Writing For Performance workshops with Liv Ello @ VFD

A 5-part ‘writing for performance’ weekly workshop series, providing a safe space for emerging writers to develop their ideas through writing tools and techniques with room for experimenting and break away from convention. A space to write share and develop without the pressure of producing something at the end of the series, but rather a focus on skill development, community building and finding your voice through writing. 

This workshop series is run by writer and performer, Liv Ello (Body Show, SWARM, Jack the Mack, director of Frankie Thompson: CAttS).

This workshop series is aimed to create an encouraging environment to explore your ideas through writing exercises, discussion and support to develop your writing skills and become confident in your writing abilities.

The sessions are catered towards anyone of any writing experience, whether you’re an experienced playwright, curious about developing text for your performance practice, love the idea of writing something new every session or absolutely terrified by it!

The aim of this course is to use writing for performance as a creative tool for developing our ideas, not just as the thing that formalises them at the end. It’s writing for discovery and expression, not just definition.

The course is designed so that if you can only afford a single drop-in session, you will still come away with valuable tools and explorations, whilst those completing the full course will also experience a sense of progression and development.

Liv Ello is an actor, writer, director and ‘anarchist clown’ based in London. At the core of their work is an urgency for compassion, combined with a zeal for anarchistic values. Liv’s blend of poetic language, comedy and crucial subject matter has earned them praise fromThe Guardian, Time Out, The Independent, The Scotsman, The Stage and  i. 

Their debut solo show,SWARM(‘a scathing appraisal of Britain’s political parasites’,Guardian) was nominated for an Offie Award, as well as previously winning the Pleasance Award, following their successful run at the Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh Fringe 2022.SWARM returned for sell-out runs at Camden People’s Theatre and VAULT Festival 2023.

Recently, Livcompleted a sell-out run of their new show,Body Showat the Edinburgh Fringe and and another sell out 3-week run at Soho Theatre, co-created and performed with their long-term collaborator, Frankie Thompson. The show received much critical acclaim, earning the duo a spot in The Stage’s ‘Fringe Five’ - their pick of the most innovative theatre-makers of the moment. 

Liv is also an experienced facilitator, a former course leader at a drama school, as well as regular facilitator and practitioner at drama schools, universities and theatre companies working with a wide range of participants - whether professional actors, writers and theatre makers, queer cabaret performers, young people and those with physical and learning disabilities. Liv's ambition is to create spaces of creative development for those usually excluded from educational and development opportunities as an artist. Unfortunately, the space in inaccessible for wheelchair users.