How A Spiral Works
Work In Progress
A collaboration between a director, a circus artist and a dancer.
where is the edge of each of our performative spaces. where do they overlap. where is the common ground. Can we meet there or shout at each other from a distance.
Credits
Currently Looking for Residencies and production support.
Collaborators : Jason Dupree, Alise Bokaldere, Izabelė Kuzelytė
me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me
An exploration of Self.
This is a performance
And it is not a performance
This is an exhibition and it is not
We are being ourselves, and we are not
If you put all your precious items on a plinth, would it tell us the whole story
A four week creative process with the 20 second year students at the National Centre For Circus Arts. My directing position merged with that of a lecturer and the rehearsals blended artist training with performance making. The outcome was an energetic immersive exhibition, mixing performance arts with gallery.
Credits
Conceived and Directed: Jason Dupree.
Choreographer : Alise Bokaldere
Composer : Adam Dupree
Set Design : Emily May Sion
Lighting : Will Renoyds
Stage Manager : Laura Harvey-Overton
Production Manager : Tom Albu
Technical Manager : Elinor Chapman
Riggers : Matt Burch & Sunni Jolly
Produced: Adrian Porter
Created and performed: FD2 students at The National Centre For Circus Arts
Serving Sounds
SERVING SOUND is a multi-sensory sound installation that creates connection through music – a bar that serves bass rather than beer. The installation is a interactive work, playful and joyful, that can run throughout the daytime and evening. There are space for up to 4 people of all ages to interact with the bar at any one time, each experience lasting up to length of a song.
THE SERVING SOUND PILOT PROJECT is a project that blends creation, residency and engagement. It’s main aim is to create new paths for engaging with pub communities around conversations around mental health. In the UK suicide is the biggest killer in men between the ages of 18-49. These men are of more risk to themselves than that of cardiovascular disease and car accidents combined. even though mental health awareness has increased in the last 20 years, the suicide rates of men have also increased and are at a all time high in the last 20 years.
The Serving Sound bar has been created to enable a dialogue with men who are the most effected, going to a space where they frequent. This project aims to create conversations, learn more about the mentality of men in these spaces and use the knowledge collected to create a performance, sharing the findings, giving working class men a voice.
Credits
Conceived and Created : Jason Dupree, Adam Dupree
Performed by: Jason Dupree, Adam Dupree
Produced: Activate Performing Art
Created and performed: Laura Overton-Harvey, Tessa Blackman, Leo Ward, Kate Shaw, David Sanchez.
Don't Expect Me to Be Sane
“You were bound to end up here, such is the magnetism of this establishment. Your attendance is, in fact, obligatory. It is proof of your insatiable need to learn about love – true love, that is. Everyone you will meet have been here since time immemorial. They are trapped here because they are in love with illusions & they desire what is not real.
They cannot be allowed to leave until they know true love…… & neither can you”
Premiering Autumn 2020. Visit the Living Room Circus Website here for ticket info, venues & dates.
Living Room Circus’ latest experience. Created in the beautiful Venue of Hello Darling, this absurd blend art forms, that Living Room Circus is known for, invites you to come to the facility, walk through the rooms, to question love. What is your understanding of romantic relationships? What are the rules we all follow?
This facility knows the truth, & you are here to learn.
Credits
Conceived and Directed: Jason Dupree.
Dramaturge: Matthew Lloyd
Produced: Elinor Overton-Harvey
Created and performed: Laura Overton-Harvey, Tessa Blackman, Leo Ward, Kate Shaw, David Sanchez.
The Penguin & I
What have you lost down the back of your sofa? Change? Keys? A memory? This immersive performance tells an absurd story of a man chasing a penguin through his memories in an attempt to piece together events from the previous night.
He finds more down the back of his sofa than you would ever expect.
Visit the Living Room Circus Website here for ticket info, venues & dates.
The Penguin & I is an immersive performance that blends Circus with Dance, Live Music and Physical Theatre. It was made to adapt to some of the most amazing & intricate spaces; a Castle in Denmark, a botanical garden, a working dairy farm, arches of an underground ash pits, a graveyard, each space offering the Penguin & I something different. The Living Room Circus Team & Jason rework the show into each spaces moulding the performance to the surroundings as a part pre-made, part site-responsive show.
Credits
Conceived & Directed: Jason Dupree.
Created & Performed: Laura Overton, Josh Frazer, Tessa Blackman, Leo Ward, Rosa ter Kuile, Charlee Rico Debolla, Adam Dupree.
Reviews
“Jason Dupree’s direction of The Penguin & I perfectly captures the humour and uncanny of the subconscious, the ever-shifting balancing act between identity and madness, and an underlying preoccupation with death and jouissance.” – Circus Diaries. Full review here
“This was a slick and enjoyable mix of absorbing surreality, fascinating ideas and polished dexterity, studded with a couple of breathtaking tricks.” – Graham Watts, Reviewer
“I booked The Penguin & I as our Christmas Show, I didn’t know fully what I had booked, so I was excited and nervous about what was to come. I saw the dress rehearsal and was blown away! What a show! It was like being in an art gallery and not understanding what you were seeing but was mesmerised with what was developing in front of you! The skill of the cast was incredible, never before have I seen some of the lifts they did. Magical, Mystical, Mysterious absolutely incredible” – Zoe Dune, Director of The Shelley Theatre
Ink Blots & Love stains
“Darling, I Love these nights – You know, the nights of emotional contortion. The nights that touch like a feather making me feel like I can float on your breath. Let me suspend in the air above you. Come in secretly, so banality is unable to follow & lets be us, the real us, for just one night.
But darling, don’t expect me to be sane.”
Set in a beautiful house in Clapton, London, This intimate one off performance was the starting point for Living Room Circus’ latest production ‘Don’t Expect Me To Be Sane’. Using the senses, lust & love, & inspired by the film ‘The Lobster’ directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, This performance offered a tour through the rooms of a world where romantic connections were examined clinically.
Credits
Conceived & Directed: Jason Dupree.
Dramaturgue – Matthew Lloyd
Created & Performed: Laura Overton-Harvey, Elinor Overton-Harvey, Renato Diaz, Suzie Smith, Elizabeth Hungerford, Jason Dupree.
Follow link for a trailer
The Birthday
“Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to You…..When did you get so big? You must understand the world now, you’re at that age, no? Or are you not allowed to blow the candles out yet… before you’ve seen everything?”
When you look, do you see reality or belief? The actual or assumption? Fact or opinion? Do you see a Duck or a Rabbit. This was the first piece Jason created with Living Room Circus & really set a direction of the kind of work he makes now. This is also where the Penguin in ‘The Penguin & I’ was born. Set around a birthday/house party, this piece was an immersive absurd dreamscape with Live Music, Poetry, Dance, Physical Theatre, Live Art and Circus. It was created in the abandoned North Pole Pub in Canary Wharf, London.
Credits
Conceived & Directed: Jason Dupree.
Created & performed: Laura Overton-Harvey, Elinor Overton-Harvey, Rosa ter Kuile, Charlee Rico Debolla, Charlie Rebekah Caplan Wilson, Kate Shaw, Vee Smith, Ben Nickolson, Renato Diaz, Daniel Rose
Follow link for a trailer
Circus Cosultancy
9 Minutes
Jorge Crecis’ work is renowned for merging athleticism with the compelling visuals of an art installation. In these three pieces, he movingly explores what it is to be alive, encompassing the extremes of joy and despair.
Fusing Contemporary Dance, Spoken Word, Circus and Music, the performance imagines the last 9 minutes of life, in ways which are, in turn, celebratory, thought provoking and nostalgic.
Working alongside choreographer Jorge Crecis as a circus consultant to help aid his process and bring his ideas to life. The piece Jason worked on was created with the 3rd year ensemble at The National Centre For Circus Arts (Jorge also made two other pieces with RADA and LCDS) and used three bespoke pyramids that the ensemble devised on throughout the process.
Credits
Concept & Direction: Jorge Crecis
Circus Consultant: Jason Dupree
Script writer: Paula Paz
Original Music & Sound: Domenico Angarano
Lighting Design: Muly Yechezkel
Lighting Associate: Aiden Bromley
Set design: Jorge Crecis in collaboration with The Sixfold Architects
Stage design & costumes: Ricardo Pardo
Production Manager: Tom Albu
Show Rigger: Steve Ryan
Company Stage Manager: Emily Louise Palmer
Deputy stage Manager: Emily Melville-Brown
“9 Minutes” Producer & Touring: Emily Crouch
Set Build: Oscar at Silo Studio
Lighting Hire: White Light Ltd
Created with the students of: Edge, National Centre for Circus Arts, RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art)
Work History
| Type of work | Description | Date |
| Co – Director | How A Spiral Works -Art For Rainy Days | 08/2022 |
| Dramaturge | 107 Ways to Deal With Pressure – Kanata | 06/2022 |
| Conceived & Director | me, me , me…….. National Centre Of Circus Arts | 05/2022 |
| Dramaturge | Clothes & Us – Kanta | 07/2021 |
| Conceived & Director | Serving Sound – Working Boys Club | 06/2021 |
| Conceived & Director | Circus In The city | 06/2021 |
| Conceived & Directed | Don’t Expect Me To Be Sane | 04/2020 |
| Created & Performed | Forgotten Circus gathered 30 acrobats for a National Lottery Advert | 09/2019 |
| Dramaturgue | Eloise Currie, Realise | 06/2019 |
| Circus Consultant | SS Great Britain. Invsible Circus | 06/2019 |
| Circus Consultant. | 9 Minutes. Jorge Crecis | 05/2019 |
| Conceived & Directed | Ink Blots & Love Stains | 02/2019 |
| Circus Consultant. | Elephant. Milton Lopez | 11/2018 |
| Circus Consultant | Bournemouth International Centre Charity event | 10/2018 |
| Conceived & Directed | NCCA Gala. FD1 | 06/2018 |
| Associate Artist / Open Lab | V&A Lates for Metta Theatre | 04/2018 |
| Conceived & Directed | The Penguin & I | 06/2017 |
| Conceived & Directed | Sonder | 10/2016 |
| Conceived & Directed | The Birthday | 07/2016 |