Post Workers Theatre: Birdie Danse Macabre
Welcome to a presentation of Post Workers Theatre! IASPIS residents Demitrios Kargotis, Dash Macdonald and Nicholas Mortimer will present their practice and ongoing work in in three acts, followed by a conversation with Magnus Ericson.
The UK based design troupe share their research into Workers Theatre in Sweden and their ongoing project Birdie Dance Macabre considering the “frankenchicken” as a symbol of the human and environmental cost of cheap chicken in The Capitalocene today.
Photo: PWT
Cobb 500 Chicken skeleton puppet
In the first act, Post Workers Theatre discuss recent research into the Swedish workers theatre movement and how this relates to their wider practice of updating historic forms of creative resistance. The second act includes a performative reading of worker testimony from the Big Poultry industry and discussion of PWT’s use of verbatim theatre techniques. The final third act, closes the three with a short performance that reimagines past participatory narrative devices to address the lived experience of unseen workers within industrial scale food production and delivery. Finally, a conversation with Magnus Ericson and the audience aims to somehow unpack Post Workers Theatre’s work and methodologies in relation to design, and socially/politically engaged practice.
Post Workers Theatre are a design troupe formed in 2018 in the UK by Demitrios Kargotis, Dash Macdonald and Nicholas Mortimer. They investigate the future of politically engaged performance, reimagining historic forms of creative resistance for a contemporary context. PWT study and update historic workers’ theatre and folk practices to address inequalities in the contemporary labour market and wider society. Through collective writing, performing, costume and stage production, the collective sets up opportunities for workers and communities to discuss and challenge their conditions and imagine them otherwise. Magnus Ericson is Head of Applied Arts at IASPIS.
Photo: PWT
PWT Song writing studio