Coney
“I tend to talk a bit too grandly when I talk about the Goldbug hunt. I can’t help it, It inspires me to talk big, to talk emotionally. I want people to know how much I enjoyed taking part, and how much I appreciated it. To me, it was something new, a new medium by which to experience things. Imagine what it would be like if you had never seen a film in your whole life, only to one day have somebody usher you into a darkened auditorium and sit with you whilst you watched for the first time.....” A Participant reflects on The Gold-Bug (2007) by Coney.
Coney is an agency of adventure and play, founded on principles of adventure, loveliness, and reciprocity. Coney makes play which is live and responsive, interactive, immersive and participatory, using whatever forms, platforms and media suit the ideas and the playing audience. It starts when you first hear about it and ends when you stop thinking about it.
"the most cutting edge company in application of live and digital" - Nick Williams, Arts Council England
image: A Small Town Anywhere, a Coney and BAC co-production 2009; photo credit Briony Campbell
Coney itself plays like a game of secret society, with members taking codenames, and distributed all over the world although the main centre of gravity is currently in London. Codenames are artists, makers and players… in fact anyone game. This secret society is led by Rabbit (very possibly a rabbit), currently absent on the far side of the world. Rabbit is a gatekeeper embodying Coney’s key principles and which talks to people online, leading them into adventures.
"the best piece of theatre I've seen in 5 years" - David Jubb, Co-Artistic Director, BAC, on Rabbit: Valentine
Coney codenames gather for playdays to seed and develop ideas through play and also collaborate remotely together online in a walled Garden. The open collectivity of the Society of Codenames is gamed so that creativity earns rewards. A small group of Runners - a collected artistic directorship and creative producership - drive the core projects and developments, seek commissions, set up project teams and facilitate the society. But any codename can propose ideas and lead them as projects. Coney actively recruits codenames from its playing audience; half the current Runners came through this route.
"I had a fundamentally different experience from what I have learnt to expect from theatre; one with involvement, excitement and profound drive. I loved having a mission and a carefully individually constructed way of entering the world.... the collective twinkle in the eye of all involved!....Very clever, very creative and very in tune with the fundamentals of the human need to find, explore and inhabit story" - Emma Rice, Artistic Director, Kneehigh Theatre on A Small Town Anywhere
image: The Shoreditch Ball Park, a commission for LIFT at the Shoreditch Festival 2008.
Coney have been supported artists at BAC between 2006 and 2009, and produced by Solar Associates since 2008.
Links to documentation of a selection of Coney' work are here.