DEVISED ORIGINAL WORKS
DIRECTED FOR KABOODLE PRODUCTIONS

Kaboodle started out as an ad hoc group of international artists brought together at the Oval House in London by Johnny Melville. The group of 1978 that came together to make Monkey (a re-shaping of the Chinese legend via Kurt Voneghet) proved to be particularly creative. We constantly toured England and the rest of Europe for two years.

Circus based story telling, experiments in film like story telling, musical story telling, improvised events, street shows and contact with many international practitioners made this my real drama training.It opened my eyes to the many possibilities of theatre and the crafts of multi-disciplined theatre.

After being a student of comparative literature I was hungry to engage in every aspect of live story telling. I joined the company as an actor but after two years of devising and brain storming I became artistic director of Kaboodle Productions which continued to tour the UK and elsewhere until 2002. More and more I became interested in the content of the stories being told and inventing a style appropriate to each story.

Below is just a sample of the shows that we toured between 1980 and 2002. We worked as an ensemble trying out everything in rehearsal, often using improvisation, music and design to find a show, as much as an existing text. The ensemble was constantly reshaping, I was especially keen to give young people from all backgrounds and cultures opportunity to bring their talent to an independent theatre vision. It was also important that the company was open to people who may not come from the traditional training route to the theatre.