Original Anarchy is led by Valerie McCann
Is it possible to enter the composition space free from expectation? What might you find if you leave your agenda at the door?
Inspired by Mary Overlie's laboratory of the Original Anarchist, in this workshop we will approach composition with an emphasis on materiality via deconstruction. Each evening will begin with embodied improvisation and ensemble-building exercises to prepare and inform solo and group (de)composition tasks. Informed by physical/laboratory theatre traditions, contemplative practices and experimental choreographic questions, participants are encouraged to eschew assumptions and surrender to the unknown in order to discover the building blocks for new performance landscapes.
About
Throughout the Autumn Season, London Performance Studios is excited to host a series of four workshops led by our resident theatre company The Director’s Theatre Writer’s Theatre (TDTWT). The workshops are tailored to professional actors, physical theatre practitioners, and drama students. Each workshop offers 15 hours of immersive exploration over three to five days. Led by artists across a wide spectrum of disciplines, these sessions will explore Active Analysis, mask work, puppetry, physical theatre, and voice.
Valerie McCann is an invisibly and dynamically disabled body and time-based artist, facilitator, and researcher. As a performer and co-conspirator, she dances across traditional theatre, choreographic, and performance art disciplines.With home bases in Los Angeles and London, McCann works collaboratively with artists and ensembles across the US, UK, and EU.
McCann is a founding member of ARTEL. She has trained extensively in the Viewpoints with Mary Overlie, the Six Viewpoints Institute, and SITI Company, and serves on the board of the SITI Alumni Association. She is an original member of London Performance Studios resident company, The Director’s Theatre Writer’s Theatre (TDTWT). Her solo works explore the intersection of classic texts and postmodern choreographies. As an embodied researcher, McCann’s interest lives in the space where rigour meets reality, reimagining methodologies through relational experience.
The Director’s Theatre Writer’s Theatre (TDTWT) is an international ensemble that has been creating plays primarily within the contemporary visual art context since 2013—integrating the black box of the theatre into the white cube of the gallery.
TDTWT’s work forms a hybrid of dramatic and post-dramatic theatre; blending post-dramatic aesthetics, classic narrative structures like melodrama and queer theory, and utilising Stanislavsky’s Active Analysis and structured Etudes. TDTWT stages original writing, adaptations of plays or novels, and commissions new plays by associate writers.
As of 2025, TDTWT is the resident theatre company at London Performance Studios, where it produces and programmes productions or workshops on a seasonal basis with the aim to create a solid and constant repertoire of contemporary theatre and performance.
No one will be turned away for lack of funds, to discuss this with the team email info@londonperformancestudios.com