Co-productions
Changing the arts with Co-Productions
We believe that the best way to achieve our goal of true representation onstage, off stage and in the audience, is through partnerships.
Our flagship collaboration is with Cirque Bijou. Together we lead Extraordinary Bodies* a company that creates bold, provocative work that changes hearts and minds.
Co-productions enable us to embed change and exchange knowledge while we create something terrific together. Interested?
Let's change the arts!
Co-Productions
As the industry recovers from the impact of Covid-19, we’re looking for ways to rebuild the arts into a fairer, more equal shape. This means not just ensuring equality doesn’t backslide, but actively pursuing better representation from boardrooms, to backstage, to centrestage.
We think the best way to make lasting change is to embed best practice everywhere we can. Change doesn’t come through a training day, although those can be useful too, but through creating something in a new way, learning good practice directly, by implementing it. If you work with us, you’ll have the confidence to uphold high standards for representation and equality in everything you create.
Co-producing with Diverse City can help you realise your ambitions for access and representation in your creative processes, programming, casting and staffing, while also making a bold, brilliant piece of work.
Our convictions feature in everything we produce. Our show Mid Life smashed taboos surrounding menopause to sell-out, joyous houses at Bristol Old Vic and Barbican. The show exemplified how BSL, Audio Description and cast diversity can be woven into the creation of the show.
This year, Extraordinary Bodies has been touring Human, a show that germinated from the company’s experiences of lockdown. Every audience member is experiences the show though headphones, so they can benefit from the full range of music and sound design the production offers.
To see more of the amazing selection of shows we produce through Extraordinary Bodies, please visit the Extraordinary Bodies website.
Get in touch if you want to be at the forefront of the movement for positive, lasting change.
When you co-create work with us, you can benefit from:
- Accesible rehearsal room support
- Accessible auditioning
- Diversifying your casting and staffing
- Representative programming consultation
- Creating new creative connections with diverse artists
- Accesible marketing support
- BSL and Audio Description integrated into the creative process.
Ready for more?
Whatever you have in mind, we might be able to work together: one way to find out!
Co-Productions
Photo credits from top to bottom of page: © Chelsey Cliff / Left © Paul Blakemore, Right © Paul Blakemore
/ Left © Richard Davenport, Right © Paul Blakemore / Left © Richard Davenport, Right © Gemma Aldred
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.
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 into the heart of birth, love and change.
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, original 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.
Created with support from Ferment at Bristol Old Vic.
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.