Profile on: Ben Harrison
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Ben Harrison is a theatre director, specialising in site-specific theatre. He takes this to mean ‘the perfect matching of material to a space’. From a chance encounter in site-specific performance to Ben’s work contributing to Grid Iron’s thirteen major awards and nominations for a further seven – Ben has firmly established himself in the field, having worked across the globe.
Ben trained as a Theatre Director at the Central School of Speech and Drama and was educated at the universities of Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Warwick and Venice. In 2001 he was made a Fellow of the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) which is supporting his research and development work until Spring 2005. |
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Since 1996, Ben has been Director at Grid Iron, for which he has done most of his work. Still with Grid Iron, in 2004 Ben was made Associate Artistic Director of the circus company The Generating Company. The same year, he was made Artistic Advisor for the Dutch company Muztheater. In his career, Ben has also been Associate Director (Education) at the Almeida Theatre in London (2000-2002), where he created the Participatory Projects, involving young people in the creation of new theatre.
Ben has been involved in numerous productions. To name a few:
- Those Eyes, That Mouth for Grid Iron in 2003, winner of seven awards.
- Caledonian Road, his final project for the Almeida in 2002, using local people and professional actors, led an audience along the streets and canal paths of London.
- Decky Does a Bronco for Grid Iron, first appearing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and touring nationally thereafter. Winner of the Scotsman Fringe First Award.
And coming up...
- In 2005 he will direct Wedekind's Spring Awakening for Grid Iron. He will adapt and direct The Devil's Larder by Jim Crace for Grid Iron at Cork Capital of Culture 2005.
- Projects include Roam, which will be presented in a working airport in 2006, and Storm, a narrative circus show for The Generating Company.
Ben was plunged into site-specific performance when directing a new play, Hare and Burke (1994). At the close of the first act, the 27-strong cast and audience went to Greyfriars’ Kirkyard, where the rest of the piece was played out. Actors and audience were surrounded by gravestones against the backdrop of Edinburgh Castle. By coincidence, at an opportune moment, the castle turned red, drenched in floodlights. The lights were simply being tested, but the result was exceptional. The character seemed to command such a response from the entire city – such that could never be repeated on stage.
Following this, Ben felt that too often, stage plays missed this ‘extraordinary dimension’ that came from colliding real life with artifice.
The conventional theatre can be seen as socially excluding. For Ben, site-specific promenade theatre allows for accessible, class-less theatre. It is important for him that he be able to engage an audience of broad social and economic backgrounds, while being theatrically inventive. Barriers are broken down between actor and audience. Theatre becomes truly participatory, an act of mutual imagination, highly charged. ‘The sense of journeying through a space, or to of a space transformed by great acting seen in close proximity, is for me, second to no other experience in the arts.’
Of Decky Does a Bronco:
“Ben Harrison’s spell-binding production heart-wrenchingly captures the precise moment when innocence gives way to appalled knowledge of man’s inhumanity to man...an outstanding piece, at once delicate and tough”
Charles Spencer, The Daily Telegraph
Of Horses, Horses, Coming in in All Directions:
“Ben Harrison, one of the strongest young directing talents in Britain today, leads us through the labyrinthine spaces of the Arches for a night of close-up entertainment on the theme of love and loss...directed with generosity and vision by Ben Harrison...a dazzling variety of rooms and moods...an exuberant, uplifting romp.”
Hannah McGill, The List |