A Reintroduction Amongst the Chaos

Hello and welcome! Thank you so much for clicking on our very first Mismatch blog post! First of all, I hope you are all doing well and keeping smiling through this uncertain time. For most of us in the company our bill paying jobs have closed for the foreseeable future, which means we have found ourselves with a rare abundance of free time to dedicate to finally get round to doing things we haven’t time to do - like this blog! This is not only a space where we will post updates about the company and general shenanigans we get up to, but also art and theatre related content we wish to share and hopefully, guest blogs by fellow creatives! I think this would be a fantastic opportunity to reintroduce ourselves as a company… so without further ado… Hello! We are Mismatch Theatre, nice to meet you! *Goes to handshake, swiftly retracts, instead drops into a theatrical curtsey* We create original work using a fusion of physical theatre and stylised storytelling. We are a feminist company, making sure all performances represent women in all forms and strive to be a force of optimism for the future of the arts. In a world that is becoming increasingly grey and divided, we want people to dust off their paint brushes, put on their dancing shoes, and find the things that bring us together. Formed in 2017, we are a Bristol based company and have performed both locally and across the UK. Our first performance, ‘The Den’ a devised piece set in an after school club in 2008 was performed at the Bower Ashton Theatre in 2018, in summer of the same year we took it to the dizzy heights of Dunchurch Village Hall in Rugby. The Den is our precious first born and we would love to return to it someday! (Maybe in 2028 - 10 year revival.) Read more about The Den here.

In 2019 we made ‘TooRaLooRaLum and Other Colourful Tales’ a family show about a girl searching for colour in her greytown. We took this to the 2019 Bristol One Act Festival and won Best Moment of Theatre, Audience Choice and Adjudicator’s Choice awards! Later on in the year we were put through our paces when we performed it at a primary school for children ages 4-11. Luckily, they loved it and gave us some (honest) and helpful feedback (see our website for some glowing and adorable reviews.) We then performed at Alma Tavern before taking it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for a two week run at TheSpaceUK venue. We aren’t going to lie, performing at 10am everyday was a challenge, but we managed to reel in audiences and got some cracking responses! Read more about TooRaLooRaLum here.

And in 2020 we made (and are still working on) our current production ‘BLOOMERS’ created by the company and written by Daisy Kennedy. This piece is about five women in five different stages of life trying to navigate coming to terms with grief and post university realities at a wake that unravels into an afterparty. This performance aims to empower the real women through physical theatre, comedy and a LOT of house plants. We performed this at the 2020 Bristol One Act Festival in February and won some more awards! These included First Place, Best Original Play, Best Moment in Theatre, Best Director, Best Lead Actress (Eleanor Jones) and Audience Choice Award. We were super thrilled with this and plan on developing the piece and performing again as soon as everything is back up and running and life is back to normal.

Alongside our performances, we aim to encourage creativity and arts to children in a curriculum that is slowly weaning out the arts. Throughout 2019 on the first Saturday of each month we ran a storytelling workshop at Waterstones at Cribbs Causeway where we read and hosted an array of activities to keep the kids creative! Read more about our outreach here. So that’s a whirlwind summary of what we’ve been up to in the past two years! We are excited for the future and to continue devising and performing in Bristol. In times like this, I think everyone has been forced to take a step back and reflect on what is really important to them. Personally, I will never take our rehearsals, our silly hilarious meetups or a trip to the theatre for granted ever again. For now, we will continue to talk through Facetime, keep eating snacks and staying positive the best we can! (I really wish I had a batch of Mia’s amazing cupcakes to snack on in my self isolation.)

We really really love the theatre community in Bristol, it’s unique, innovative and is host to some of the boldest, more courageous theatre I’ve ever seen. This is down to theatres who really support artists and encourage original work, they are the beating heart of our dynamic artistic community. With this in mind, if you have bought a theatre ticket and your show has been cancelled, we encourage you to donate it to keep our beloved theatres alive. Also, if you’re feeling generous most theatres have a donation page, any donation would be a huge support during this crisis. Tobacco Factory Donation page Bristol Old Vic donation page

Thank you all for reading, stay safe, stay warm and stay creative.

Daisy Kennedy Mismatch Theatre x