PERFORMANCES AND WORKSHOPS
LATEST NEWS
Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th September 2024
THE GREAT PILGRIMAGE
Matt Fletcher and Kevin Butler of Out There Actions will be reprising their microthreatre performance which explores the Suffragist Pilgrimage of 1913, as part of the Heritage Open Doors Festival, at the National Trust's Winchester City Mill.
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Sunday 1st to Saturday 7th September 2024
(TAKING A WALK ON) THE VILDE SIDE
Matt Fletcher and Marcus Hopkins of Out There Actions will be staging a series of public disruptions in and around the city of Tartu, Estonia, as part of its European Capital of Culture festivities. The performances will honour the fictional meeting of Oscar Wilde and Eduard Vilde in 1890.
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Sunday 11th to Saturday 17th August 2024
VERS LES VAGUES
After a hiatus of seven years, Matt Fletcher from Out There Actions will be returning to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer, with a performance which sees him walking back into the city, carrying a spade. The work builds on the 2017 performance Ambulance, and explores themes of ritual, grief and return, taking inspiration from a range of sources, among them Rupert Bear and Virginia Woolf.
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Saturday 6th July 2024
THE GREAT PILGRIMAGE
Out There Actions are currently working on a new piece of microtheatre for indoor and outdoor settings in Summer 2024. The work will explore the Great Pilgrimage of 1913, when women across the country marched on London to campaign for Women's Suffrage. Using contemporary newspaper reports of the event, there will be a significant verbatim aspect to the project. It will be performed at Winchester's Hat Fair on Saturday 6th July, and at Winchester City Mill, as part of the Heritage Open Days festival, on Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th September.
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Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th October 2023
STAGE DOOR JOHNNIES
Matt Fletcher and Kevin Butler of Out There Actions will be re-staging Stage Door Johnnies, a piece of verse microtheatre which celebrates the lost world of Edwardian Music Hall, as an enhanced Powerpoint presentation at the British Music Hall Society conference, Cinema Museum, Kennington, London.
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Saturday 16th and Sunday 17th September 2023
THE MILL ABOVE SOKE BRIDGE
Out There Actions have been commissioned to make a new piece of work for Winchester's Heritage Open Days festival in September. The work - in iambic pentameter with a complex internal rhyming structure - will be performed multiple times by Matt Fletcher and Kevin Butler in the National Trust's City Mill and will focus upon the Trust's acquisition of the building in 1930, and its transformation into the first Youth Hostel in the South of England in 1931.
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Saturday 1st July 2023
BEING HERE
Matt Fletcher, Kevin Butler and Marcus Hopkins of Out There Actions will once again be performing at various locations around the city of Winchester, as part of the Hat Fair. This year, they will be responding to the old weather station on the wall of the Guildhall, and attempting to measure the circumference of the Earth using only a stick and some intricate mathematics, following in the footsteps of Eratosthenes.
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Sunday 11th to Saturday 17th June 2023
SUDDENLY SANDOR (IS STANDING BESIDE ME)
Matt Fletcher and Marcus Hopkins of Out There Actions will be undertaking a durational series of actions in and around Veszprem, Hungary, as part of the region's European Capital of Culture festivities. The actions will honour the bicentenary of the birth of Sandor Petofi, Hungary's most celebrated poet.
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Sunday 1st January 2023
SOUTHAMPTON MUMMERS' PLAY
Now in its 25th year, the Southampton Mummers' Play will take place, as tradition dictates, in St. Michael's Square, Southampton Old Town, on New Year's Day at 1.00pm. Roll up, roll up, come and see the show!
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Saturday 10th September 2022
EMPTY VESSEL (22 ELIMINATION EVENTS)
Matt Fletcher and Marcus Hopkins of Out There Actions will be performing a durational series of events at the Fluxus Festival in Kaunas, Lithuania on Saturday 10th September. The events, based on a score by George Brecht, honour the founder of the Fluxus movement, George Maciunas, who was born in Kaunas in 1931.
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Saturday 2nd July 2022
STAGE DOOR JOHNNIES
Matt Fletcher and Kevin Butler of Out There Actions will be performing a new piece of verse micro-theatre at the Hat Fair in Winchester, UK, on Saturday 2nd July. The play, entitled Stage Door Johnnies, celebrates the lost world of Edwardian Music Hall, and is constructed around a specific variety bill at the Central Pier, Morecambe, staged from 14th to 19th July 1902. This is an outdoor show performed in various locations, and is suitable for the entire family.
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Thursday 24th March 2022
THOMAS JANCIS in DEAD LOST
Out There Actions member Thomas Jancis will be premiering a new one-man show at the Camden People's Theatre, London, in a work-in-progress performance on Thursday 24th March. Dead Loss is set in Baker Street's Lost and Found Office, where items come to rest which have fallen through the cracks of the world. Look out for a guest appearance by Out There Actions' Artistic Director, Matt Fletcher. See the venue website (cptheatre.co.uk) for more details.
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Sunday 2nd January 2022
SOUTHAMPTON MUMMERS' PLAY
After a merely virtual offering last year, Out There Actions will once again be presenting the Southampton Mummers' Play live in St. Michael's Square, Southampton Old Town, at 1.00pm on Sunday 2nd January, for the 24th year in a row. Roll up, roll up, fun for all the family!
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Friday 3rd December 2021
CIGARREN
Matt Fletcher of Out There Actions is honoured to be performing a Kurt Schwitters poem (Cigarren, 1921) at the opening of a Ti Parks retrospective exhibition at Messums Wiltshire.
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Saturday 28th August 2021
OPTICAL TELEGRAPHY
On Saturday 28th August, as part of the All Aboard festival in St. Denys, Southampton, Out There Actions will be bringing out their faithful telescopes once again, in order to send curious and quirky messages back and forth across the River Itchen. You can find us at various points along the river bank, in the general vicinity of Cobden Bridge, throughout the afternoon.
UPDATE: Due to circumstances beyond our control, this action will now NOT be taking place. However, the All Aboard festival will still be happening, with plenty to see, hear and do!
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Saturday 3rd July 2021
THE PLAY OF KING ALFRED
On Saturday 3rd July, Out There Actions will be reprising their presentation of The Play of King Alfred as part of Winchester's Hat Fair. Family entertainment in a Mummers style and with a historical bent, it will be performed through the day at various locations throughout the city. Why not come and search us out!
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Friday 23rd April 2021
THE PLAY OF KING ALFRED
Friday 23rd April marks the 1150th anniversary of Alfred the Great becoming King of a fledgling England in the year 871. To commemorate this momentous occasion, Out There Actions will be premiering their new outdoor performance, entitled The Play of King Alfred, in a socially distanced way atop St. Catherine's Hill in Winchester at 1.00pm on that day. Written by Matt Fletcher in a Mummers style, it's very much an entertainment for all the family. So if you happen to be out for a stroll in the area, why not pop along!
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Tuesday 2nd March 2021
OPTICAL TELEGRAPHY
To mark the 230th anniversary of Claude Chappe's first public demonstration of an optical telegraph in France in 1791, Out There Actions will be using telescopes to send resolutely distanced optical messages across the waters of the River Itchen in Southampton (not quite the 16 kilometres of Chappe's original experiment, but still a wholly remarkable feat of analogue communication). Needless to say, we shall be using the English shutter system developed by Murray in 1795, rather than the cumbersome French original.
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Tuesday 15th December 2020
THE LARK ASCENDING
A performed journey through Shirehampton, Bristol, UK, to commemorate the centenary of the first ever performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending at Shirehampton Public Hall on 15th December 1920. The journey will begin at Kings Weston House, where Vaughan Williams stayed with his friend Philip Napier Miles, and end at the Public Hall, where the piece was premiered in a version for violin and piano by Marie Hall and Geoffrey Mendham.
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Friday 16th October 2020
FOOLS CIRCEL 9WYS
A ritual performance around the old city of Canterbury, UK, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the publication of Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. The performance will begin at Northgate at 9.00am, circling the walls anti-clockwise and spiralling inwards to finish at the 15th Century wall painting The Legend of St. Eustace in the north choir aisle of Canterbury Cathedral at approximately 3.30pm.
Thursday 1st October 2020
OUTDOOR ODES
Public recitation of poetry around the streets of Bristol, UK, to mark National Poetry Day.
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Look!
Out there!