For the 15th anniversary, SPRINT Festival (running until 31 March) offers four weeks of adventurous performance from the best artists in Britain and beyond. They have 40 companies performing in the theatre, out and about in the backstreets of Camden, in the foyer, and at their late-night speakeasy in the basement downstairs. Now under the new exciting co-Direction of Jenny Paton and Brian Logan, the Camden People's Theatre continues to lead the way with new and experimental theatre with the gusto and vigor we've come to respect from the London performance scene. In their interview with Run Riot they give us a candid insight to their first time working together in this role - get ready for the SPRINT Festival 2012!  

RR: You say 'We've got theatre that sells you perfume in your own home. Theatre that’s improvised in synch to the TV news. Theatre that leads the audience in a riot...' Is there a uniting strand that threads through this year’s SPRINT Festival?
BL & JP: The only uniting strand is the spirit of adventure that we look for in all the stuff we programme. If it’s the kind of thing you’ve seen before, it won’t (we hope!) be at SPRINT. If it’s an artist or company trying to make theatre in some curious way that will surprise and excite audiences, we want that happening at CPT.
 
That said, there are a few little sub-strands that have popped up by accident. There are a couple of shows taking sideways looks at the troubled social situation in England today. There are a handful of shows that theatricalise medical conditions. And the first weekend of SPRINT unexpectedly had two shows in a row about cyborgs and artificial intelligence.
 
RR: With this being your first festival as CPT's co-Directors, could you tell us how you work together?
BL & JP: Broadly speaking, Brian does the programming and artist liaison, and Jenny does the producing and finances. But on any given day, that can be reversed. CPT is a small venue with a big workload, and we both (alongside one or two trusty colleagues) do a bit of everything - including painting, sourcing vintage furniture and mopping the floor when the radiator leaks.
 
RR: Do you commission any of the productions?
BL & JP: We have a strand of activity called Starting Blocks, which is about selecting then helping five artists to create new theatre shows from scratch. These five shows - the artists this year are Bread + Goose, Chris Dugrenier, Rachel Mars, HalfCut and Greg Wohead - will all debut in SPRINT, and they’re all mouthwatering prospects. Alongside those, there are a few more all-new shows in SPRINT from artists to whom we’ve offered free rehearsal space, or to whom a place in SPRINT is all the excuse they need to get a new piece made. But this year’s festival has been programmed in (exhilarating) haste. Next year, we’d like to commission and produce more bespoke new work for the festival.
 
RR: Some of the most exciting theatre challenges social woes head-on, and you certainly have that in the festival with Brian Lobel and The Mechanical Animal Corporation tackling cancer, plus Sam Halmarack and Tom Wainwright having a good crack at psychotherapy. What's their approach to these subjects?
BL & JP: As far as we know - because some of those shows are still being made - the approach is playful and unexpected. What the performances you mention won’t be are plays making some worthy point about cancer or psychotherapy. Brian Lobel, for example, describes his show as “salacious” and “inappropriate”, and explicitly about challenging the usual “cancer story” narratives. He invites the audience to handle his testicles at one point - that much we know. We’re interested at CPT in exploring how unusual forms of theatre and performance can address social or political subjects - which are often held to be the preserve of the lone playwright, bellyaching about the state of the nation. We like stuff that's both imaginatively theatrical and socially engaged.
 
RR: So, tell us more about the show where you're sold perfume in your own home. We're hooked on Avon Calling by The Other Way Works!
BL & JP: It’s a show that visits its audience in their own home, in the guise of a traditional “Avon lady”, offering make-up products to try out. So on the one hand, you and your friends can experience an almost-real encounter with a door-to-door cosmetics seller - you get to try on lipstick, put cucumbers on your eyes and sniff various perfumes. But you also get a tender and funny story about a young woman- the Avon lady in question, Deborah - oppressed by the burden of her mother’s expectations. We had a performance to launch the festival last weekend and everyone present (there was no room for either of us!) said it was terrific.
 
RR: Can you tell us about Short Cuts and Starting Blocks - great to see Jessica Latowicki (Made In China) here.
BL & JP: Jess is presenting a brand new solo show about her own faults, of which she tell us she has done a thorough inventory! But that show isn’t part of Starting Blocks or our Short Cuts nights per se - we’re showing it in a double-bill with a new take on Don Quijote by Tom Frankland, who staged a lovely show with his dad (called Frankland and Sons) at CPT in January. Alongside that, we have two Short Cuts nights, which bring together works-in-progress, cabaret acts and any other type of show (finished or otherwise) that lasts 25 minutes or less. Like the Starting Blocks showcase on Sun 25 March, these evenings are an opportunity to cram several weird, wonderful and very different new shows into one night’s entertainment - and all for a tenner.
 
RR: With the likes of Kazuko Hohki performing at SPRINT, and later in the spring you have the legendary Amy Lame - is this a nod to DUCKIE as the 'purveyors of progressive working-class entertainment'?
BL & JP: You’ve missed one: we’ve got another Duckie veteran, Boogaloo Stu, doing his show Pop Magic here in June as well. We certainly love what Duckie do, and we love their emphasis on that word ‘entertainment’, which people don’t always associate with ‘experimental’ performance. We believe strongly in giving people a good night out. But these shows didn’t come to us through a Duckie route. We booked Kazuko because she’s been making her show Incontinental at University College Hospital, just round the corner from CPT - and because Brian has known and loved her work since they shared a producer back in the early 2000s. And Amy came to us through her show’s director, the live-art legend Scottee (another Duckie performer), who cut his teeth as a CPT youth theatre member over a decade ago, and still has a soft spot for the place.
 
RR: We all love a riotous finale! Is it true you have the resurrected Steve Jobs in the building kicking up a storm?
BL & JP: Someone who closely resembles Steve Jobs makes an appearance in Greg McLaren’s oddball interactive show A Symphony for Audience and Performer, in the last week of SPRINT. We don’t know much more than that - again, it’s an all-new show - but if it is Jobs reincarnated, we hope he brings his cheque book.
 
RR: What else would you like to recommend to the Run Riot readers?
BL & JP: On Friday 23rd come and check out Wild Thing I Think I Love You by Ella & Nicki - gather inside a tent and listen to tales of the mythical beast Bigfoot - followed by Molly Naylor’s My Robot Heart, and (in the streets outside) the Bread + Goose event Mission. A ticket to either or all of these gets you entry to our SPRINT Festival knees-up that night: a chance to dance, drink and chat to the artists who have made our 15th anniversary SPRINT Festival so special.

running until 31 March
SPRINT Festival
Camden People's Theatre, 58-60 Hampstead Road, London NW1 2PY.
www.cptheatre.co.uk  @CamdenPT

Co-Director - Brian Logan @mrbrianlogan
Brian Logan’s theatre work includes fifteen years as a co-director of the acclaimed touring theatre company Cartoon de Salvo, with whom he has devised and performed in 11 major shows, including Meat & Two Veg (BAC and international tour), The Sunflower Plot, Hard Hearted Hannah and Other Stories (Lyric Hammersmith, Edinburgh Fringe and Kennedy Center, Washington DC) and Pub Rock. Brian also works as a freelance director and playwright, as a theatre and comedy writer for The Guardian, the Independent on Sunday and others, and he is a former assistant theatre editor of Time Out London.

Co-Director - Jenny Paton @JennyfPaton
Jenny Paton spent two years as project manager at award-winning producers Fuel, working with artists and companies including Belarus Free Theatre (Fringe First, August 2011), David Rosenberg, Will Adamsdale, Sound & Fury and Inua Ellams. She currently works part-time as Arts Adviser at the Wellcome Trust co-managing their Arts Awards grant scheme, which supports the creation of new art works through collaboration and reciprocal exchange between artists and scientists. She previously worked as a project manager for Inspector Sands, Press & PR Manager at the Lyric Hammersmith and Client Manager at Mobius Industries, an arts PR and marketing consultancy. Jenny has also worked at the Barbican Centre, Pleasance Theatre, and Kings and Festival Theatres, Edinburgh.