THE COMPANY
Ferodo Bridges is an international theatre company, based in London, that creates and produces plays that engage audiences in an immersive and strongly political manner. The company's artistic director, Alexander Raptotasios, mixes classic texts, pop culture, performance art, immersive and physical storytelling to create experiences that foster debate and communication, usually in unconventional spaces and by using all the senses. The company has been supported in the past by the Arts Council England to create and tour work in England, but it has also presented work in Greece, Denmark, Japan, Spain and India in collaboration with various local artists and theatres.
THE HISTORY
In 2012 a group of international creatives (directors, actors, dancers, singers, designers, visual artists, performance artists) living in London had just graduated from various MA programs around the capital and were faced with a surprising lack of opportunities and networks for international and cross-disciplinary work in the UK. So they got together, under the initiative of Alexander Raptotasios and created Ferodo Bridges, an international platform that would produce and support new performance and visual art work that was innovative, diverse and unexpected.
The next step was to find a space to do that, and the charity 3Space offered a series of spaces that made a lot of projects and collaborations possible. First it was the old Blackfriars Courthouses on the Thames, where the first theatre productions was created THE VACUUM CLEANER that went to perform at the Arcola and the Edinburgh Fringe, eventually culminating to the creation of the VACUUM THEATRE company by the show's creators Kit Redstone and Vicky Kyriakoulakou. In the same spaces dozens of artists collaborated on the collective exhibitions I DON'T MIND (curated by Howard Sivills)and DRESS THE STATUE (curated by Anna Vauhkonen and Danae Loukaki) that were quite quickly noticed by the press.
After this location was no longer available, 3Space moved the company to their Oxford Street narrow 6-story building. There the repertoire expanded even more: Marco Turcich presented his theatre production of HISTRA, Simona Zemaityte curated the significant film event LIFE ON MARS, and Alexander Raptotasios directed and curated with Howard Sivills the post-cabaret PRIMARK ON ACID - behind a glass wall looking directly into Oxford Street's Primark stores- which was recommended by TIMEOUT London. Ferodo Bridges also continued to support the productions of affiliate artists by providing an online platform, production support or rehearsal space to the VACUUM THEATRE company for their show SOMETHING FROM NOTHING, the 2/3 BELLOW company for their show 2/3 BELLOW and the LUXURIOUS SNACKS company for their show MA PETITE FOLIE.
With 3Space eventually closing the Oxford Street space, the company focused on theatrical productions with a strong immersive or participatory element, under the direction of Alexander Raptotasios. From that point, Ferodo Bridges went on to present THE MACBETHS (at the The Pleasance theatre and Linbury Studio in London), THE WHITE PLAGUE (at the BIOS theatre in Athens and at The Landor studio in London) and HOTEL APOCALYPSE (at the BAGEION hotel in Athens). New and exciting projects are coming up such as the UK and international tour of THE WHITE PLAGUE in 2020, new productions of the same play in German and in Spanish,, and finally a Greek version of the acclaimed participatory play THE EVENTS, written by David Greig, at various regional theatre across Greece in 2020.