“I was very excited by the performance and it left a great impact on me...Your production was a welcome breath of fresh air and very inspiring! I felt that I was really witnessing something that was live and unfurling in the moment. It was interesting to see how spontaneity and discipline far from contradicting each other, feed off each other and create between them a powerful dynamism. ”
–Philip Thorne – Co-Artistic Director Imploding Fictions, on The Jesus Guy –

photo (Theron Schmidt, in 'The Jesus Guy') Birthe Jorgensen

Besides you lose your soul or The History of Western Civilization (2009)

An Apocryphal Mini-Festival,
Lorem Ipsum Gallery (January 2008)

The Jesus Guy (2006)

Heart Oven Falling, Gotcha! (2005)

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Besides, you lose your soul or the History of Western Civilization
Text and Direction: Julia Lee Barclay
Performance and Creation: Apocryphal Theatre lab
Premiere production: February 2009 at Camden People’s Theatre

“Besides, you lose your soul” is the last line of an interview of a U.S. Army officer from a New Yorker article about the inefficiencies of the use of torture for gathering accurate information.  Besides, you lose your soul attempts (with the humour that results from certain failure) to search through the remnants of Western Civilization in order to find out who's to blame for the creation of the individual soul (that can apparently be lost or recovered).  It's a bumbling cut-up detective story searching for clues as to how to get out of this mess.  ‘This mess’ meaning the use of God v. Godless (soul v. soul-less) to justify the ruthless realpolitik of all the unholy Holy Wars (on Terror, on the Godless Infidels, on the Axis of Evil, on women’s bodies, and Whatever Else Comes to Mind).  

“It was without a doubt one of the most stimulating nights of theatre I’ve had in quite some time.” – Martin Denton of nytheatre.com

photo (Zoe Bouras, in 'Besides you lose your soul...') Birthe Jorgensen

Premiered in December 2007 at the Brick Theatre in NYC (Williamsburg) and shown in 2008 at Camden People’s Theatre, Chelsea College of Art and Lorem Ipsum Gallery in Gallery, this event has featured members of Apocryphal’s laboratory, which includes actors, dancers, musicians, live artists and visual artists from seven different countries.  These events have been performative-responses to the text by performers who have worked together for many years with Barclay in NYC and London. 

Apocryphal is now raising funds and producing partners for a February 2009 premiere of a full scale production at Camden People’s Theatre in London followed by an international tour, including Continental Europe and New York.

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The Jesus Guy

“I was a huge fan of The Jesus Guy, and seeing (I think) four performances of it made it all the more fascinating and compelling”
- Chris Goode, director Signal to Noise

Text and direction by Julia Lee Barclay
Created & performed by Bill Aitchison, Lukas Angelini, Zoe Bouras, Rachel Ellis & Theron Schmidt
Live Visual Artist: Birthe Jorgensen
Assistant Director/Production Manager - Lucy Avery

30 March - 16 April 2006, Camden People’s Theatre, then toured to Rose Bruford , Loughborough University and Central School of Speech and Drama.

Five performers create a new show each night, improvising with written and improvised text, scores, ideas and visual materials accumulated during rehearsals and performances.

“This play is political in the true, uneasy sense -about how we get ourselves into these situations and why some of us become these leaders and why the rest of us let this happen.”
- Jill Robinson, writer

A visual artist throws them new objects she creates to play with.  No one has a space to call their own.

The Jesus Guy is a trip through the collective grid of unconscious desires, which lead and mislead us to look to Someone In Charge to ask for the name of our own nameless experience.

It has opened up the possibility of a whole new concept within theatre… It was comparable to life on earth, people spreading out making new connections, periods of intense hustle and bustle, then complete silence. – Joanna Wassall, MA student

photo (Bill Aitchison, in 'The Jesus Guy') Birthe Jorgensen

Julia on The Jesus Guy “What the audience sees are everyday and/or constructed objects, pieces of paper, practical lights, and performers responding to a situation as it exists, in the room, in the moment. The audience and the players, both lit, can sense we are in the same room together. We are all, players and audience alike, witnesses to what we are experiencing and creating as our reality in any given moment, whether or not it can be expressed in fixed terms.

The production embodies the conflict between sacred and secular space. The text allows in the contradictory voices within us in the struggle to name nameless experience. The text cuts into and contradicts itself, demanding a response from the five performers that is not character-based but instead is based on their own response to the text. The Jesus Guy will not attempt to smooth out the rough edges of the experience of hearing these conflicting voices, but instead will highlight the gaps between our desires and our actions especially as regards the seemingly insatiable desire to have Someone in charge.”

“The presence of a quest for humanity…my hands became a cemetery” –Luis C. Sotelo, performance artist (to see Luis’ article on The Jesus Guy please go to the press pages)

“That way of presenting things is much more in tune with how we perceive reality” –Tim Jeeves

“The fact that at points the people on stage surprised themselves and other participants and ended up laughing was really refreshing. "We were all in it together". -Katayoun Thurlow, actor/writer

I felt quite uplifted… Due to the improvised nature of the piece, and the interaction with the audience, I felt like I was a spectator witnessing an event of which I was part. -Annabel Bashford – MA student

To see pictures from the run at the CPT click here
To see pictures from the rehearsals click here.

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Heart Oven Falling: Gotcha!

“This work touches me deeply” –Aude Tournay

Direction/conception: Julia Lee Barclay
Creation/performances: Zoe Bouras and Catherine Dyson (2004 Rules & Regs)
   Zoe Bouras and Theron Schmidt (2005 Chelsea Theatre)
Lighting Design (2005): Seth Kriebel

Jim wrote that he heart oven wrote. We loudly pronounce this. JWB
7 emails from an aphasic father, 2 performers, 1 abandoned dollhouse, some scribbles on paper.

Inspiration: The basis of both very different works is the aphasic e-mails sent to Julia from her father since he had a stroke last year.  Aphasia affects the language centre of the brain, creating a disassociation of words from what we think they mean.

The structure: using work from the company’s lab exploring levels of presence, along with new levels discovered during rehearsal.  While there is an underlying structure that includes a verbal/gestural vocabulary, the piece is improvised from moment to moment, and cannot be replicated from one performance to the next.

" I will call it performative theatre. It is not so much about representation, it is about presentation of a process: the process of becoming aware of awareness. It’s a transparent act…. Clear appealing theatrical images appeared by chance… It was about recovering awareness, a mental state. The technique to get there: the body. The technique to be conscious and to rewire body and mind: to perform and to be aware that one is performing in front of others. The own self is part of the audience, if you want, it is the most attentive audience.” - Luis Carlos Sotelo

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