CRAP AT ANIMALS Travels From Scotland To Denmark Before Greenwich+Docklands International Festival Performance

An intimate, outdoor work about species and our relationships to them offers audiences a playful, poignant space to meditate and explore the current mass extinction that's happening. By the Herald Angel Award-winning company Mechanimal, and a sequel to Edinburgh Fringe 2019 hit Vigil, the show blends projection, physical theatre, a mock VR experience, and clowning to introduce audiences into a bonkers big world of currently extinct and endangered species, as one man attempts heroically and fails epically to do the impressions of 44,000 animals on the extinct and endangered species IUCN Red List.

Ahead of its GDIF performances, Tom Bailey has been walking from Scotland to Denmark to perform the show at Passage Festival. With all his gear and a fabric artwork that lists the 44,000 extinct and endangered species, the two month-long journey is over 1600km by foot and ferry, and has been made in response to the challenges of sustainable touring. The blog of his experience can be found here:
journeyofalosthuntergatherer.wordpress.com/

Tom Bailey said, "When the company made Vigil just before the pandemic, the list of extinct and endangered species was 26,000 long. Following the pandemic it leapt to 44,000 long. I wanted to make a show that responded to this sad fact. The need to explore the mad and beautiful biodiversity that's vanishing on this planet feels even stronger now. Equally, I feel that climate change heralds a massive shift in the way that we make and tour creative work in the Anthropocene. This journey looks to ask some of those questions. One of the things I'm looking to explore is - what happens if the touring of human artwork can take inspiration and learning from the way that nature travels - for instance, migration pathways of other species?"

Mechanimal is a Herald Angel award-winning company that creates devised theatre and immersive installations. It's led by Tom Bailey. Each project involves collaboration with a range of different artists and researchers. The company makes touring performance that explores life on a changing planet. Based in Bristol, England, Mechanimal currently tours performances both nationally and internationally. Crap at Animals is co-commissioned by Without Walls and Norfolk & Norwich Festival. Mechanimal's 2019 Edinburgh Fringe hit Vigil will also be making a comeback to this year's Fringe for a limited five day run 20th - 25th August at ZOO Venues Main House.

Crap At Animals is at Greenwich+Docklands International Festival, Well Hall Pleasance, Eltham, SE9 6SZ, Sat 31 Aug & 1 Sept, 1pm & 5.30pm. Tickets are FREE. For more information about the festival go to: https://festival.org/gdif-2024/

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