Announcing two major artist commissions and three new seed commissions as part of our Making Waves programme
Alongside our Making Waves partners, we will support two artists to create brand new shows that will tour around the UK and internationally in a new model designed to facilitate more high quality touring contemporary performance in the UK.
These artists will receive a fully funded production budget along with further financial support and a ready-made touring network both in the UK and internationally. The shows will be lead produced by BAC.
We have also collaborated with Unlimited to offer three seed commissions for artists to spend a week in our building developing fresh ideas whilst being provided with dramaturgical and producing support from BAC.
This stage of the Making Waves programme follows on from five R&D commissions supported by BAC in the Spring. Now, we are focused on supporting more artists at all stages of development – from the initial idea of a project to full scale, groundbreaking productions.
The artists receiving Major Commissions
Krishna Istha
Krishna is a performance artist, comedian and writer, creating socially conscious form-pushing works about taboo or underrepresented experiences of gender, race and sexual politics. They have been touring their theatre show First Trimester about finding a sperm donor for their pregnancy. Recently, they wrote on Netflix’s Sex Education and was featured on the Netflix Special Hannah Gadsby’s Gender Agenda.
Lucy McCormick
Lucy makes nightclub interruptions, cabaret interventions and extravaganza theatre shows, marrying interests in absurdity, ego and the grotesque. Lucy’s work is unique in the UK experimental performance scene and she has toured globally to over 30 venues. Lucy is also an actor and has worked at the National Theatre, Royal Court, Globe and RSC.
The artists receiving Seed Commissions
Chanje Kunda
Chanje is a poet, playwright and performance artist. She creates autobiographically inspired art about how the personal interlinks with the political. Exploring 21st century life, she aims to use art to transform lives, shift consciousness and bring hope to an otherwise stressful modern existence.
EM Williams
EM is a queer, transgender, black mixed race theatremaker, born in Northamptonshire to Irish Jamaican parents. Their specialisms lie in circus skills, movement and puppetry. Their key collaborators on this project are Chuck SJ and Shardell Joseph.
Contra Productions
The home of Laura Murphy and Nicole A’Court Stuart. Their work is deeply interdisciplinary, drawing on circus and choreographic practices alongside video to combine intimacy, spectacle and the cinematic. Queer and neurodivergent led, their practice takes up space for the messy and incongruous and explores the value, politics and virtuosity of the personal and the everyday.
About Making Waves
Making Waves is a new national commissioning programme funded by an Arts Council England Project Grant and Cockayne Grants for the Arts 10th Anniversary Grant.
Making Waves provides bespoke opportunities for a cohort of artists to develop extraordinary new work through commissions, residencies, artist development programmes, national and international touring.
Making Waves brings together the diverse strengths of a network of 11 national partners to create the conditions for new work to flourish and revitalise touring networks for artists and partners.
The Making Waves Partners are Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (ACCA), Battersea Arts Centre, Cambridge Junction, FABRIC, The Gulbenkian Arts Centre, Lancaster Arts, Lowry, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, SPILL Festival of Performance, MAYK, Unlimited.
Making Waves is made possible with funding by Arts Council England and Cockayne 10th Anniversary Grants for the Arts.