Can you experience a wine with all your senses? In Through the Grapevine every performance is made in response to the wine you are drinking as you watch the show. This is a unique evening of humour, music and physical surprise. No previous knowledge of theatre or of wine is required — but be prepared to be thoroughly entertained as you taste them both together.
The Company
Through the Grapevine Performed Wine Tastings was founded by Krysta Dennis and Roanna Mitchell of Allied Productions
Krysta Dennis is a performer, director, musician, and wine expert. Directing credits include Through the Grapevine, The Tempest, Women and Wallace, and Hamlet Remembered (assistant director). She has performed in Richard Schechner’s Imagining O, as Herodias in Anton Juan’s Salome, as Mrs. Peachum in The Threepenny Opera, Elmire in Tartuffe, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, and sang the role of the Mother in the opera The Consul. She released an album entitled Empty Pockets in 2005. Krysta trained at L’Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq and will be finishing her dual PhD at the University of Kent and the Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III in 2015. She also holds an Advanced Level Certificate from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust.
Roanna Mitchell is a performance maker and movement artist based in the UK and working internationally. She is associate artist with east coast artists (ECA) and co-founder of artists’ collective Allied Productions. Roanna works as a movement teacher and lecturer, teaching at the University of Kent, the Central School of Speech and Drama, and Goldsmiths. Her doctoral research examined the body politics involved in training for, and working in, the acting profession. She has published work on the actor’s aesthetic labour.She is also artistic director for AnyBody, the UK chapter of Susie Orbach’s local-global initiative Endangered Bodies. www.roannamitchell.com
Rosemary Klich is Lecturer and Head of Drama and Theatre at the University of Kent. She is a researcher and theatre practitioner with interests in multimedia theatre, public performance interventions, and the immersive, visceral and participatory potential of performance. She is a member of the Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance.
Bryony Thomas has a first class degree in experimental theatre from Brunel University and attended The Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris from 2008-2010. She has been performing and directing professionally for the last 10 years and has worked with Shunt, The Liverpool Playhouse, The Liverpool Everyman and The Battersea Arts Centre. She is also an experienced workshop leader. Bryony enjoys working with Grapevine and using smell and taste as stimuli for creation.
Katharine Hardman is currently co-Artistic Director of Entita Theatre, a physical theatre company focusing on re-imaginings of Shakespeare. Katharine works as a movement director, physical performer and actress. After graduating from the University of Kent with the Physical Actor Training and Performance specialism, Katharine worked with White Slate Theatre on their successful run of Your Fragrant Phantom at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Having performed multiple times at the Edinburgh Festival as well as the International Youth Arts Festival and the National Student Drama Festival, Katharine is thrilled to be taking part in Through the Grapevine.
Jenna May Hobbs is inspired by a love of language and its complexities in all her performative endeavours. In 2012 Jenna performed in Imagining O at the International Theatre festival of Kerala before heading to New York on a scholarship to study playwriting and acting. Having graduated from the University of Kent in 2013, she now works as a Playwright with White Slate Theatre. The opening of her first play Your Fragrant Phantom was/is at The Marlowe Studio Theatre before featuring in the Canterbury Fringe Festival and touring the South East of England.
Mark Curley is a Masters student at the University of Kent who is currently working towards a degree in Physical Actor Training and Performance. He aspires to pursue a career in acting and has been involved in a range of different productions whilst at the University. He has most recently been working with the new graduate theatre company, Entita Theatre and their show Method in Madness, which was chosen to participate in the International Youth Arts Festival in Kingston in the summer of 2014.
