Eyes On Stalks

Description

Welfare State International, the inspirational theatre company founded in 1968 and based in Cumbria, creates and facilitates celebratory art and theatre, ranging from carnivals, lantern processions and rites of passage, to flags, banners and pyrotechnics. In a mixture of personal stories, clear instructions, poems and artists' sketches, Eyes on Stalks is a detailed and practical guide to their production. It includes sections on caravans and street shows, community regeneration, comedy extravaganzas and alternative naming, betrothal and funeral ceremonies.

John Fox made puppets as a child, learned about explosives in the National Service, spent his PPE course at Oxford doing life-drawing at The Ruskin School, then studied Fine Art at Newcastle. He formed Welfare State with Sue Gill and others in 1968, and was their Artistic Director and Chief Executive.

Since the advent of John Fox's spectaculars of ritual and procession in Yorkshire with the Welfare State International company 45 years ago, much of our most potent theatrical and installation art has taken place in outdoor landscapes, on rivers and hilltops, in forests and fields. -- Michael Coveney * Guardian * EYES ON STALKS is a book you must read - wise, committed and beautifully written. Not too misty eyed. The title comes from WSI's old slogan 'Eyes on Stalks, not Bums on Seats'. * Sideshow - Contemporary Circus Magazine * WSI have maintained their name and their principles of cultural activism. Having provided the reader with such a rich entertaining book, Fox could be forgiven a political rant. His final chapter, however is not an angry tirade but a thoughtful passionate call for the use of the arts for cultural change and the power of the artist as a creative catalyst. -- Emma Govan * Contemporary Theatre Review *