Knight Watch. Inua Ellams

       Inua Ellams

      Inua Ellams is a poet, playwright and performer. He has lived in Jos, Plateau State – Nigeria, Dublin – Ireland and London – England, where he currently resides. He has five books published, including his most recent pamphlet of poems Candy Coated Unicorns and Converse All Stars (Flipped Eye, 2011).

      He also works as a graphic designer/visual artist, as such describes himself as a ‘Word & Graphic Artist’. As a workshop facilitator, he has taught in universities, secondary schools, primary schools, theatres, libraries and museums, delivering prose, poetry, occasionally combined with visual art as a stimulus in cross art form workshops. He also delivers workshops through social media networks such as Twitter & Facebook.

      His first play The 14th Tale, won a Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2009 before touring nationally and transferring to the National Theatre in spring 2010. The show had its international debut at Perth Festival 2012 in February 2012. His second play, Untitled, was longlisted for the Alfred Fagon award. It was co-commissioned by Soho Theatre and toured nationally in autumn 2010. His most recent show Black T-Shirt Collection was commissioned by Warwick Arts Centre. The show toured nationally in spring 2012 and had a sold out run in the Cottesloe at the National Theatre in April 2012.

       Thierry Lawson

      Thierry has been a youth theatre director for the past fifteen years. Although mainly being the resident youth productions director at the Tricycle Theatre during that period, Thierry's work has taken him to many various and challenging horizons. Before being offered a place on the Contact Theatre in Manchester's Live and Direct director's course, Thierry travelled the world from his London base working with LIFT, as an Actor with Channel 4 and Discovery in Canada or bringing a taste of Africa to Singapore and Malaysia with Tamtam theatre. More recently Thierry directed Talawa YPT plays and was honoured to be invited to direct The Last Heroes by Nick Walker at the Belgrade Theatre Coventry. Thierry likes to brand himself a story teller whether as a film maker: Winner of best short film award for Block Up or in theatre where he directed multi-award-winning new writer's project for PUSH 01 at the National Theatre Studio or creating and running the touring education programme for The Colour of Justice (Stephen Lawrence inquiry). Thierry directed Inua’s previous plays, The 14th Tale and Black T-Shirt Collection, at the National Theatre and on tour, and Untitled at Soho Theatre and on tour.

       Zashiki Warashi

      The Zashiki Warashi (ZW) drum and flute duo consists of Akinori Fujimoto (drum kit) and Mikey Kirkpatrick (flutes). They have been playing as a duo for five years, with a huge amount of performance experience from the streets and tube tunnels to the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. They met studying for a music degree at Goldsmiths College. Mikey Kirkpatrick has been playing music since the age of seven, and is now a professional performer, composer, co-producer at Avocado Music Productions, lecturer in composition/ performance and curator of the monthly 'Stoke the Fire' event for new music in East London. He also has a solo show called Bird Radio and plays with other ensembles such as The Working Classical Music Orchestra.

      Akinori Fujimoto has an MA in Studio Composition from Goldsmiths and a MA in drumming from Tech Music School. As well as teaching in a number of schools, he is involved with a variety of music projects from recording to live shows. He has also toured all over the world with a London-based Japanese Taiko drumming group. Some of the projects he is currently involved with on a regular basis are Chik Budo, Bang Stroke Blow, French for Cartridge and the Boogie Drum School.

      The idea for a duo with this instrumentation was inspired by the ancient tradition of bamboo pipe and drum music found across the world – particularly Africa, Asia and Europe. The slave trade carried these sounds to the United States of America and this sonic combination became one of the foundations of the Blues and Jazz that we know well today. The tradition was, until recently, kept very much alive by flautist Otha Turner in Mississippi.