapestry of human existence. It’s an invitation to embrace your unfiltered, uncensored, and unapologetically fabulous self—a vibrant celebration of life in all its magnificent forms. Join us in the revelry.
Earth, Wheels, Air
Earth, Wheels, Air is a creative collaboration between the UK’s first integrated circus company, Extraordinary Bodies, and Kenya’s leading inclusive contemporary dance company, Pamoja Dance. Together, they are creating a performance that transcends borders and celebrates diverse talent.
Mid Life: The Skin We’re In
A poetic look at how to celebrate, survive and thrive in your own skin. This vital, uplifting film explores the expectations we place on women’s bodies, and how we can rise through them to a deeper appreciation of ourselves.
Delicate
A show written by Jamie Beddard, about how things need to fall apart before they can into place. Delicate was presented by Extraordinary Bodies and co-produced with Figurteatret i Nordland (Nordland Visual Theatre) and Theatre Royal Plymouth. Delicate toured between October and December 2022.
SW!M
A national participatory project celebrating ordinary lives and our extraordinary bodies in nature.
SW!M is Diverse City’s national participatory project led by Claire Hodgson and Deborah Paige. SW!M and Sw!m Too were performed in Swanage in 2022 and 2023. SW!M 75 was performed in Weston Super Mare in October 2023. The Sw!m shows collect the verbatim stories of swimmers and share these alongside mass choreographed movement in the sea and on nearby land, celebrating ordinary lives and our extraordinary bodies in nature.
Coming to a seaside town near you!
Splash!
Splash! was an immersive outdoor summer show for Every Body. It was commissioned in 2018 by the East Midlands Splash! Consortium, led by The Mighty Creatives. It was directed by Billy Alwen and Jamie Beddard and was written by the directors in collaboration with Richard Headon and Donna Williams.
Bestival 2023
We were delighted to collaborate with our friends at Cirque Bijou on another of their spectacular finales to Bestival in Dorset.
Mid Life
Based on the real life experiences of Claire Hodgson, Karen Spicer and Jacqui Beckford, this joyful, potent show took on the taboos surrounding menopause. Weaving together BSL, audio description, orThese are midlife women – unpaid carers, up-all-nighters, emotional load bearers, shoulders to cry on, school-runners and piece-picker-uppers. Join them as they find a way through the loss, mess, despair, frustration, freedom, joy and possibility of the middle years.
iginal music, dance, and theatre, Mid Life told an honest story of different experiences of the same life event to sell out audiences in Bristol and London. Mid Life is currently available for touring.
For more on the show click here.
Created with support from Ferment at Bristol Old Vic.
Human
Human is about the small moments that shape us. This new show from Extraordinary Bodies is a poetic record of our time, based on the real life stories of our company and performers, told through circus, music and film.
Intimate, funny and celebratory, Human looks inPart circus, part serenade, part cinema, Human is about the small moments that shape us. We toured the show twice, in 2021 and 2022, and made a film version that was available to venues.to the heart of birth, love and change.
Bestival 2022
We are very excited to be working in tandem with our good friends at Cirque Bijou on some seriously funky moves at Camp Bestival this year as we attempt to break the Guinness world record for World’s Largest Disco Dance! The current record stands at 324 disco dancers, so we’d like to invite you and your family to join us when we take on our world record challenge on Saturday 30th July.
The Delicate Podcast
The Delicate Podcast is our digital piece that stands alongside our live show Delicate delving deeper into the themes and creative process.
Mid Life
Hold tight. There’s a change coming.
Vivid, rebellious and joyful – Mid Life is a frank, comedic exposé of menopausal midlife. Join us as we laugh, roar and disco dance our way through our midlife!
Mid Life sold out in venues across the UK in 2020. Rewritten and revamped, this upbeat, life-affirming show is packed with razor sharp humour and disco. It draws its themes from real life experiences of women in midlife and ends with a dance party for all to join in. Touring in 2025.
SW!M75
Join us as we celebrate 75 years of the NHS in this collaboration with Super Culture in Weston-Super-Mare.
Waldo’s Circus of Magic and Terror
Extraordinary Bodies presents a new musical co-produced with Bristol Old Vic and Theatre Royal Plymouth. A spectacular story of love and resistance, set in a travelling circus touring Germany in 1933.
