Alan Burgess

Things have been quite challenging recently, but I haven’t disappeared. So, what’s been going on?

Last year was dominated by my father’s illness, his passing away, and funeral. This was a beautiful, woodland burial, amongst friends both human and arboreal.

I haven’t done a lot of designing, but I did design Deafinitely Theatre‘s show Barrier(s), which opened in Birmingham before touring to Manchester and London. It got some great reviews and audience responses. It was an unusual one for me, in that the set was very simple, and most of my work went into the video projections. I was also helped by a fantastic costume supervisor, Sophie Barnard, who ended up as assistant designer. That was in the autumn, and then, as every year, in February I worked on Deafinitely Youth Theatre’s half-term show.

Over at Daedalus, we continued to develop the Dysbiosis project, with workshops in Sheffield and London, and exhibitions and performances at the Omnibus Theatre, Clapham, and the Queens Theatre, Hornchurch. I’m incredibly excited about this project, and you can find a lot more about it over on the Daedalus site. We also did a storytelling performance with some new tellers performing alongside some of our original group. A really beautiful show, it was as part of a Season of Bangla Drama, the annual Eastland festival that we are often involved with. Four of the performances can be found here.

I’ve always liked the idea of writing for The Guardian, which, despite my many disagreements with its editorial stances, is the paper I grew up with. It’s a sad irony that my first and perhaps only Guardian byline is my father’s obituary.

Dad passed away at the end of October, after a long struggle with hydrocephalus, and a much shorter decline in general health brought on, in part, I think, by being stuck in a hospital bed for around 6 weeks for a procedure the doctors eventually decided not to carry out. He remained bedbound after that.

He was a very remarkable man, but also very quiet and self-contained. It is not possible to sum up all that he was to everyone he interacted with. A lover of trees, a protector of the countryside, a seeker of wisdom, an incredible artist, a practitioner of meditation, and a teacher, mentor and friend to many; his art, his activism, and his philosophy were very much one.

Time for another update

Remembering my father, Alan Burgess

Alan Burgess

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