Two performance texts by Hannah Jane Walker and Chris Thorpe
The Oh Fuck Moment Fucking up is the truest, funniest, most terrifying moment you can experience. Poet Hannah Jane Walker and theatre-maker Chris Thorpe examine the poetic guts of mistakes in a bundle of words and strip lighting. The Oh Fuck Moment is an award-winning conversation around a desk for brave souls to hold their hands up and admit they fucked up, or for people to laugh at us because we did.
'A brilliant celebration of our mistakes and evolutionary reflexes' Guardian
I Wish I Was Lonely I Wish I Was Lonely is an interactive show about contactability asking whether the invisible waves we're tethered to might be drowning who we are. It's a show in which the audience commit to leaving their phones on. A show investigating what it means to participate in communication - or not. There are poems, there are stories and there is conversation.
I Wish I Was Lonely sees Hannah Jane Walker and Chris Thorpe ask how much of ourselves we've given up to the new gods in our pockets.
Hannah Jane Walker is a poet and Chris Thorpe is a theatre-maker.Together they make award-winning work that is part performance, part poetry gig and part interactive experience. Their work is based around an honest encounter between themselves, an audience and the difficult but often uplifting moments we all face in the process of living. Their shows feel like a generous, open conversation, with poetry and storytelling at their heart and space for audiences to contribute in a meaningful way.
Thorpe, Chris: - "
Chris Thorpe is a writer and performer from Manchester, where he has an ongoing association with the Royal Exchange Theatre - work for them includes There Has Possibly Been An Incident and The Mysteries. Other theatre work includes Victory Condition and The Milk of Human Kindness for the Royal Court, Chorus for the Gate Theatre and Hannah, Beowulf and one of Aesop's Fables for the Unicorn. He also has ongoing collaborations with Rachel Chavkin produced by China Plate (Confrmation/Status), Lucy Ellinson (TORYCORE), Portugal's malavoadora (Overdrama/House-Garden/Dead End/Your Best Guess) and Hannah Jane Walker (The Oh Fuck Moment/I Wish I Was Lonely) Chris was a founder member of Unlimited Theatre, is an Associate of Live Art/Theatre company Third Angel and has worked frequently with Forest Fringe. Chris also collaborates with Rachel Bagshaw, writing the award-winning The Shape of the Pain, recently adapted for BBC as Where I Go (When I Can't Be Where I Am). He has also worked as a translator, most frequently with Serbian playwright Ugljesa Sajtinac and Belarus Free Theatre. His short film for the Royal Court and the Financial Times about the climate crisis, What Do You Want Me To Say? was released in September 2019.
Current work includes the Methuen Climate Commission for the Royal Court,
Dying for mala voadora and the National Theatre of Portugal,
Tell Me, for HOME Manchester, co-written with Yusra Warsama, a new piece for Nationaltheater Mannheim in collaboration with Javaad Alipoor,
Hold Out Your Hand, a play for young performers produced by Scottish company Wonder Fools and the Traverse Theatre, and
A Family Business, his next collaboration with Rachel Chavkin. He also works closely with the National Student Drama Festival."
