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The show, The Candidate, examined and subverted the concept of ‘the family’. This concept was derived from the Langham Club, which for many years has functioned as a communal, intergenerational living room, with all the love and fall-outs, gossip and giggles, fond memories and baggage you’d find in any tight-knit community with a lot of history. The show involved about 25 performers, aged 21–84, five live musicians and several designers. A couple of the club’s long-standing members performed in the show too, including the bingo lady, who starred as herself. The club was open to members during show nights, so the audience were never quite sure who was a performer and who was a punter, or what was spontaneous and what was rehearsed.
The Candidate was a site-specific, immersive theatre piece that was devised and staged by Persona Collective in 2019 at The Langham Club; a traditional working mens club on Green Lanes, near where we all live in Haringey, north London. The club has existed for over 100 years but its numbers are really declining. We became members and spent several months hanging out there, getting to know the regulars and attending bingo nights before developing the show.
The Candidate is the first and last piece of a perpetual cycle. It is a surreal exploration of the family concept, where characters act as family members to fabricate a false reality.
The story is a metaphor for a failed socio-political and financial system in which the role of the family is to prepare themselves to form part of an absurd and competitive system, with no way out. Here, the strange pathologies of human behaviour are dissected and the characters find themselves falling down a symbolic rabbit hole, slowly losing control of events and culminating in an intoxicated awakening that is a celebration of human affairs and rituals.
The Candidate was a site-specific, immersive theatre piece that was devised and staged by Persona Collective in 2019 at The Langham Club; a traditional working mens club on Green Lanes, near where we all live in Haringey, north London. The club has existed for over 100 years but its numbers are really declining. We became members and spent several months hanging out there, getting to know the regulars and attending bingo nights before developing the show.
The Candidate is the first and last piece of a perpetual cycle. It is a surreal exploration of the family concept, where characters act as family members to fabricate a false reality.
The story is a metaphor for a failed socio-political and financial system in which the role of the family is to prepare themselves to form part of an absurd and competitive system, with no way out. Here, the strange pathologies of human behaviour are dissected and the characters find themselves falling down a symbolic rabbit hole, slowly losing control of events and culminating in an intoxicated awakening that is a celebration of human affairs and rituals.
The Candidate was a site-specific, immersive theatre piece that was devised and staged by Persona Collective in 2019 at The Langham Club; a traditional working mens club on Green Lanes, near where we all live in Haringey, north London. The club has existed for over 100 years but its numbers are really declining. We became members and spent several months hanging out there, getting to know the regulars and attending bingo nights before developing the show.
The Candidate is the first and last piece of a perpetual cycle. It is a surreal exploration of the family concept, where characters act as family members to fabricate a false reality.
The story is a metaphor for a failed socio-political and financial system in which the role of the family is to prepare themselves to form part of an absurd and competitive system, with no way out. Here, the strange pathologies of human behaviour are dissected and the characters find themselves falling down a symbolic rabbit hole, slowly losing control of events and culminating in an intoxicated awakening that is a celebration of human affairs and rituals.
The Candidate was a site-specific, immersive theatre piece that was devised and staged by Persona Collective in 2019 at The Langham Club; a traditional working mens club on Green Lanes, near where we all live in Haringey, north London. The club has existed for over 100 years but its numbers are really declining. We became members and spent several months hanging out there, getting to know the regulars and attending bingo nights before developing the show.
The Candidate is the first and last piece of a perpetual cycle. It is a surreal exploration of the family concept, where characters act as family members to fabricate a false reality.
The story is a metaphor for a failed socio-political and financial system in which the role of the family is to prepare themselves to form part of an absurd and competitive system, with no way out. Here, the strange pathologies of human behaviour are dissected and the characters find themselves falling down a symbolic rabbit hole, slowly losing control of events and culminating in an intoxicated awakening that is a celebration of human affairs and rituals.
> the halfway house / behind the scenes
> the halfway house / behind the scenes
The Village was a multi-location immersive theatre inside Soho & Chinatown, I directed & produced through Persona Collective. The live shows took place from 30th March until 19th April 2023. This project celebrated the diversity & tolerance of Soho’s local community & indie businesses with a narrative based on real voices and in real unique locations in the local area. This project was supported by The Arts Council England.
The audience found themselves stepping into an intimate journey across multiple secret locations throughout Soho & Chinatown; weaving through hidden passageways. Their journey was a multi-sensory experience - somewhere between fiction and reality. Each group of audience were following one character’s story, whilst witnessing threads of multiple narratives throughout their journey. Audience members described the experience as “being immersed inside of a film” or as “hyper-real, it was never clear whether something was reality or an artistic construct”.
Through out the project we worked closely with the LGBTQ+ communities and Soho’s local businesses & residents. Together we co-created a multi-location immersive theatre & build a set/installation in a gallery, all in Soho.
The Collective
Rocío Ayllón - Artistic Director & Producer
Ting-Ning Wen - Assistant Director & Choreographer
Georgia Rowan - Choreographer
Abbie Adams - Creative Producer
Yagoda Sovinska - Producer, Photography, Props & Costumes
Emma LD - Graphic Design & Props / Art Direction
Emily George - Concept, Photography & Graphic Design
for 'The Village' Poster
Jack Wates - Art Installation / Set Design
Jakub Nowacki - Costume Designer
Lighting Design Team
Satu Streatfield - Lighting Design Director & Labs Facilitator
Anna Fil - Lighting Designer
Shu - Ang, Yeh - Lighting Designer
Steve Lowe - Lighting Technician
Sound Design Team
Jose Macabra - Sound Designer Director & Labs Facilitator
Enrico Lovatin - Sound Designer
Vit Trojanovsky - TROJΛNOVSKX - Sound Designer
Finn Boxer - Sound Operator
Cast & Creators
Valentine Bordet
Ning Chou
Melanie Gautier
Emily George
Amanda Kamanda
Francesca Kos
Pilar Morales Pérez
Sally Plowman
John Quan
Kieran Saikat Das Gupta
Tony Towell
Harper Walton
Kim Way
Ting-Ning Wen
Anna Fill
Amy Kingsmill - Fallen - Performance
Zell Couver - Live Music (Violin)
Tony Shrimplin
Collaborators
Jason Tang - Writer & Researcher
Nikki McFarland - Assistant Production
Art Installation Production Team
Jack Wates - Designer & Constructor
Marcel Croxson
Alex Mead
Josh Richards
Sound Design Assistants
Zell Couver
Shutting Cui
Jovienne Jin
Haein Kim
Ella Macfarlane
Artem Spivak
Lily Tiger Tonkin Wells
Video & photo documentation
Olga Lagun - Cinematographer
Edmund Fraser - Photographer
Chaperones - routes guides
Vanya Gostev
Nikki McFarland
Special Thanks to:
Rebecca Marcus Monks - The Koppel Project Tony Shrimplin - Museum of Soho Sami Sabik - Electronics/props
Cindy & Stephan - French Protestant Church Tim Lord & Joel Levack - Soho Society Paul Simon - Enliten Architectural Lighting
Daniel and Ashanti - We are Cuts Unit 7 member Grosvenor Way
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