Oh happy days! The fools of Beyond The Ridiculous are gathering for a week of intensive training leading up to three shows at The Wardrobe Theatre as part of Circus City festival (13th, 14th and 15th October).

It's such a pleasure to be back in the company of the most wonderful, brave and compassionate gang of misfits. We're gently easing our way back into the fools world. So far, we've been reacquainting ourselves with our unique improvisation form (fooling) and finding out where we're all at, after a year of not playing together. My, how we've all grown!

The next stage of training will be to explore a new version of fooling. Up until now, the fools have always walked onto stage with absolutely nothing, discovering stories, characters and play in the moment. This week's training is geared towards each player developing their own internal cast of stock characters (i.e their inner critics, inner cheerleaders, inner teenagers, inner gods, inner dorks etc). The material will still always be improvised, but their familiar, stock characters will each have a place on the stage and will be available for the players to drop into, if they so wish. 

This new version of the form comes from my own work in progress project, earlier this year (hey, you can read more about those discoveries here). Through having a known cast of characters on stage with me, I found a real sense of stability, which allowed me to take massive risks in my performance. I'm intrigued to find out if it does the same for the fools of Beyond The Ridiculous. 

Our 3-night mini fooling festival is called Cliff Jumping For Beginners. During the performances, we'll be using the developed version of the form to explore the theme of risk, asking ourselves and the audience; what does 'risk' mean to you? How does it show up in your life? Are you a daredevil cliff jumper, a reckless romantic, a sensible risk-measurer or a quivering wreck? How does your relationship with risk effect your life?

Come and jump off cliffs with us!

13th, 14th and 15th October
8pm 
The Wardrobe Theatre
Each night will be different
£10

Get tickets via The Wardrobe Theatre here

Find out more about Beyond The Ridiculous here

The Facebook event is here

Circus City Website is here