"I'm so excited to be working with Shout to tell a story that is local, unique, and has a huge intergenerational appeal. This city has a rich and vibrant queer history that deserves to be celebrated - it's my distinct pleasure to collaborate with Shout to offer these histories time, space, and an active imagination. I hope our work together inspires and provokes audiences; and maybe, also, just makes them want to get up and dance!"
Photo Hayley Salter @headshotswithhayley
A warm welcome and introduction to Louis Wharton, who has joined the Shout programme as an Artist in Residency. Louis will be working with our Senior Creative and Community Producer, Hannah Phillips, to produce ‘Breeders’, a theatre piece on queer extinction. Using research from the queer community and archive stories from the 1980’s.
Louis is a freelance theatre maker, based in the West Midlands. His creative practice seeks to combine queer storytelling with bold and inventive contemporary theatre processes.
His experience is varied, ranging from performances in published texts and improvised musical theatre, to producing and directing original writing and devised productions. He is a first class graduate from the University of Warwick, where he collaborated on and directed multiple exciting projects, including I Feel Love, which looked at acid house rave culture in Thatcherite Britain, and The Garland Complex, which explored the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England in the late sixties.
In September, he assistant directed Cancer B*tch by Hannah Ali Khan in Oxford. Cancer B*tch was a community driven, arts council funded piece of new writing that offered a unique perspective on a necessary story. In October, he performed as part of the European debut of Andrew Lippa’s I Am Harvey Milk at Cadogan Hall.
Recently, he founded his own theatre company, Milk No Sugar. MNS dedicates time, money, and resources to original writing on queer themes in the West Midlands.
Photo Hayley Salter @headshotswithhayley
Artwork by Louis Wharton
