Emma/Emma Jayne/EJ has been called a dancer, theatre-maker, collaborator, facilitator, movement director, dramaturg, intimacy co-ordinator, activist, organiser, and occasional drag king. They’re not fussed about definitions. They research, think, make, and do - preferably in collaboration.

From a rural, working class background Emma grew up with no connection to the creative industries*, leading to a non-linear work history that is more easily defined as an approach than a list of productions. It is a series of overlapping explorations of failure, belonging, intimacy, and euphoria that always begin in the body but manifest in various forms, aiming to be hyper-contextual and inviting people to participate in a way that is most meaningful to them. Sometimes watching, sometimes playing, sometimes in conversation.

Emma learns by doing, believes in open source practices and has no interest in selling themselves in response to the demands of neoliberalism. They are driven by everyday pleasure, building meaningful relationships, finding generative way of working and a hunger for liveness.

[Website in Transition 25th April - 30th May 2024]

I’ve always struggled with websites, they feel too close to selling myself which triggers a deep resistance: part working class cringe and part sadness at living in a system that measuring creativity in awards, outputs and soundbites. Over this time I will be working to build something fixed that goes someway to translating the liveness that drives me. As well as working with collaborators to understand how I can articulate work in a way which that enables survival in a neoliberal industry, whilst minimising complicity in it. You won’t ever find me calling myself award winning/ multi-award winning - I want you to value the work, not the accolades offered by closed networks. If it helps to see a list of things that I have worked on, please check out my CV in the interim. (It is probably always a little out of date!)