Theatre | Gareth Taylor

GARETH TAYLOR

I am a director a movement director a teacher

I trained as an actor at GSA and specialised in movement at L'école Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, and now I split my creative time between stage and digital performance. I direct and movement direct for theatre, and I am a Performance Director for video games, VR and V/O.

To see a full listing of my work, push the button

Creative C.V

Director

DIRECTING

Who Killed Alfred Oliver?

Rabble Theatre Company
A four hander by Beth Flintoff, a flurry of multi-rolling through 1920's Reading as stage manager Charlie unravels a murder mystery. Based on a true unsolved crime.

TEMPESTS

East 15
A new devised play based on William Shakespeare's The Tempest, by the MA Acting cohort. We created two narratives, one on the island and one in modern day prison. Spoken word, music and movement collided to create a magical thriller.

A Christmas Carol

ALRA South
BA Christmas show, co-directed with Aly Spiro. A new take on the Christmas classic, as Ebony Scrooge is haunted by her homophobic past, her credit-crunching present and a hopeless, fractured future.

TRu-CArE

ALRA South
A new devised verbatim piece exploring the effect of the new HIV drug Prep, told through the remarkable story of Greg Owen and his campaign to prepare the communities it affects.

Lorenzo Lotto: Past and Future

National Gallery
A devised musical and movement promenade performance during the exhibition at the National Gallery was a collaboration between ALRA and Wimbledon School of Design.

TBA New Digital project

curious directive

In the last few years I have been working as a director both as an industry freelancer, and within Drama schools; from projects to final year productions.

More to follow...

Movement Director

MOVEMENT DIRECTING

What I can offer

I love to help other creatives realise their visions with an additional layer of exploration and expression. Because of my background as an actor, I'm able to note and direct from their perspective, and be adaptable depending on their training.

Movement Directing generally comes in two forms, and depends on budget.

(What doesn't!?)

The favoured course is to be involved from the beginning. Or at least during early concept. This allows time for layered movement work, fully exploring the themes, spaces and characters of the piece. The best movement work is invisible, a continued language throughout and as organic to the actor as the text should be. Not a piece of choreography to be remembered.

or...

A set amount of hours to come into rehearsal and work with the actors and director on certain sequences, character physicality and theatrical choreography. It's reactive and exciting, and I work very hard to ensure it doesn't feel like an add on, or a 'trick'.

I am also free to come in at R & D stage for devising and performing.

Recent Productions

A puppet created for Stavenset, directed by Jeff Pedersen. The play had two dancers, a percussionist, a puppet and two lead actors playing multiple generations. It was performed in a cave on the Norwegian coastal mountains.

FOALS - Wake Me Up

NME winning Music Video
The first music video I worked on, I was asked to choreograph an (almost) one take shot of a journey around a theatre with multiple sets, props and performers, culminating in a joyous explosion!

Headcase

Bush Theatre + tour
An autobiographical one woman play, written and performed by Kristin Mcilquham exploring her relationship with her Father.

Henry I of England

Rabble Theatre Company
An epic by Beth Flintoff, with sinking boats, suicidal towers, wars, hunts and timeless beauty.

War of the Worlds:

Dot Dot Dot - Site specific
An immersive event working with the newest technology we navigated VR, projection mapping and live puppets to imagine a new way to witness the end of the world.

Hans og Grete

Stongfjorden Opera
A new telling by director Jeff Pedersen in which cardboard houses fold away and Gingerbread armies save the day.

Your Last Breath

curious directive
A Fringe First winning multi-narrative set in the Norwegian mountains that maps out our personal histories and futures.

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curious directive

I met the Artistic Director Jack Lowe at Lecoq, and on our return I joined his company in 2009. We are an ensemble of theatre makers influenced by science and we explore the humanity surrounding big ideas and findings.

Working out of Norwich the company have won four awards at NSDF’09, a Fringe First in 2011 and 2014 as well as the short-list for Sky Arts Futures Fund, Carol Tambor Award and the Oxford Samuel Beckett Award in 2012-13.

At our first Edinburgh Festival, Your Last Breath received rave reviews and won a Fringe First award. It gave us a platform to continue to create increasingly more rigorous work, as well as the beginning of our publishing relationship with Methuen. We revised the show at Southwark Playhouse, and I Movement Directed and reprised my original roles as Otto and Recko, plus a bit of fun reindeer puppetry. We also toured to South Korea and shared our theatre making practices in a set of workshops.

More recently the company have worked with VR and AR, and we in the process of developing a show we started back in 2012, incorporating motion capture technology into live performance.

★★★★ ‘Powerful…a dramatic pleasure.’
- Time Out, London (Return to the Silence, 2010)

★★★★ ‘The bright young company curious directive.’
– The Guardian (Your Last Breath, 2011)

★★★★ ‘Jack Lowe and his ensemble continue to push boundaries’
– The Metro (After the Rainfall, 2012)

★★★★ ‘Terrific…a show with brains and a heart.’
– The Guardian (The Kindness of Strangers, 2013)

★★★★ ‘Restlessly intelligent theatre.’
– The Daily Telegraph (Pioneer, 2014)

Russell Woodhead as Christopher

in Your Last Breath, 2011

Rehearsal for After The Rainfall

Your Last Breath rehearsal with Jack Lowe and Sarah Calver. I had a full week of rehearsals to introduce the world of the play, and the movement language before we started on text.

Reviews

After the Rainfall

"This is intelligent, highly original theatre"

Telegraph ★★★★

"After the Rainfall achieved more in a single hour

than would seem possible.

I left heavy with its weight, eager to sit down

and think it all through"

Observer

"Perfectly choreographed"

The Stage ★★★★

Your Last Breath

Rigorous, inventive and intelligent

The Guardian ★★★★

a chair, hung with a slip of fur

and ably handled by an actor,

becomes a reindeer…

But none of these physical and visual flourishes

is to the detriment of the script

Telegraph ★★★★

Creative C.V

Teacher

TEACHER

I have taught movement at many UK drama schools and universities, including Rose Bruford, CSSD, ALRA, St Mary’s and Arts Ed. For 4 years I was Lead Movement Tutor at ALRA South, and Head of First Year BA students.

I am a Fellow of Higher Education Authority (FHEA)

As a teacher I create an inclusive, safe, creative and rigorous room to encourage the student to emerge and thrive.

I recognise that we all arrive with our unique perspective and with the right conditions we can strive to not just be the best version of ourselves, but to surprise, enhance and draw out new ways of creating, thinking and being.

I specialise in:

Neutral Mask - an organic ‘Natural body’ improvising exploration blended with Elements
Animal Studies
Laban - inspired largely by Vanessa Ewan and Sue Mythen
Movement Techniques for Digital Performance - TV & Film as well as Green Screen, VR and Mo-Cap
Michael Chekhov - Archetypes, Atmosphere and Imagination
Devising – New Writing, or re-imagining texts/poetry/music/art
Corporeal Mime
Choral & ensemble work
Movement input on projects and shows

These can also be run as stand-alone workshops

Lecture and Events

Netherlands Film Festival - Speaker - Motion Capture and the Parametric Truth Symposium
Coventry University - Speaker - How to train students for a performance world that is changing
Northampton University - Speaker - The Digital Actor
Seoul, South Korea - Workshop leader - Digital performance on stage
Workshop Leader for The Mocap Vaults - Heroes and Monsters and Cinematics
Filmakademie, Stuttgart - Workshop leader - Digital Acting
Pants on Fire - Workshop Leader - Adventures in Space: Lecoq devising techniques
CCSD - Workshop leader - The Digital Actor
St Mary’s University - Workshop leader - The Digital Actor

Certificates

2020 Transgender Awareness Cert - Mermaids
2020 Physical Health First Aider
2019 Mental Health First Aider
2019 Movement into Text - Northern Centre for Voice and Movement - Ingrid MacKinnon
2019 Freeing the Natural Voice - Northern Centre for Voice and Movement - Kristin Linklater 2019 Intimacy - Vanessa Ewan
2018 Pure Movement - Jackie Snow
2017/18 Michael Chekhov Technique - Joerg Andrees
2017/18 Sensing Laban - Sue Mythen

Publications

Performance, Movement and the Body - Mark Evans - Red Globe Press - Guest contributor
Your Last Breath/Olfactory/After the Rainfall - curious directive - Methuen - Co-writer
Performing for Motion Capture - John Dower & Pascal Langdale - Methuen - Guest contributor

Please get in contact with me if you have any queries or questions regarding rates and availabilty.