Welcome to the Projects Section!

‘Mutate' as a label seeks to capture the ever-changing and adaptive nature of the kind of work we produce; never conforming to one aesthetic, medium or genre. We leave room for the awkward and elegant patterns of expression that naturally accompany experimentation. There is a sense of multiplicity and duality that comes with the word, it is individual in its potential, fascinating yet embodied collectively in its journey.
Mutate Collective are the 22-25' Experimental Art and Performance (BA) cohort at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Comprised of 22 individual emerging artists each with their own unique practice and discipline, our previous projects include Wildlands: An Immersive Experience at Ugly Duck (2023), Usher at Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch as part of their Blueprint festival (2023), Mutate Inhabits: An Exploration of Mess at Chat’s Palace (2023), and Fractalia Festival at Toynbee Studios (2024). Our final project studying at CSSD, Mutate Evolves, will take place March 2025 in Royal Central’s Courtyard Theatre. Click the Logo (Designed by yours truly) to check out all of our Collective works. As for my own projects within Mutate:

• '_____An Epic' as part of the 'Mutate: Volume One: Emerging' publication
• 'Rust Moment' Made for 'Wildlands' Immersive Project
• 'The Play' for EAP and WfP's joint unit: Writing for Solo Performance
• 'Glitter Pirate Radio' for Mutate: Evolves

Mutate

'[no] good grief is a participatory performance that implicates the audience in the premature burial of Cerulean (that's me)! It explores themes of death with reverent silliness. As you begin to comfort and mourn the "recently deceased", you are asked to consider the conditions that have led to their death. We will not die equal and Cerulean is prepared to go out kicking and screaming. It is a piece about transness, class and mortality neatly gift wrapped and adorned with a party hat. Thank you for coming and I'm sorry for your loss.' - Cerulean
I support Cerulean's [no] good grief as a co-performer and dramaturg.

[no] Good Grief

'Ass-smashing, Cake-licking. Corporate domination. In The Hand That Feeds, Rebecca Boss chews through corporate greed and blockchain bravado. Audience members become footstools, cake stands, and disposable interns while he redefines what it means to be a real boss in a world obsessed with fake coins and power fantasies.' - Riposte.
'The Hand that Feeds' utilises elements of clowning and burlesque to create a campy and critical performance art piece. The work targets Capitalism, and in particular the false notion of a “trickle-down economy” through strip, clowning and audience participation. These frameworks intertwine with the use of damaging and dirtying food (in particular cake, see: French Revolution) by sitting on it, hand-feeding it and ‘sanitising’ it (with actual hand-sanitiser) to others to represent how corporate greed and its masculinity indulges in a multitude of 'gluttonous' or 'taboo' ideas to further consumption. Furthermore, this queering and feminisation in my characterisation of He.E.O Rebecca Boss, is both a mocking and a manifestation of this greed physically, where marginalised and sexualised bodies suffer at the hands of this destruction.

The Hand That Feeds

Glitter Pirate Radio is an audience interaction performance work about an ex pirate radio host whose radio has fallen ill. Joined by a flock of seagulls, Glitter and the audience must navigate what it means to 'mend' her radio whilst juggling feelings of belonging, connection with others and what care looks like.

Glitter Pirate Radio

Erosion is an interactive installation work exploring the materiality of water and ideas of erosion and temporality via durational indoor rainfall, created by myself, Emily Butler-Moor and Owen Else. Despite structural limitations placed on the project due to a listed building, we recreated an environment to showcase documentation of an earlier experimentation with strong sonic and lighting elements and spinning photographs.

Erosion

Captain Astrid Backwash is an egotistical pirate lesbian who tells tall tales of adventure, erotic encounters, spinning as many stories as she can earn gold coins for. I’ve been her for nearly 3 years now – here are some of my favourite introductions I’ve written for various acts I perform with her.

Famed queer pirate Captain Astrid Backwash to perform the uncensored original version of 'A Pirate's Private Plunder'. She's here to detail the thrilling and definitely 100% entirely true story of how only she survived -within 6 inches of her life- a shipwreck that the rest of her crew perished in. Give it up for the slut of the seven seas, Captain Astrid Backwash!

Some know her as the slut of the seven seas, others as the woman even sirens can't resist. She sets sail for treasure, but the one thing this pirate loves more than gold? Fingering. Give it up for famed queer pirate Captain Astrid Backwash!

Martha: She needs little introduction…
The sexiest pirate of the seven seas
Captain! Astrid! Backwash!

Sean: Wait Wait Wait!
I’m afraid the captain will not under any circumstances be performing tonight. I have tied her up for her misdeeds of piracy, gold stealing and filthy lezzer behaviour.

Oh shit, I gotta dash. You can all watch her for me right?

Cue Sweet Escape Playing

Sean: Good. Now remember. Don’t help her, under ANY circumstances.

Sean takes the hat and bag off soph and leaves them behind her on the floor, then leaves out the door and comes back through a different door into the crowd.


Later on in the performance Soph will point to the crowd. This is the cue for Sean to come back, check on “Astrid”, discover Amelie in her place and take the bag and hat off her scooby-doo style.

Sean: CURSES ASTRID!!!! (Campy yell!)

Captain Astrid Backwash

Conversation is an explopration of feedback loops made into dialogue. I worked by writing music and dialogue with symbiosis: writing dialogue to music and then music to dialogue, I use text to speech systems that enabled me to process the reverb and delay feedback of the music and speech I was writing into composite sentences, and inspired by these explorations, they culminated in Conversation! This is one of my favourite works, as I made it whilst my partner drifted off next to me - heavily inspiring the content (an emotional feeback loop in its own right perhaps?)

Conversation

This Dyke Wood is an exploration of queerness, specifically - lesbianism, in handmade and crafted items. My focus of research was in woodworking, the butchness of the workshop and explorations of love when making art out of love. This piece is a commission for my partner Amelie, made to help her reach the top shelves in our soon to be shared kitchen. This work also delved into the erotics of woodwork and lesbian masculinity. Part of the research involved reflective writing, and I wrote this poem, enjoy:

The Butch Fantasies of a Teenage GXrl:

I had this girlish fantasy that my arms bulged twice the size and that sweat stood longer atop my brow. I hoped the stench from my bits, pits and tits bore hot steel and grated rough against my nose. I’d bottle the drops to record my hammer’s conquest, and age it in my belt. I stroke the hammer clean and slip it next to its nectar, hoping this time the belt doesn’t cling to my hips, but swaggers against my bush with its maw hanging favourably. Each new tool I grasp begs a moan from its leather and each bodied saw pull, blooms new bruises - but it’s nothing that a whet stone top can’t fix. The finer details and finishes, slick smooth with my fingers roaming every surface infinitely.
Until I decide we’re done.
So when the sweat stops, and I take my work home – only I will know, I fucked it till completion.

This Dyke Wood