Sleep Tight explored the world of night-time rituals, where fantastic figures emerged to create chaos and confusion in the fun and games of bed-time routines.  The audience found themselves immersed in a land of extraordinary imagery and play as pillows turned themselves inside out to reveal a multitude of surprises – mounds of duvets transformed into vast landscapes, friendly creatures rocked us to sleep and lullabies soothed our fears away.

Sleep Tight toured the UK in 2000 and 2001 to venues and festivals, including: Young Vic London, Visions Brighton, Minerva Chichester and Young at Art Festival, Belfast.

Theatre-Rites used objects from Southwark’s Art and Museums Collection to inspire a magical look into the world of the museum.

The audience journeyed around an enchanted world whose strange inhabitants find and keep things. Things curious, things shiny and things that other people throw away. Along the way, they discovered how objects are collected, kept safe, and then how they are brought to life.

Finders Keepers was commissioned by the Unicorn Theatre as a site-specific performance at the Livesey Museum in Southwark, London in 2003.

Shopworks began life when Theatre-Rites took over an empty corner shop in Tooting, London. A shop with a mind of its own. Stepping off the street, audiences met the shop’s inhabitants: a bizarre group of workers in brown coats clinging to their daily routines – collecting, sorting, weighing, wrapping, labelling and stacking.

In this apparently ordinary world, a world of wondrous transformations and strange happenings where the items for sale took on a life of their own, audiences discovered what lurked beyond the counter as they journeyed deep into the hidden back rooms.

Commissioned by LIFT and Wiener Festwochen, Shopworks was performed throughout May 2003 in London, before transferring to a disused corner shop in Vienna, where it was recreated and performed in German and English.

Set in a damp, low ceilinged cellar of an old rag-trade building in Hackney, East London, this site-specific piece enthralled audiences young and old as the hero experienced a series of surreal encounters with the workers and the materials before finding the suit of his dreams.

A team of four artists worked with William Patten School, a short walk from the site, exploring changes in the children’s lives through video, sculpture, dance and puppetry. The theme of change was picked up through the transformation that took place in the creating of a garment, from cutting a pattern to wearing the finished article. The children were kept informed of the creation of the piece and made site visits as the installation and rehearsals progressed.

Taking its inspiration from a poem by Robert Graves ‘Through Nightmare’, The Lost and Moated Land told a story of the hero’s mythical journey, as a young child searched for his most precious possession, a star.

Studio spaces were transformed into a magical landscape with cones of different materials and textures. An atmospheric lighting design and original musical score added to the richness of this inspiring piece of theatre for the very young.

The Lost and Moated Land toured completed two national tours and played at international festivals in Norway, Canada and Japan.

This event at Gardner Arts Centre Brighton, took the form of a magical installation and the performance centred around four different chambers in which the rituals of going to bed were re-enacted. It was a textural and interactive piece to complement the touring show Sleep Tight.

Guided by 2 performers, the audience of under-fives and their families, explored the four environments, each representing a different stage of going to bed: bathroom preparations, the pyjama room, a pocket room of bedtime stories and the bedroom.  The performance culminated in all the children and performers settling down into a huge bed as the lights faded and night-time imagery played out in silhouettes on the ceiling above.

An old tidal mill on Three Mills Island in Bow, East London was the setting for Millworks, which looked at the cycle of life and death through the symbolic imagery of the milling process.

Each part of the process was represented by a puppet, from the cutting of the wheat right through to the making of bread.

The beautiful old wooden building created a dream-like landscape where the ghosts from the past re-enacted their daily rituals and each puppet was destroyed to signify transformation of the next part of the process.

Puppetry, performance and installation art for under-fives.

Houseworks was a ground-breaking piece of theatre for young audiences. Set in an old house in Brixton, where every room was a different world, the audience was greeted by Ernie, an old man puppet, who then welcomed them into his house.

Small groups were guided around the building and as the house revealed its secrets, the children were engaged in each room by puppets, performers and installations.

Houseworks was performed in London (1996) and Belfast (1998).

“Release your imagination and these places will surrender rewarding secrets”.

Sunday Times

Following the sell-out success of The Welcoming Party at MIF17, we returned to the Festival with a team of international collaborators – and an uplifting new show mixing dance, music, theatre and puppetry for children and family audiences.

A group of dancers meet to make a film – but things get wonderfully weird when the camera takes on a life of its own.  

We can now connect with anyone, in person and on screen – but is the camera our friend, our playmate or something else entirely? Partly inspired by our lives under lockdown, The Global Playground explored the magic of our first encounters, how we play together, how we connect and sometimes disconnect – and ultimately how we make the most of the time we spend together, however we spend it.  

Deep in the forest, in a wintry land, lives a gorgeously grizzly Beasty Baby. Mayhem and laughter await around every corner as three people embark on a wild adventure to bring up this very mischievous and totally loveable child.  Using an inspired mix of puppetry and live music, Theatre-Rites creates a funny and magical shared experience for the whole family, to warm up those cold winter days.

Beasty Baby was originally a co-production with Polka Theatre where it was presented in 2015. Since then the show has had Christmas runs at Lakeside Arts Nottingham, Tobacco Factory Theatres Bristol, Unity Theatre Liverpool, and wider UK touring.

Beasty Baby was one of Lyn Gardner’s (The Guardian) top 10 theatre shows of 2015.