Documentation
Cock & Bull by Nic Green
Artist
Nic Green

Scotland
www.nicgreen.org.uk

Nic Green is an award-winning performance maker based in Glasgow, Scotland. Her work is varied in style and method, with forms often ‘found’ through collaborative and relational practices with people, place and material.  

Her work has received several awards, commissions and recognitions including A Herald Angel, ‘Best Production’ at Dublin Fringe, The Adrian Howells Award for Intimate Performance, and a Total Theatre Award for Best Physical/Visual Theatre Edinburgh Fringe. She is the recipient of the Inaugural Forced Entertainment Award, in memory of Huw Chadbourn, 2018, and in the same year was one of four artists nominated for the ANTI Festival International Prize For Live Art. She is thrilled to be Artist in Residence at National Theatre Scotland.

Performance
Cock & Bull by Nic Green

Originally conceived for the eve of the 2015 UK general election, Cock & Bull sees three female performers—Nic Green, Laura Bradshaw, Rosana Cade—convene to perform their own, alternative, party conference.

Exploring power, voice, agency and sustainability, they use the most heard phrases from Conservative governmental rhetoric, to dismantle and redress dominant paradigms of power and Politics. Responding to the meaninglessness and repetition of empty political promise, the privilege of the governmental elite and the deep discontent of an increasingly disproportionate and divided society, this work is part protest, part catharsis, part exorcism. It becomes, in part, a demonstration of togetherness. Cock and Bull is a transforming choreography of words and a passionate speech of the body, underpinned with the real-time energy of political dissatisfaction and tory tongue-speak.

For the Toronto premiere of Cock & Bull, two iterations are performed: the original short version (60 minutes) and the long version, lasting the length of an average sitting of the House of Commons (over 7 hours). Presented as bookends in the first week of Progress, audiences are afforded the unique opportunity to investigate the performance’s structure and form as it expands (and contracts) over time.

“A quiet, luminously brilliant, meditation on politics and pain.” Exeunt Magazine
★★★★ “A blistering, beautiful act.” What’s On Stage
★★★★ “Astonishing…Unforgettable performances.” The Scotsman

Winner of the Total Theatre Award for best visual/physical theatre, Edinburgh (2016)

CREDITS
Curated and Presented by FADO Performance Art Centre
Conceived and Directed by Nic Green
Created with Laura Bradshaw and Rosana Cade
Performed by Laura Bradshaw, Rosana Cade and Nic Green (short version)
Performed by Rosana Cade and Nic Green (long version)
LX design Eleni Thomaidou
Technical support Murray Wason
Production Manager (Toronto) Deb Lim

PERFORMANCES
January 30, 2019 @ 7:30pm (60 minutes)
February 2, 2019 @ 2:00pm (7 hours & 41 minutes)

This year’s Progress, international festival of performance & ideas takes place between January 30–February 15, 2019. Progress is collectively curated by FADO Performance Art Centre, F-O-R-M, Native Earth Performing Arts, SummerWorks, The Power Plant, the red light district, The Theatre Centre, Uma Nota Culture and Why Not Theatre. Produced by SummerWorks in association with The Theatre Centre.

© Nic Green, Cock & Bull. Photo Manuel Vason.

Performance Yellow

This fragrance opens us to the question, has the show started? It's winter, the theatre is colder than the street and the room is filled with people and all their winter smells: wet faux leather, down, too much shampoo, and beer breath. The atmosphere is a trickster. Am I late, am I early?

Top Notes

yellow mandarin, mimosa

Middle Notes

honey, chamomile, salt

Base Notes

narcissus, guaiac wood, piss, beer