Louise Orwin

Louise Orwin & Co Producer Call Out

About the Company

‘Louise Orwin makes playfully unsettling work, work that leads you with a disarming smile and the promise of fun into some of the darkest corners of contemporary life.’  (Andy Field, Forest Fringe)

Louise is an award-winning writer, researcher and performance maker, making research-driven performance projects that sit on the boundary of live art and experimental theatre. She makes work about subjects that are close to home, hard to get your head around, and need to be spoken about. It is often work about what it means to identify as female today, in a fast-moving, media-saturated world that prizes patriarchal, heteronormative narratives. Louise’s work is provocative and brash, intimate, awkward at times, and generally filled with a heady dose of pop culture

‘Work that demands and deserves to be seen.’ (Exeunt)

Her work has received consistently great critical acclaim. Pretty Ugly, which delved into how teenage girls interact with the internet today, went viral in 2014 and was featured in press all over the world: on the radio (Woman’s Hour, BBCR4), TV (Fusion News, ABC, US), and broadsheet press (Vogue, The Telegraph, The Independent, El Pais etc). A Girl and A Gun, which explored women and violence on film, has been featured in The Guardian, Vice Magazine, and on the BBC Radio. She has toured both shows throughout the UK and Europe.

She has just re-developed her latest show Oh Yes Oh No, a show about female sexuality and recovery from trauma. The show’s initial premiere at CPT in 2017 saw the show open to 4* reviews and sold out shows. The show will go to Edinburgh in 2019, and tour through Autumn 2019 and into Spring 2020.

She is currently developing her latest work, CRY CRY KILL KILL, a show about rage and what it means to be a survivor, which features live wrestling. The show  was a finalist for The Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award 2018, and began its development at the Barbican. The show will be developed through 2019 and will premiere in 2020.  

The Role

Louise is at a pivotal point in her practice, as she prepares for her third UK tour (Oh Yes Oh No) and begins to scale up from solo work with her latest project, CRY CRY KILL KILL.

She is now looking for an experienced Producer who can help her take the next steps in her practice, and help the company think strategically as it grows and begins to make work of a bigger scale.

In 2019, Louise will tour Oh Yes Oh No­ (6 dates already booked); and to Edinburgh for 2 weeks (Summerhall); and develop her latest work Cry Cry Kill Kill. Alongside this, the company will be undergoing a period of strategic, organisational development which will include contracting a Production Assistant, Engagement Officer, and setting up an Advisory Board. The company is particularly interested in hearing from candidates who have experience with participation and community work, as Louise is keen to develop her outreach practice.

This role will cover:

Strategic Development

• Securing future funding & partners for new projects

• National and international tour development and planning

• Audience development

Project Management

• Tour Management (accommodation/ transport/ liaising with venues)

• Developing future touring dates

• Contract management

• Edinburgh (marketing, networking, production support)

Marketing + Promo Material

• Liaising with PR (company already contracted)

• Management of development and distribution of print materials

• Social Media

• Tour marketing (liaising with venues)

Louise is comfortable and proficient at managing day to day admin on development projects (budgets, communicating with collaborators etc), so this role is ideally for a more experienced, strategic producer who is interested in working with an ambitious company looking to the future.

The ideal candidate is:

• Warm, engaging, and a good communicator

• Familiar with (and preferably interested in) Louise’s work

• Comfortable talking about and selling work

• A strategic thinker, with an eye on the future, who is continually on the lookout for opportunities for the company

• Experienced in booking UK and International tours (preferably with good connections to UK and international programmers and/or tourbookers)

• Experienced at finding partners/sponsors for work, and comfortable negotiating terms and finances

• Experienced in working with large budgets and submitting over £15k Arts Council Grants

• Has experience of working with touring artists/companies creating work that sits between experimental theatre, performance and live art

• Is comfortable dealing with shows of a sensitive nature covering topics such as violence, sexual trauma and recovery from trauma

Salary/Payment

The company is currently submitting an Arts Council bid for over £50k to cover this period of work.

The role is budgeted at £200 pd, for roughly 1 day a week Spring 2019 through to December 2019, with the option of extending dependent on funding.

Selection Process

Please send a CV and covering letter outlining why you think you’d be suitable for the role to louiseorwin@hotmail.com.

Deadline: 31st January

Interviews to be held in the first two weeks of February.

More can be found on Louise’s work here: www.louiseorwin.com