User:Shepdaws/sandbox

Andrew has had an interest in theatre, since the early 1980’s. He studied dance with Merce Cunningham in New York and theatre in Paris with Phillipe Gaulier, Monika Pagneux, and Jacques Lecoq. He studied The Feldenkrais Method in a 4-year professional training programme (1990 -1994) reflecting his ongoing curiosity into the physical body, mindfulness and movement.

Between 1984-1992 he formed a theatre company, Mime Theatre Project with Gavin Robertson. The first show they created ‘Thunderbirds F.A.B.’ began in small venues but then went on to perform 6 seasons in London’s West End and two world tours. Other performances the company created were “The Six-sided Man’, ‘The Three Musketeers’, ‘What is all this Dancing?’,’The Thirst’ and ‘Vertical Deserts’. Andrew has originated work that is inspired my true stories, extraordinary events and science. ‘Space Panorama’ (1987) the story of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing told with only his hands, using a table for a stage to a soundtrack from Shostakovich’s 10th symphony. The piece has been seen around the world from London’s West End in the aptly named Apollo Theatre to the Kennedy Centre, Washington DC for the fortieth anniversary of the moon landing and at an astronaut reunion dinner in Houston for 200 space shuttle crew including Buzz Aldrin. Using the theme of hands and a table for a stage he made an evocative visual poem of finely tuned movement and gesture called ‘Quatre Mains’ (1998) with Jos Houben, comprising of vignettes from evolution to world war, which was revived for a season at UCLA, Los Angeles in December 2008. Andrews solo show ‘Absence and Presence’ (2005), won the Carol Tambor award for the best of the Edinburgh Festival and was taken to New York for performances at PS122. The piece is a deeply intimate and touching production in which, Andrew, explores - not without wry humour - the death of his father.

He created and directed the stage show of ‘Wallace and Gromit’ (1995), ‘Amnesia Curiosa’ for Rainpan 43 (2008) Premièred in the oldest surgical amphitheatre in America in Philadelphia. Fabrik Potsdam’s award winning ‘Pandora 88.’ (2003) In Olso ‘For Kaffen Blir Kald’ (‘Before the coffee turns cold’) (2011). ‘The Idiot Colony’ with Redcape Theatre Company, where three women spent decades locked away reliving their faltering memories amidst drugs, brutality and the restraints of the asylum. Recently he was Co Director on ‘The Heads’ for Blind Summit Theatre Company. 2008 also saw him make his choreographic debut at the New York MET with the Grammy award winning ‘Dr. Atomic,’ by John Adams. The production was subsequently presented in London at the English National Opera in 2009. In 2010 he choreographed ‘The Pearl Fishers,’ also for ENO and he was the movement director on the British première of the opera ‘Our Town’ at the Guildhall school of Music (2012) In 2010 he was awarded a Arts Award from Wellcome Trust, with Professor Jonathan Cole, to create ‘The Articulate Hand’, this performance theatre piece on the subjective experience of impairments of hand function. It received its US première at the World Science Festival in New York (June 2011) and featured as three short talks at the TEDMED (Oct 2011.) This year he received his third grant from Wellcome Trust to research and develop ‘Chasm of Sorrow’ the story Anton Chekhov’s astonishing exploration to Sakhalin Island in 1890. Also that year, commissioned by Dello Scompiglio, Italy, I am half of who I Am ‘ is a performance fuelled by curiosity of the self. Only half of Louise Coleman’s body, her left side, is medically labeled with Cerebral Palsy. Her right side appears normal.

Recently he was the Movement Director for A Midsummer Nights Dream at the Bristol Old Vic directed by Tom Morris and in association with Hand Spring Puppets. (the team that created War Horse)