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/.

Unseen

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’. On the bottom right, the text reads ‘Streaming from 4th March 2024’ followed with further text below, which reads ‘www.extant.org.uk/unseen’. At the bottom of the poster are a row of 4 pitched rooftops in a line. The houses painted blue, pink, yellow and green.

Monday 4th March 2024

Listen to Unseen Audio Drama below:    Extant presents Unseen, a gripping new audio drama that examines the subtle and insidious effect of domestic abuse on the blind and visually impaired community, using empathy, hope and candour to raise awareness of this important subject. Through the stories of two visually impaired protagonists, Unseen illuminates […]

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I Dream in Colour

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 […]

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Super Power Panto

Super Power Panto Logo: In a comic book style, a blue gloved hand bursts out from the pages of a comic book, holding a white cane. Yellow action lines and stars surround it, flying out from the centre of the image. Slanted across the top left of the image the words 'Super Power Panto' are written in yellow blocky cartoon text, outlined in black and with a blue drop shadow. All of this is in front of a deep red background.

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 […]

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Super Power Panto Programme

Super Power Panto Logo: In a comic book style, a blue gloved hand bursts out from the pages of a comic book, holding a white cane. Yellow action lines and stars surround it, flying out from the centre of the image. Slanted across the top left of the image the words 'Super Power Panto' are written in yellow blocky cartoon text, outlined in black and with a blue drop shadow. All of this is in front of a deep red background

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.

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Inside Yellow Sound

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.

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Flight Paths

A digitally animated drawing of a blind Japanese woman walking in an open landscape in close up. She is in side profile, wearing a purple and light blue kimono patterned with orange flowers. The background is shaded in muted browns, and a pale yellow sun looms in the horizon.

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 […]

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Extant and Yellow Earth present Flight Paths

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.

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Catching the Ghost

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

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The Chairs re-tour

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 .

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Flatland

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.

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ComBUStion

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…!

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The Chairs

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.

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ZombieyeZ in Zagreb

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.

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Sheer

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.

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Tandemonium

Illustrated logo for Tandemonium – a tandem rides along a musical score

2010

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

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Obscurity

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.

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Effing and Blinding! Cabaret

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.

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The Cast Party

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 […]

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Weights

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.

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Resistance

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.

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