YFEL

Pan Pan is core funded by the Arts Council and Dublin City Council. APHIDS is supported by Creative Victoria.

Created by Gavin Quinn and Emma Coen with the company
Cast– Mish Grigor, Faith Jones, Marcus McKenzie, Mazzy Ronaldson
Director– Gavin Quinn
Set Design – Andrew Clancy
Lighting Design – Suzie Cummins
Sound Design – Alice Quinn Banville
Associate Director– Emma Coen
Script Editor – Signe Lury
Stage Manager – Grace Donnery
Production Manager – Peter Jordan
Production Assistant (placement) – Mats van Sluis

Image from the British Library Collection:  Royal 2 B. vi, f. 10v

Pan Pan was founded in 1993 in Dublin. The company has toured its work to the most prestigious festivals and venues worldwide, including BAM, the Lincoln Centre, the Kennedy Center, the Barbican, Hau Berlin, NCPA Beijing, Sydney and Melbourne Festivals, and received multiple national and international awards, including the Herald Angel Award at the Edinburgh International Festival.

Since its inception, Pan Pan has constantly examined and challenged the nature of its work and has resisted settling into well-tried formulas. Developing new performance ideas is at the centre of the company’s mission. All the works created are original, either through the writing (original plays) or through the totally unique expression of established writings. Pan Pan tries to approach theatre as an open form of expression and has developed an individual aesthetic that has grown from making performances in a host of different situations and conditions.

Pan Pan is committed to nurturing the next generation of theatre performance artists, sharing the knowledge and experience gained over 30 years of work. This work is carried out through our annual International Mentorship Programme, Associate Artists Programme, International Residencies and our Space and Support Programme – an informal mentoring and space sharing initiative by the core team.

Do you need to be evil to be an artist?

The topic is vast, we won’t get through it all in this showcase. The performers have made a pact, like Faust, to become the most celebrated and ground breaking performers in history. They have traded their souls for success, but the prospect of success loses its shine as it draws nearer. It’s up to you to stop them. We appeal to your patient judgement. 

YFEL dissects the meaning of art, truth, reality, the nature of human existence and the role of the artist in society. The relationship between performers and audiences, personal trauma and memory, the role of the director, collaboration, artistic integrity, and the challenges of making art. Influences. Rivals. The artists have created a crisis and we’re all going to solve it. The YFEL School for the Performing Arts is a theatrical exploration of artistic identity and conflict within a group of artists who are attending the school. 

Each night, the artists will be live directed. The technique of live directed is something Pan Pan have been experimenting with as early as our 1996 show, Cartoon, which allows the director or instructor to feed tasks, give instructions and even feed words to artists live on stage. As a result of this technique, there is a quality of alienation and coolness in an emotional sense, and an estranged distancing effect. It allows the performer’s body to be free to be used and focused in a way that would not be possible if the performer was also remembering their lines. It creates unique rhythmic and arrhythmic patterns that can lend itself to a strange compositional quality for certain scenes.

We are thrilled to formally partner with APHIDS, an artist-led experimental art organisation based in Naarm/Melbourne. We have previously worked with Co-Artistic Director Mish Grigor on a number of projects including The Temple and The First Bad Man, which has toured to leading venues and festivals across three continents. YFEL marks the Irish debut of Mish and fellow Australian performer, Marcus McKenzie. 

YFEL will celebrate theatre’s natural quality of immersion on many different levels, emotionally, intellectually, physically and spiritually. Ticket sales are a sign of your spiritual devotion, but the artists are not responsible for your experience of their work. 

Free your mind. Be YFEL.