Gideon Reeling

News & press

The Stop Starty Xmas Party 2020

Its Christmas 2020
Its been a bit of a shocker eh?
Don't let that stop you celebrating this most extraordinary year.
Gideon Reeling will be offering an online version of our infamous Xmas Starty for groups and businesses this year.
contact us at info@gideonreeling.co.uk

We've 10 years experience of rolling these comedy cabarets out live: they're participatory, entertaining, quite stupid, laugh out loud feel good fusion evenings that have become a staple of London freelancers' Christmas calendars.
So if you want an alternative office Christmas party for friends, colleagues, neighbours or randoms then shout and we can tailor make your evening or dig in Santa's sack for an off the shelf surprise.
Seen at such venues as Soho Theatre , the Arcola and Shoreditch Town Hall.
 Le Cool said of them: "It's the Christmas Party season. But before you go to your awful evening, you should go to this….. it's critically acclaimed and it's bananas. Brought to you by the brilliant Gideon Reeling”

Conversations on Life and Death 21

Through 2020's first lockdown we came together with
     -  Sybil from Flexible Films 
      - our own Jo Dagless- artist and filmaker and longtime collaborator with Gideon Reeling.
      - and Artistic Director Kate Hargreaves.
to have a series of meaningful conversations around the subject of death and dying
You can follow the project  at @gideonreelingtheatre at @magicvideobox and @jo1157 on Instagram and Facebook.

It has so far taken the form of edited films created in collaboration from long form zoom conversations with varied people including artists, musicians, gardeners, dentists, crematoria  managers, software developers and founders of the Death Cafe.
Moving into 2021 we are investigating partnerships, Sybil is continuing extraordinary work with Flexible Film's Magic Video Box, Jo has partnered up to create an online festival - Lifting the Lid
and Kate has partnered with Winkball to develop a plaque project Legacy Is For Everyone  (LIFE) 
Watch this space. Its been an enriching creative process for us.

The Flanneries

120 performers, 12 horses, 5 dogs, 1 musical child prodigy and all nature of tales for an invited audience, across the streets of 12 areas of London for 12 bespoke walking tours exploring Britishness followed by performance at a reception in the Saatchi Gallery - across one day event for International Press Launch.

Penguin Imagines

Penguin and Riot PR asked us to collaborate to make 2019’s Penguin Presents Show.
In its 2nd year as a theatre show at the Palladium they wanted us to come up with a concept and collaborate with them creatively to fuse Immersive and stage performance with presentation of their big authors for the coming year.
But we were to be sure to make it playful and imaginative and unexpected: a cohesive show as opposed to an episodic presentation of authors.

Starting with the title, Penguin Imagines we were immediately drawn to our own childhood imaginations, the start of our own relationship with books and reading. The love of reading develops at such an early age and, we really believe it should be nurtured and cared for.  So, tasked with exploring the true power of publishing, we thought of the kids and we thought of us as kids and  also, of the old adage of 'show me the boy at 7 and I will show you the man' (this works for girls and women too folks!)
We were delighted to devise ways to integrate the childhood memories of staff, authors and external guests and transport our audience back in time to explore their own and others' 7 year old selves and to genuinely contribute to the shape of the event and immerse the audience in this idea of Penguin Imagining.
The Characters they met, the things they read, the sets we designed and the props they came across were all devised from the memories we garnered from the audience.
Kate Hargreaves, Lucy Hall and Adam Neville made up the core team who worked in the most rewarding collaboration with the staff of Penguin Random House.

Meeting, directing and creating for the likes of Ai Wei Wei, Bill Bryson, Stormzy, Malorie Blackman, Cerys Matthews, Kerry Hudson and Darren McGarvey was an enormous treat on top of all of this.

We conceived and devised all aspects of the aesthetic and performance with PRH & their branding agency Riot PR and then we got to work with some truly brilliant companies and individuals that we commissioned to bring certain elements to fruition.
Holotronica (who we've been desperate to work with) made an incredible 3D Holographic finale to accompany a touching poem by Cecilia Knapp from the Poems Out Loud book. We worked with two fantastic young readers from London Primary schools to bring the reading and stage presentation to life.
Limbic Cinema created all the video content for projections on stage and worked so patiently with us as we made the (extensive) necessary changes as the author list coalesced. What they made was visually stunning and so in tune with what we'd imagined.
John Colville lit the whole show beautifully and we got to work with the splendid Ed Borgnis as Production Manager. 
Some of our favourite immersive performers devised the stage transitions and front of house performance to immerse the audience from the moment they arrived to the moment they left the theatre.(Kathryn McGarr, Matt Costain, Adam Redmore, Syvia Mercuriali, Aoi Nakamura,  Kate Ashcroft and Nicola Jallim (who we met in our work with students at the University of East London)
Our fantastic musician friend, Sarah Anderson composed a specially commissioned piece to accompany the Big Books section.
Alice Lessing and Elisa Nader created the costumes and Anna Inglis Hall and Paul Rogers were on Hair and Make Up.
And our friends Get Lost and Found entertained the audience in their seats with a giant word game.
Then Speedwagon and Chris Lopez recorded it all on film and in photographs for us.

Thanks to all who were involved and collaborated (thats the whole audience too). 
We were immensely proud of what we all made together.

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