Bold Makers is back. This award has been set up to support and facilitate emerging theatre companies in the development of a new piece of work at an early stage of development. Each selected company will be paired with a specialist mentor to support the development of new work.
TWO WEEKS REHEARSAL SPACE
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MENTORS
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£1000
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FILMED SHOWING
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A PERFORMANCE
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TWO WEEKS REHEARSAL SPACE ✳︎ MENTORS ✳︎ £1000 ✳︎ FILMED SHOWING ✳︎ A PERFORMANCE ✳︎
BOLD MAKERS will support three theatre companies working across devising, site-specific work, and physical theatre. Each selected company will be paired with a specialist mentor to support the development of their new work. These mentors are Told by An Idiot, In Bed With My Brother and Dante or Die.
This award is designed to facilitate emerging theatre companies in the development of a new piece of work at an early stage of development. We are looking for all kinds of devising companies, perhaps those who make site specific work, physical theatre groups or those playing with form.
The 3 final companies will receive:
Sessions with a mentor who specialises in the relevant field
£1000 for each company
2 weeks of rehearsal space with a sharing for all three companies. Weeks Commencing the 22nd June & the 20th July.
Each sharing will be filmed by a videographer
A performance at BOLD later in the year
Our mentors
told by an idiot
Dante or Die (DoD) is an award-winning, internationally recognised theatre company specialising in creating and touring unique site-specific performances. It was co-founded by Daphna Attias and Terry O’Donovan in 2006. Their unique, up-close and intimate storytelling combined with applied theatre engagement activity ensures all their productions are created from a place of understanding, and truly reflect the experiences of those whose voices they aim to amplify.
Since 2006 they have toured to over 90 venues and worked with more than 5,500 participants. Their work has been experienced by audiences the world over through collaborations with world-class national and international arts organisations such as Brooklyn Academy of Music, Greenwich and Docklands International Festival, Almeida Theatre, Traverse Theatre, Lowry, Wales Millennium Centre, Theatre Royal Haymarket and Battersea Arts Centre. Their live productions have won multiple awards, including Best Book and Lyrics at the Black British Theatre Awards for Kiss Marry Kill. The performance ensemble of Skin Hunger were awarded the OFFIES 2022 IDEA Performance award.
During the pandemic, Dante or Die began experimenting with digital storytelling. Partnering with the Guardian to present User Not Found video podcast resulted in winning Scenesaver’s Digital Honour Award and being shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Europa Awards. Odds On, their first interactive short film, transports audiences into the addictive world of online gambling. The project has won Digital Content Award at Arts Council England’s Digital Culture Awards, Best Interactive Film (International Media Festival of Wales), Best Experimental Short Film (Gully International Festival), and was shortlisted for Best Digital Project in The Stage Awards.
IN BED WITH MY BROTHER
Told by an Idiot is a critically acclaimed UK theatre company that explores the human condition through theatre that is ambitious but never pretentious, experimental but always accessible. We avoid boredom at all costs and are fascinated by the space between laughter and pain. We consistently experiment with what theatre can be and who gets to make it. In doing so, our work blurs the line between theatre maker, participant and audience.
Our vision is to ensure we make a major contribution to the national and international reputation and reach of the cultural sector in England by creating risk-taking, dynamic and critically acclaimed new work which consistently reflects ambition, quality, inclusivity and relevance.
Told by an Idiot have been lucky enough to present our work across the Globe for the past 36 years. From Beijing to New York, the Scottish Highlands to Caracas. We have made genuine international partnerships working with young performers in Soweto and talented jazz musicians in Venezuela. We have reinvented the work of acclaimed author Philip Pullman with an ensemble in Helsinki and were the first UK theatre company to tour to South Africa post apartheid. We are currently an Associate Company with Birmingham Rep and we have produced critically-acclaimed new productions with partners including the Royal Court, Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, Chichester Festival Theatre, Leeds Playhouse, the RSC, National Theatre Wales, National Theatre of Scotland, Unity Theatre Liverpool, Barbican Centre London, Royal Exchange Manchester and Theatre Royal Plymouth.
‘Theatre about as inventive, imaginative and fantastical as it gets’ - Time Out
dante or die
In Bed With My Brother is Nora Alexander, Dora Lynn and Kat Cory, three best mates who make shows together. Working together for over a decade, they create unruly, excessive, high-energy performance at the collision point of theatre, noise and nightlife. Their collaborative practice draws on clown, performance art, music and physical endurance, and is grounded in improvisation, experimentation and interplay - giving their shows the charge that anything could happen, and tonight, it just might.
Their work pushes liveness, confrontation and big laughs to the front, gleefully swerving between silly and sinister, playful and provocative - creating whiplash experiences that will stay with you long after you've left the theatre.
IN BED WITH MY BROTHER’s critically acclaimed shows include PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD (2025), PRIME_TIME (2021), TRICKY SECOND ALBUM (2019), and WE ARE IAN (2016).
Awards include the Scotsman Fringe First Award (2025), The Stage Fringe Five (2025), the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award (2021), the Total Theatre Award for Innovation, Experimentation and Playing with Form (2019), and the Charlie Hartill Fund for Theatre (2016).
They have worked with the Barbican Centre, Battersea Arts Centre, Bristol Old Vic, Cambridge Junction, Royal Court Theatre, National Theatre, and The Yard Theatre among others.
This award has been funded generously with the support of Southwark Council.
