Theatre & Immersive Events
British Enough?
2017
In collaboration with artist and filmmaker Kristina Cranfeld - BE Festival - Birmingham Rep - 2017
Written & Directed by John Harrigan
Dear Provisional Citizen, are you British Enough?
You have been selected for testing within the British Enough Testing Zones, an immersive theatrical site-specific experience set in a future where British Citizenship is the ultimate prize. Enter a world where Britishness is manufactured and cultural identity must be won through ingenuity, endurance and psychological testing. ‘British Enough?’ is a collaboration between artist Kristina Cranfeld and writer/director John Harrigan, founder of FoolishPeople, exploring the physical and imagined spaces conjured by Brexit in the borderlands of Britain’s future outside of the EU.
The Woods Trapped At The Edge Of Midnight
2015
Theatre Headliner - Wilderness Festival - 2015
Written & Directed by John Harrigan
Hidden deep within the forest in Cornbury Park is a secret. A camp, inhabited by gods, spirits and monsters; a sacred site that exists at the edge of midnight. Those lucky enough to enter are changed forever by what they experience within these rare and wondrous woods. You say the words, this secret belongs to you. Now you must share it, but who with? You know that this is the heart of the puzzle.
Spirit, human, monster, animal, demon. Every imaginable creature born of myth, fable and fairytale has been forced to retreat there. For in the very near future, this wilderness will be all that remains. One last forest, one last ritual. For in the forest at the edge of midnight, a new story waits to be born. Filled with power, love, anger and manifested from a great and extraordinary gathering. Where the creatures of myth and fairytale find strength in one another by accepting their place as fallen dreams. Your friends stand. Ready to follow you into the dark forest and to help you to change the fate of the last wilderness before midnight arrives. You have located the most precious and rarest of dreams, hidden within the minds of your friends, at this wild human gathering. Hope...
Now you must lead them to the other side of forever, beyond the border, deep within the forest, back to the camp before midnight arrives. Where a secret is hidden deep within the forest in Cornbury Park. A camp, inhabited by gods, spirits and monsters, a sacred site that exists at the edge of midnight. Where those who are lucky enough to enter are changed forever by what they experience within these rare and wondrous woods. Tick, tock, tick tock. Be you spirit or monster. God or mortal, you must stand with us, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, we shall face midnight together and give our story life.
Virulent Experience
2012
In partnership with Conway Hall Ethical Society - London - 2012
Written & Directed by John Harrigan
THEN:London, 2012: CCTV on every corner, missile batteries on the roof of council blocks for national security during the Olympiad. Every moment of your life logged and regulated by governments and corporations trying to sell you things through your smart-phone and browser while people you haven’t seen in years can follow your life moment by moment online.
NOW:London, 2040: The Ministry of Information's Emotional Experience Act is in force. In an effort to stop the nation tearing itself apart, the government has instituted ENGLAND REBORN — for your Safety, Security & Sanity. Thanks to the Sure Heart implant technology gifted to newborn citizens, all disruptive, antisocial and negative emotions and rogue experiences are now prohibited, isolated and catalogued within the Virulent Museum of Human Experience via real time analysis of your lives.
No longer do the self destructive impulses of the nation manifest in the phenomenon known as Virulent Novelty. Always connected, never alone — watched over by the ubiquitous BLAKE.
Truly it is a Green and Pleasant Land.
On the eve of the London 2040 Olympics, FoolishPeople invite you to enter and explore the Museum in an immersive production combining theatre and art which highlights technology's impact on the mind, imagination and free will of human beings.
Questioning the ethics of regulation, experimentation and morality, Virulent Experience imagines a future disturbingly familiar. Expose your mind, body and heart to a haunted archive of forbidden emotions.
The Age of Emotional Prohibition has begun.
Ward 12 - The Basement
2010
In partnership with Secret Cinema - London - 2010
Co-Written & Directed by John Harrigan
The Basement - Ward 12 was created in partnership with Secret Cinema for the November 2010 presentation of Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Ward 12 explored the background and history of author Ken Kesey's participation in CIA MKULTRA Mind Control experiments conducted at Stanford University on the use of psychoactive drugs such as LSD and how this in turn influenced the themes of institutionalization and mind control explored in the book and film.
Ken Kesey's reported voluntary participation in the MKULTRA program 1959, his subsequent experimentation with drugs and his work as a night orderly at an asylum provided Kesey with the inspiration to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. These first steps led to the important role he played in the sixties counter culture movement. Ken Kesey became one of the main proponents of sixties drug culture, the hippie movement and an enthusiastic supporter of its aims to instigate an alternative world view.
Participants who entered Ward 12 at Secret Cinema were encouraged to take an active role in learning the truth of their own insanity. Were they part of a mythic MKULTRA test, or had they joined a family of patients who had fallen through the cracks of the system seeking escape via the basement beneath the Oregon State Hospital?
FoolishPeople's The Basement responded in real time to the expectations of the audience who were seeking to break the system. Unexpectedly, they found themselves in a world inhabited by archetypes and characters who may or may not be figments of the imagination. Or was it a psychoactive side effect and symptom caused by long term treatment with a cocktail of powerful antipsychotic medications?
The Abattoir Pages
2009
Presented with Guerrilla Zoo - The Old Abattoir - London - 2009
Written & Directed by John Harrigan
This Hallowe’en, the infamous horror author Helen Mayer will hold court at a debauched secret party. She will share the perverse and warped research conducted inside the old abandoned abattoir, which was the genesis of her greatest work. In this dark playground, the very nature of human terror has been tested, abused and fed into the living story 'The Forest'.
The author invites you to solve the puzzle and unlock the terrifying history within the old and powerful pages hidden throughout the slaughterhouse. Each holds a key to learning the truth of an ancient tale, which will ensure your survival.
Tonight, a debt will be repaid to blood dishonoured. An eternal nightmare rises up from the depths of the dark boreal forest, in the shadow of the mountain. It comes to feed on new meat inside an old abattoir.
Cirxus
2009
The Arcola Theatre - London - 2009
Written & Directed by John Harrigan
Cirxus was a promenade performance in Arcola's new industrial space, Studio K. Cirxus is based on fact: the German Bremen University confirmed that radioactive contamination by Americium-241 found in some soil samples taken by Greenpeace 11.5 km south of Sellafield, were 400 times higher than those taken 11 km from Chernobyl. 51 years on, the villagers of Seascale still live with the ramifications of the accident at Pile 1 of the Windscale Works Atomic Energy Factory.
“Athalia the ballerina waits in the ring for Loudon the clown to return with directions to the Black Pool, the mythic site of the Home Sweet Home, the final show of the season.⠀
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Join her as she begins a bizarre and wondrous search for Loudon through the irradiated secrets of Cirxus, where she must face the macabre atomic menagerie, haunted by circus animals and navigate her way through the maze of strange, hallucinogenic sideshows to the other side of time.”
Dead Language
2007
Institute of Contemporary Arts - London - 2007
Written & Directed by John Harrigan
Platoons of the latest replicas of Banksy roam the landscape, led by General Clone Banksy, a talentless nobody who once found a sample of Banksy DNA on an empty spray can. A rowdy gang of Tracey Emins wrestle half a dozen dazed Andy Warhols to the ground. It is the future and all forms of art are free, perfect replicas exist of every masterpiece ever created, copyright and ownership are meaningless, ideas are cheap and replicated ad infinitum. Artists have realised that their own identity is the only thing they can own or control, so fans become clones of artists in order to spread their art/identity. One final piece of uncorrupted art remains, yet to be copied: a living story told by Neonate Muses. Come and experience the living story and see how the world died with FoolishPeople's immersive, evolving performance in the ICA theatre.
Theatre Productions
2018 - The Lying Field - Writer and Director - Byline Festival, Pippingford Park, Nutley UK
2017 - Featured Project - British Enough? - Writer and Director, in collaboration with artist and filmmaker Kristina Cranfeld - BE FESTIVAL, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Birmingham UK
2015 - Featured Project - The Woods Trapped at the Edge of Midnight - Writer and Director - Headlining Act - Wilderness Festival, Cornbury Park, UK
2014 - Featured Project (film page) - Strange Factories: Remade - Writer and Director
Scalarama at the Curzon Community Cinema, Clevedon, UK;
Making Waves Film Festival at the Kings Theatre, Southsea Portsmouth, UK;
Ultimate Picture Palace Oxford, UK;
The Magic Lantern Cinema, Tywyn, UK
2013 - Featured Project (film page) - Strange Factories: The Imaginari - Writers John Harrigan and Craig Slee, Director John Harrigan
Cinema Museum, London, UK;
Duke of York's Picture House, Brighton, UK;
with Sundown Cinema at Cadwell Farm, Hitchin, UK;
Pavilion Dance, Bournemouth, UK
2012 - Featured Project - Virulent Experience – Writer and Director - in partnership with Conway Hall Ethical Society, London, UK
2010 - Featured Project - The Basement - Ward 12 – Co-Writer and Director - in partnership with Secret Cinema, London, UK
2010 - The Providence Experiments - Writer and Director - co-produced with Mythos Media
2010 - A Red Threatening Sky - Writer and Director - The Old Abattoir, Clerkenwell, London, UK
2009 - Featured Project - The Abattoir Pages – Writer and Director - presented with Guerilla Zoo - The Old Abattoir, Clerkenwell, London, UK
2009 - Featured Project - Cirxus – Writer and Director - The Arcola Theatre, London, UK
2008 - Terra:Extremitas – Writer and Director - NDSM-werf, Amsterdam, NL
2007 - Featured Project - Dead Language – Writer and Director
esoZone, Portland, Oregon, USA
Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London, UK
2007 - Desecration – Writer and Director - In association with the Theatre of Ophidia - Galleries of Justice, Nottingham, UK
2007 - Weaponised Art 3.0 - Writer and Director - Lazy Gramaphone, The Luminaire, London, UK
2007 - Terra-Incognita - Writer and Director - 491 Gallery & Vertigo, London, UK
2007 - Ghost Redux - Writer and Director - 491 Gallery & Vertigo, London, UK
2006- Dark Nights of the Soul: Cycle VI - Carousel - Writer and Director - The Horse Hospital, London, UK
2006 - Dark Nights of the Soul: Cycle V - Home - Writer and Director - The Horse Hospital, London, UK
2006 - Weaponised Art 2.0 - Guerrilla Zoo - Writer and Director - Corisca Studios, London, UK
2006 - Weaponised Art 1.0 - Guerrilla Zoo - Writer and Director - Corisca Studios, London, UK
2006- Dark Nights of the Soul: Cycle IV - Congealed - Writer and Director - The Horse Hospital, London, UK
2006 - Dark Nights of the Soul: Cycle III - Emergence - Writer and Director - The Horse Hospital, London, UK
2006 - Dark Nights of the Soul: Cycle II - The Fluid Flesh - Writer and Director - The Horse Hospital, London, UK
2005 - Dark Nights of the Soul: Cycle I - The Wyrm Shroud - Writer and Director - The Horse Hospital, London, UK
2005 - Dr. Bleach - Writer and Director - Weird Weekend - Centre for Fortean Zoology, Devon, UK
2004 - Ruined Steel - Writer and Director - Camden People's Theatre, London, UK
2004 - Escape from RS1 - Writer and Director - Creative Swing, London, UK
2003 - Past the Line, Between the Land - Writer - Camden People's Theatre, London, UK
2002 - The Singularity - Writer and Director - Camden People's Theatre, London, UK
1994 - Revelations; Fear The Mind - Writer and Director - North Herts College, Letchworth, UK
1991 - Enochian; Language of Angels - Writer and Director John Harrigan - North Herts College, Hitchin, UK