Russell Bender

Director Dramaturg Movement Director Producer Creative Technologist

I trained at Ecole Jacques Lecoq and on the 2010 Lincoln Center Theater Directors' Lab. I'm passionate about developing new work with ambitious new forms, often in the boundary between new writing and devising. I am artistic director of Potential Difference (www.potentialdifference.org.uk) and Creative Associate at Penned in the Margins (http://www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk/) for whom I have been a director, dramaturg or consultant on more than 15 new performance works. I have taught at UCL, East 15 Acting School and Central School of Speech and Drama.

I also have extensive experience working with new technology. In the last five years, I've started bringing this to my theatre work - working as a Creative Technologist to find new ways of implicating audiences in the story and creating new sorts of live experience both online and in person. This has included creating real time systems for interacting with a performer, working with streaming, capturing audience data to use inside a performance, interactive location-specific apps, and immersive spatial audio performance.

Credits

CO-CREATOR/CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIST, The Invisible Friend (spatial audio prototype), Royal Holloway, 2021

CO-CREATOR, Making Theatre in a time of COVID - an audio tour, St Paul's Churchyard, Covent Garden, installation, 2021

CO-CREATOR/DIRECTOR, Signal Fires: The Actors' Church, St Paul's Churchyard, Covent Garden, 2020

CO-DIRECTOR/ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, Fair Field, Site specific/multiple venues - Ledbury Poetry Festival and Shoreditch Town Hall, 2017

DIRECTOR, No Dogs, No Indians, Brighton Festival, Southbank Centre, Norfolk and Norwich Festival, Live Theatre, Newcastle, 2017

DIRECTOR, Darknet, Rose Lewenstein, Southwark Playhouse, 2016

CO-DIRECTOR, Kiss of the Earth, 27 venue UK tour, 2014-15

DIRECTOR, The Shroud, Siddartha Bose, UK tour, 2014

DIRECTOR, Game of Life, Rose Lewenstein, The Yard, 2012

DIRECTOR, Kalagora, Siddartha Bose, Edinburgh Fringe and UK tour, 2011

DIRECTOR, Emo, Tom Wainwright, Bristol Old Vic Young Company /Young Vic, 2010


I was a Staff Director at the National Theatre and have been a finalist for the Leverhulme Bursary for Emerging Directors, the JMK Award and the Regional Theatre Young Directors' Scheme

Training

Lincoln Center Theater Directors' Lab - 2010
Ecole Jacques Lecoq, 2007

Location

London

Experience

10+ years

Art forms / Disciplines

  • AR / VR
  • Gaming and interactivity
  • Live art
  • Multi-disciplinary / cross art form
  • New technologies / digital
  • Radio/Audio
  • Streaming
  • Theatre / Live perfomance

What I do

  • Curating
  • Devising
  • Directing
  • Dramaturgy
  • Editing
  • Facilitating
  • Languages
  • Movement Direction
  • Music - Can learn by ear
  • Music - Can Read
  • Music - Plays Instruments
  • Outdoor performance
  • Physical Theatre / Mime
  • Producing
  • Site Responsive/Immersive
  • Teaching / Coaching
  • Theatre making
  • Working with young people
  • Workshopping & Development
  • Writing

Additional Languages

French

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