Productions - EXTANT

All our recent productions are shown below. Sign up to our mailing list to be the first to hear about new productions and special events: https://extant.org.uk/mailing-list/.

A square poster with a light blue background containing bold dark green text, the headline reads 'Unseen’. Underneath the title in smaller text, reads ‘a gripping new audio drama by Extant’. Below this is green text, which highlights the key dates, locations and website URL. At the bottom of the poster are a row of 4 pitched rooftops in a line. The houses are painted blue, pink, yellow and green.

October 2024

Listen to Unseen Audio Drama below: Content warning: This audio drama contains themes of domestic abuse, violence, trauma and strong language. If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in Unseen, there are links to resources at the bottom of this page. If you would like to view a copy of […]

A photo image of the right half of a young Chinese woman's face. Her eye is closed. Bright light dapples across her skin.

Sunday 15 October 2023

Extant in association with Bloomsbury Festival 2023 presents ‘I Dream in Colour’ by Jasmin Thien, an autobiographical one-woman play exploring memory, loss, and the intersection between disability and immigrant culture, drawn from Jasmin’s experiences growing up fighting eye cancer and eventually blindness as a Bruneian-born Chinese. “When fighting for survival is who you are as […]

March 2023

Watch edited highlights from the show here: Read what people are saying about Super Power Panto: wonderful production and superb performance Disability Arts Online I smiled the entire time from start to finish BBC Radio 4 In Touch much enjoyed by sighted and non-sighted audiences alike ReviewsGate gives a lovely message for you to leave […]

March 2023

Contents Meet the Team Images Trailer Access Thanks Reviews Feedback There are also braille programmes available for Super Power Panto. Ask at the Box Office or check with Front of House staff for these on arrival. Please kindly return these at the end of the performance.

Inspired by painter Wassily Kandinsky's play Yellow Sound, Maria tests the installation that animates interactions between different sounds, colours and bodily positions.

15-17 December 2021

You are invited to the multisensory installation Inside Yellow Sound, developed by researchers at the University of Leeds in collaboration with Extant.

17 August 2020 - Permanently available

Experience it now: http://flightpaths.extant.org.uk/ Flight Paths, our epic multimedia production inspired by the Goze – blind female performers of medieval Japan – is brought to life on screen for the first time in a new digital retelling, co-commissioned by The Space. Combining animation, aerial movement and creative audio description, Flight Paths is an interactive online […]

A landscape photo of Victoria, a Nigerian woman, Takashi, a Japanese man and Amelia, an Italian American woman. The three stand in a line, walking towards the camera between two airport moving walkways

2019

In this production two blind women take centre stage, sometimes on aerial silks, sometimes with their feet firmly on the ground, but always surrounded by voices, music, stories and ghosts.

A white male performer stands centre stage

2017

Follow a young man’s journey into sight loss and his struggle to reconstruct a life from the ashes of the old, with honesty, dark humour, music and occasionally just falling over for a cheap laugh. Originally commissioned by Guide Dogs 2016 media week, this piece was later developed and presented by Extant for Wandsworth and Brighton fringe festivals, the BIT Festival Zagreb and Bloomsbury Festival 2017

A trio of performers on stage. From left to right, a bald white man wearing a beige jumpsuit with his neck craned to the middle, a person wearing a full body white hazmat suit standing elevated, and an older woman with curly grey hair smiling with hands clutched.

2016

The Chairs is an absurdist farce by Eugene Ionesco, first performed in 1952 at the Theatre Lancry in Paris, and widely regarded as a classic. Extant’s groundbreaking production of this rarely performed play, translated by Martin Crimp, cast two blind performers in the lead roles and incorporated audio description into the live performance as part of a unique soundscape. The re-tour travelled to four UK venues during April 2016: Harlow Playhouse, mac Birmingham, The Lowry and Stratford Circus Arts Centre .

A burst of black lines come towards us originating from the word "Flatland" in the centre of the image. Above, a series of black and white zig zags form a dome shape.

2010-2015

Extant has led a first and second phase investigation into haptic technology and immersive performance in ‘The Question’ (2010) and ‘Flatland’ (2015) .
Learn more about these innovative art and technology projects here.

In the foreground a sign for ComBUStion with a cartoon of a red bus and children excited to board. Next to this sign is another saying 'Please note you'll be offered a blindfold.' In the background is the double decker Combustion bus with the conductor and members of the public standing beside it.

2015

With support from Liberty Festival, Extant collaborated with playful public realm arts company, Bureau of Silly Ideas, and Together invited audiences at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to form an orderly queue at the talking bus stop, and wait for their chance to participate in a London double-decker Bus ride with a difference…!

Ghostly figures sit in chairs in a dilapidated room.

2014

Extant toured Ionesco’s tragic farce, The Chairs, in a translation by Martin Crimp, with a unique interpretation featuring visually impaired cast and director, as well as innovative set and sound design.

A zoomed in image of an eye, showing the black of the pupil and the surrounding tissue. The image is washed with an eerie deep green.

2013/15

How far did they go to get their sight back? The first ever authentic blind zombie movie! Filmed on location in London and the Croatian capital Zagreb, this adventure is by turns serious, silly and unsettling. Follow a cast of international blind and visually impaired characters attending a medical clinic where the final shocking conclusion of the experimental plays out.

A closeup of a burlesque performer with her yellow gloved hands up, fingers spread. She is wearing a distorted red and white patterned eye mask and crisscrossing bandages across her torso.

2012

The Dr will see you now…. For our 15th year anniversary we blended burlesque, comedy and horror to create a thrilling and unique moment where immersion meets experience in a production that explored visual impairment, sexuality and the grotesque. Touring to Stratford Circus, The Arena Wolverhampton and Artsdepot London, this show was set in the pitch dark with tactile interaction and moments of horrific illumination.

2010

Riding the rhythm on customized tandems, Extant presented four blind performers in a musical theatre performance as never seen or heard before.

A composite image of the Peter Harrison Planetarium cone

2009

A site specific outdoor promenade performance involving story telling, live music, visual art and a 16 speaker spatialised sound scape performed at Greenwich and Trafalgar Square.

Silhouette of 3 performers against a black and white grid

2007-9

A flexible, fascinating and fun cabaret in the dark by a travelling blind troop performed in the UK, Berlin, Croatia and Finland.

From above, a large group of people on the party floor, drinking near a blue lit bar.

2006

Background More and more these days, ‘access’ is the name of the game, and as visually impaired people, we find that if there is provision made for us in this respect it usually focuses on making information accessible, buildings accessible or the art product inside these buildings, like plays, films or exhibitions accessible through audio […]

A black male performer standing on stage, his left arm motioning across the stage in a fast blur.

2005

Extant premiered the UK tour of blind African American playwright, poet, actor and athlete, Lynn Manning in his one-man autobiographical play, performed in Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Brighton and London.

A close up image of white man grimacing in a policeman's hat and coat pulling back the head of another white man in a flat cap and a grey shirt.

2005

Extant’s first touring production, a groundbreaking innovative physical theatre piece based on the true story of teenage blind French resistance leader Jacques Lusseyran.