As a 19 year old I stood long evenings on the Carlisle Bridge, gazing down at The Lune, trains rumbling behind, the future imminent ahead. Now, more than 30 years […]
It was an honour to be asked to speak at Alan’s funeral. I attempted to speak for those of us who knew him from the Birmingham and theatre sides of […]
8.31am Wednesday 21st March 2018 I receive an email from Stan’s Cafe on Wednesday morning. It’s from Laura: “Hi Simon. I’m getting in touch again because we wondered if you […]
Almost everyone staging a new theatre production in the real world faces the same problem even before start rehearsals. Every production needs an image to promote it, but the deadline […]
Public work-in-progress showings are a blight on the contemporary theatre landscape, they rarely help artists, regularly confuse audiences and serve principally as a political slight of hand to divert attention […]
MEDIEVAL COUSINS TO THE CARDINALS: A RESURRECTION The ideal audience for The Cardinals died about five hundred years ago. Were they still with us, I imagine that our medieval predecessors […]
The Original Idea.We were in Belgrade in 2002 when Nenad Prokic, who had booked us to perform our show It’s Your Film there, said Stan’s Cafe was the only company […]
Birth of The CommentatorsThe Commentators were born almost by accident. When we took over the vast venue which became @ A E Harris one of the first questions we asked […]
Notes from a talk given by John Blakemore whilst a selection of his photographs was exhibited in conjunction with The Just Price of Flowers John Blakemore started photographing tulips at […]
The first panel session for the Re-Make strand of Performing Documents at Arnolfini in Bristol started with a talk by Robin Deacon, who mentioned experimenting with an honest website that […]
A shipping container on the back of a lorry outside The Public Theatre in New York City.
I found out that I was joining the RSC about a week before the contract started, so I didn’t really have time to think about whether it was the right […]
What is there left to say about the Edinburgh Festival? It has grown monstrous in so many ways and yet somehow retains its capacity to be utterly wonderful. I used […]
From June 2005 to July 2007 the rice tour was my life. I kept in touch with home through a series of emails, with my thoughts about the show and […]
IntroductionIn 2006, as part of my masters in Arts Management at Anglia Ruskin University, I undertook a research project, which involved Stan’s Cafe as a case study. The overall aim […]
A decade has past since the first fleet of huge budget Capital Lottery projects was commissioned. Now, with all these flagship projects launched, and deep into the era of depressed […]
A Personal Account From Chris Dugrenier Rostock, the largest city in the north German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommen, near the Baltic Sea, welcomed the alternative G8 summit from 5th ax00x00 7th […]
When Stan’s Cafe started Graeme and I did virtually everything. It was a DIY aesthetic and we fearlessly took on whatever needed doing. Only the presence of Richard Chew prevented […]
by David Tushingham(Extracted from programme notes for The Cleansing Of Constance Brown) The Britons Stan’s Cafe are an extremely unusual theatre company. While their work is most definitely theatre, it […]
Sarah Archdeacon: The funny thing about Dartington College of Arts is that you can spot a Dartoid a mile off: something about them makes you know that they studied there. […]
A personal account. In Melbourne in October last year, Craig and I attended a talk hosted by festival director Kristy Edmunds. On the way to the venue we got chattingabout […]
Good and True was a show made in 2000 which then toured sporadically until 2004. In the early photos I’m the guy in the chef’s hat. In the later photos […]
Two Christmases ago I played a monkey in The Emperor and the Nightingale at the Watermill Theatre. Actually, I’d auditioned for the role of “Clockmaker and other characters” – the […]
Stans Cafes education work started mostly devising theatre shows with kids. These pieces are attempts to create theatre that the pupils have a strong sense of ownership overand which we […]
Perry Como’s Christmas Cracker, Dec 91 – Jan 92 “It’s only a paper moon, setting over a cardboard sea…” chimed Perry from the portable cassette player. “..If only you believed […]
Craig and I hit the port of Hamburg in a transit with passports packed and a juiced up credit card. Hanover was the plan, but now we were off our […]
And so it happened and, eerily, went roughly to plan. Instead of rehearsals we had planning. From the angles of loose rice at rest we calculated volumes and floor prints. […]
The halogens blazed. The 8 metre square steel door was hauled open by the ‘bouncers’ wearing t-shirts emblazoned with my Che Guevara style profile. My long hair blew in the […]
Back-ache and 25g rice sacks. When I met James in Birmingham before flying to Stuttgart I had forgotten to factor in the need for a rigorous personal fitness regime. The […]
