WILD GHOST
Theatre
Our Mission
Wild Ghost fuses physical theatre, new writing and co-creation to explore personal and collective responses to the climate crisis.
Working with other artists and communities through the use of climate café techniques and through the lens of dark comedy we want to grow a collection of performances, ideas, rituals, experiments and provocations that can form a new artistic climate conversation.
Who we are
Mark Knightley
Briony O'Callaghan
Mark is an actor and writer. He is the co-director of Crowded Room where he makes verbatim and co-created theatre and a director of HistoryRiot where he makes site-specific work in heritage and non-theatre spaces.
Writing credits include: NOTHING MORE PATRIOTIC THAN TO DIE FOR YOUR COUNTRY (Ominibus, in development) THE MARINER’S REVENGE (Old Royal Naval College); THE GOLDEN CIRCLE (Kensington Palace) '2030’ (Collusion) Shortlisted for Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Award and SENTINELS (London Design Biennale, winner Edinburgh Conservation Film Festival, the Climate Film Festival & the Kings College Communicating Research Award)
He is co-artistic director of Wild Ghost
Briony is an award-winning Lecoq-trained director, performer, theatre-maker and writer. She is artistic director of Created a Monster and associate artist with SALTYDOLLS and David Glass Ensemble. In the past couple of years she was part of the original cast and performed in The Deal by Gecko Theatre for Dream Awake in China, directed by Amit Lahav and helped devise/performed in The Sex Lives of Puppets with Blind Summit, directed by Mark Down and the late Ben Keaton.
Awards for her work: The LET Award 2019 (finalist); The Stage Debut Award 2022 (winner); The OffFest Award for Best Show 2022 (winner); The LET award 2023 (finalist); The Pleasance Charlie Hartill Award 2023 (winner).
She is co-artistic director of Wild Ghost.
Our Journey
The Mariner's Revenge
In September 2022 we collaborated for the first time on 1797: The Mariner's Revenge at the Old Royal Naval College for HistoryRiot, supported by Tramshed and ACE.
The show was a site-specific promenade piece that also included chorus members from REACH, a group of SEND young adults from Tramshed in Woolwich.
This unique site-specific show, which moves through the upper rooms of Admiral’s House in the Old Royal Naval College, fuses physical theatre, puppetry and booming sea shanties to immerse the audience in a salty struggle for revenge.
“★★★★★ Half haunting folk horror seance, half gory nightmare, 1797 – The Mariner’s Revenge is spiked with surreal questions of what sanity is and if trauma can ever be overcome.” Sadie takes the Stage, 1797: The Mariner’s Revenge, HistoryRiot, 2022
Photos by Hannah Anketell
There's Nothing More Patriotic Than To Die For Your Country
Between 2022 - 2026 we collaborated on several other shows and, after developing new project There's Nothing More Patriotic Than To Die For Your Country into a short film and then a fully realised script written by Mark, we decided it was time for Wild Ghost.
Nothing More Patriotic will be Wild Ghost's first show, fusing physical theatre, new writing, dark comedy and puppetry to explore and interrogate the climate catastrophe.
The show will premiere in 2027 at Omnibus, London and with partners in Gosport. We will then tour the show in 2027/28 in the UK and will be building an online climate hub to commune, discuss and create spaces of hope around the climate crisis discourse.
An on-the-run oil executive and his nihilist wife attempt to turf an old friend out of his woodland cottage. Spirits are summoned, rabbits are flung, and a dead woman’s ashes are eaten in this surreal black eco-comedy that asks: ‘is the environment worth dying for’?
The show will be directed by Joyce Henderson (Complicité, National Theatre, Spymonkey).
To see the trailer for the short film treatment, please click HERE
Reviews from past work
“★★★★★ ...is a standout show that keeps the audience at the midpoint between laughter, discomfort and horror." - The Stage
“★★★★★ …one of the most original, risk-taking shows on the fringe.” The Reviews Hub
“★★★★★ …leaves an indelible mark on its audience.” Theatre Weekly
"★★★★ ...we become aware of our shared, complex and valuable humanity. It’s beautiful." - Broadway Baby
"★★★★ …Wonderful…exhilarating…” - The Scotsman
“★★★★ Bristling with a Rottweiler-level energy. Brilliantly powerful.” - Spy in the Stalls
Get in Touch
info@wildghost.org
briony@wildghost.org
mark@wildghost.org
