On these pages we will feature an ever-changing selection of the original productions that Green Ginger has created and toured around the world since the company was founded by Terry Lee in 1978.
OUTPOST (2014)
Directed by Joseph Wallace
Performed & devised by Adam Fuller, Chris Pirie, Kim Heron & Dean Sudron
Script by Mike Akers
If you’re drunk on power can you ever sober up?
Two guards are stationed at a border between Escobia and Grud. Luis believes in order and discipline, whilst BK believes in taking things easy. He also believes that somewhere out there, the spirit of a mysterious creature haunts the desert. The chance discovery of a strange other-world takes the guards on a journey into the dark heart of politics, tyranny and murder.
Absurd comedy and grotesque puppetry combined with original music in an hour-long show that explored nationalism, power and the consequences of using another man’s toilet.
“The script is powerful, the production and design brilliantly realised” TOTAL THEATRE
RUST (2005)
Directed by Flick Ferdinando
Performed by Dik Downey, Jonny Dixon, Marc Parrett, Peter Reynolds,
Vic Llewellyn, James Osborne, Jon Street, Max Humphries and Chris Pirie
Script by Vic Llewellyn and Chris Pirie
Original Music by Simon Preston
Two pirate radio stations are anchored in the same murky coastal waters. One transmits from a lightship; its arch-rival broadcasts from a submarine lurking just beneath the oil-slicked surface. Something has to give…or be taken.
RUST was a fast-moving story of piracy, passion and vinyl. Grotesque puppets, animated sets and shiploads of absurd humour were welded into a dark comic-book vision of low-life on the high seas. The show toured to great acclaim in Spain, France, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Denmark, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.
“Satisfyingly bizarre”. ANIMATIONS MAGAZINE
Photo: Dag Jennsen
BAMBI: The Wilderness Years (2000)
Written by Terry Lee & Steve Wright
Directed by Richie Smith
Performed by Terry Lee, Billy Paul, James Osborne and John Barber
Original Music by Simon Preston
Whatever happened to that creature with the big watery eyes? The Bambi story comes of age in a comic-book nightmare set in a beastly urban jungle.
Green Ginger, with its customary disrespect for classic tales, used masked performers, grotesque puppets, animated sets and projections to shed new darkness on a bittersweet story.
“The ingenuity is staggering, the unconventionality always poised at the point of freakishness. This is so different from almost anything else you’re ever likely to see in the theatre...a rare and wonderful thing”
The Guardian
STREET THEATRE: PRATs (1994)
Performed by Terry Lee, Dik Downey, Chris Pirie, Billy Paul, John Barber, James Osborne
Directed by Luci Gorell Barnes, Mike Shepherd
Costumes by Ruth Walker
Green Ginger’ roots are in street theatre and outdoor performance. In 1994 the company created PRATS (Positive Response Action Team); a crack team of highly-strung and under-trained operatives who patrol shopping centres, parks, festivals and events, seeking out potential dangers and creating them if none are found.
Here are a few photos… (thanks Steve Tanner, Richard Termine et al)
SLAPHEAD: Demon barber (1996)
“…wonderfully grisly and gloriously entertaining.” Total Theatre Magazine
Performed by Terry Lee, Dik Downey, Chris Pirie, James Osborne
Directed by Kevin Brooking
Music by Simon Preston
Costumes by Ruthie Walker
Setting Stylists were Ned & Kate (Creature Features), Steve Wright, Liz Johnson, Richard Robinson, Andy Jones, Marion Davies, Vaughan John, Vernon Warder, Malcolm Prout
Split Ends Control by Amy Rose
Management Europe by Carla Kogelman at Kleine Spui, NL
Green Ginger’s irreverence for classic tales plumbed new depths in this reworking of the Sweeney Todd story. The company developed its skills in merging life-size puppets and masked actors, whilst beginning a long-term working relationship with composer Simon Preston. The show was invited by the Jim Henson Foundation to a residency at NYC’s famous off-Broadway venue PS122; all three weeks were sell-out performances and some nifty quotes in a New York Times review. A video shot during the run is available in the New York Public Library.
FRANK EINSTEIN: BORN TO BE WIRED (1993)
Performed by Terry Lee, Chris Pirie, James Osborne, Dik Downey, Vicky Andrews, Olly Crick
Directed by Bim Mason
Music by Sharron Harries & Duncan Whitehurst
Costumes by Ruthie Walker
Green Ginger’s first full-length theatre show took Mary Shelley’s classic tale as a starting point for this deliciously puerile retelling. With the company’s first public funding (Arts Council Wales). Informed by their street theatre expertise, Terry and Chris bought their visual tricks out of the elements, and offered their audiences an hour-long, mad-cap adventure inside the world of Dr. Einstein and his faithful servant Evor.
