ABOUT NST
NST is a performance collective founded in 2021 with the intention of exploring the liminal space between traditional theatre and experimental performance. We aim to create work that is challenging, liberating, visceral and destablising.
Our hope is always to be ambitious and exploratory, pushing at the boundaries of what live performance can represent and how. We are interested in the fractures and faultlines that run through our world, the irresolvable and unanswerable questions, our collective traumas and fears, and how our common life might be reimagined.
We are looking for theatre that does not exist, and that might never exist. There is no such theatre – yet.
You can read our manifesto and ethics charter below to get a better sense of what we're about.
CURRENT MEMBERS
BENJAMIN PETERSON
Co-founder; Artistic Director Ben is a director, fight director, movement specialist, teacher, and performer. As a director and performer his work has involved New Writing, Literary Adaptation, Classics, and Physical Theatre. Ben frequently teaches in both University and Workshop settings in Stage Combat, Physical Acting as inspired by martial arts and Grotowski Technique, and Devised Ensemble Movement inspired by Viewpoints and various other theatrical traditions. He appreciates and respects all forms of theatrical storytelling but is most interested in work that is audacious, adversarial, and, when appropriate, very silly.
JAMES CHRISTENSEN
Co-founder; Artistic Director James is a director, writer, dramaturg and composer. His work across theatre and performance encompasses practices of radical adaptation, new drama, musical theatre, experimental devised work and solo performance-art. Taking inspiration variously from theatre artists such as Ivo van Hove, Elizabeth LeCompte and Sebastian Nübling, as well as performance collectives like Forced Entertainment and Goat Island, he is interested in dissecting the slippage-points and frictions between different disciplines, traditions and forms as they co-exist in performance. His work draws broader influence from experimental film, noise music and body art to create a unique theatrical language that is both lyrical and visceral.
NICKY DAVIS
Associate Producer; Ensemble Nicky is a Production Manager, Artist, Producer, and part-time PowerPoint enthusiast, based in Leeds and London. He creates work which is chiefly silly and playful, but explores themes of ‘sonder’, and the relationships between one other. Whether it's the adverts we can all recognise from the TV, a shared bus journey, a collective memory of old computer systems, or just lying on the floor together, he is always interested in how people's lives connect and separate again. Utilising methods of installation, performance lecture and PowerPoint, Nicky attempts to demonstrate, in a playful way, just how complicated people are.
