Improbable return with 17th annual Devoted and Disgruntled

Improbable return with The 17th annual “unconventional convention” Devoted and Disgruntled, running March 19-21 as an online event with pay what you choose tickets.

The last two years in the theatre has been plagued with loss: loss of work, loss of ticket sales, loss of faith in the industry as a whole. What can we do to support one another through this time? Devoted & Disgruntled (D&D) Online 2022 is an opportunity for everyone passionate about the arts — from audiences to artists, CEOs to FOH staff, grassroots groups to seasoned professionals — to get together and focus on the question: “What are we going to do about theatre and the performing arts?” Anyone and everyone is invited to take part, no matter how experienced they are, where they are, if they have kids with them, use BSL or captioning, don’t look like the folk in the pictures or are just plain skint. If someone wants to be in the room, Devoted and Disgruntled want them in the room too.

Open Space Technology encourages participants to self-organise and create their own agenda on the day, all are free to come and go as they please throughout the event – choose one session and stick with it or bumble bee in and out of various conversations.

Phelim McDermott, Co-Artistic Director of Improbable said, “Last year, for the first time ever, we held our annual Devoted and Disgruntled event online and it was extraordinary. People came who had never been able to attend before. People came from across the world. People came who had been isolated in their homes and they said it felt like the first time they had been out since lockdown started. It was astonishing how the event, online, managed to have so much of the same atmosphere and provide so much of the same vital support and connection as our in person Open Spaces. And, actually, I believe, this is down to the same thing that powers theatre – our power to imagine, and to feel the space between us, to fill it with possibility, with story, even when we are sat far apart.”

Over the past 25 years, Improbable have staged epic outdoor spectacles like Sticky (which was seen by over 250,000 people); intimate puppetry like Animo in studios across the country; operatic triumphs like Satyagraha and Olivier and Grammy nominated Akhnaten at the English National Opera in London and the Metropolitan Opera in New York; theatrical masterpieces like Tao of Glass; digital laboratories like Outside the Frame; and original plays like Opening Skinner’s Box at Northern Stage and Leeds Playhouse. With improvisation at the heart of everything that they do.

D&D try to be accessible for all participants including (but not limited to) d/Deaf, disabled, blind, partially-sighted, and neurodivergent people. They provide a range of online access technologies, including BSL interpreters and live captioning, and will be working with a dedicated Access and Wellbeing Officer to support participants throughout the event. D&D is also suitable for ALL ages

19-21 March 2022, Saturday and Sunday 10am – 6pm, Monday 9.30am – 1.30pm Tickets are pay what you choose from www.devotedanddisgruntled.com