Dussskk
A new production by Snap-Elastic
The Performers
Bryn Thomas
Shiori Usui
Nerea Bello
Claire Willoughby
Jon Whitten
Performed by Shiori Usui, Nerea Bello, Bryn Thomas, Jon Whitten and Claire Willoughby
Conceived and Composed by Claire Willoughby
Co-Directed by Claire Willoughby and Greg Sinclair
Set and Costume Design - Emma Bailey
Sound Design - Rob Willoughby
Lighting Design - Katharine Williams
Choreographer - Dr Aby Watson
Costume Supervisor - Zephyr Liddell
Access Consultant - Max Alexander
Dramaturg - Eszter Marsalko
Producer - Isy Sharman
Production Manager - Craig Fleming
Technical Stage Manager - Craig McNeill
Stage Manager - Lauren Murison
Poster image by Josafinni (@josafinni)
Visual Story Graphic Design by Rosie Cunningham (@illustrationetc)
Marketing and PR by Eragona Communications
Credits
Presented in association with Mahogany Opera, and produced by Isy Sharman.
Dussskk has received support from Creative Scotland, the Jerwood New Work Fund, the Hugh Fraser Foundation and Capital Theatres Trust.
Dussskk has previously been developed with support from Jerwood, Oily Cart and Imaginate, and with support from Unity Theatre Trust, Youth Arts Initiative and The Work Room.
BIOGRAPHIES
Dr Aby Watson is a neuroqueer polymorph: an artist, choreographer, performer, academic & activist working across contemporary performance and knowledge exchange. With special interests in stimming, sensuality, ritual, and consciousness, Aby’s playful, stimulating choreographic sensibility explores non-neuronormative potentials in dance through rhythm, repetition, multisensoriality and togetherness. She works nationally and internationally, taking her work to Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin, Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, Southbank Centre, Sophiensaele, and Tramway, amongst others. Aby trained in Contemporary Performance Practice at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where she also earned a PhD in partnership with the University of St Andrews, ‘Disordering Dance: Neuroqueering a Choreographic Practice’, which explores non-neuronormative approaches to making and experiencing dance. Aby founded the Scottish Neurodiverse Performance Network, an emergent organisation supporting neurodivergent creatives working with/in performance across Scotland.
Aby Watson - Choreographer
Bryn Trained at London Contemporary Dance School, winning the Charlotte Kirkpatrick scholarship for exceptional potential. He then joined VERVE, the postgraduate performance company that toured internationally. After finishing VERVE, he completed an MA in dance performance. Since then, Bryn has worked with Julia Thorneycroft Dance, Daniel Persson , About NOWish, The Velcro Collective, Lisa May Thomas, Simone Mousset, Seiko Sokio Teatras, Lilly Pöhlmann, National Theatre of Wales, and Travelling Light Theatre Company. He has also choreographed for Tessa Bide, Myrtle Theatre Company, Vic Llewellyn & Kid Carpet, and The Wardrobe Theatre Christmas show ‘The Good, The Bad and the Cyote Ugly’. Bryn has also worked as a support worker, carpenter, and massage therapist.
Bryn Thomas - Performer
Claire Willoughby - Performer, Co-Director and Composer
Claire Willoughby is a multi-award winning performance artist based in Glasgow. After graduating from Glasgow University in Joint Music and Theatre she continued training at Ecole Philippe Gaulier in Paris, as well as with the Meredith Monk Vocal Ensemble and Marissa Carnesky’s Finishing School for Cabaret Artists.
Claire has worked with Catherine Wheels, Mahogany Opera, Magnetic North, the NTS and Liz Carr amongst others, and presented work at the Southbank Centre, The Tramway and Melbourne Comedy Festival. She is the Co-Artistic Director of Snap - Elastic, an artist-led performance company who make bold theatre, live art, cabaret, video and music.
Claire is inspired by collaboration and play, video games, club culture, sensory experiences, short story collections and reality tv. In 2020 she was awarded a Jerwood Fellowship with Oily Cart and Imaginate - a year long period of funded research to explore making sensory work for young audiences with additional support needs. This Jerwood Fellowship has been instrumental in opening up a new direction for Claire’s practice - exploring multisensory ways of expressing, sharing and playing together that challenge and upend previously assumed linguistic forms of communication. She is currently working on developing a new vocal practice, that uses space, movement, visuals and light to explore ways of singing collectively.
Emma Bailey is an award-winning set and costume designer, working between drama, dance and live art. Her designs have appeared worldwide, including at the Sydney Opera House, on Broadway and the West End, RSC, Burgtheater Vienna, and Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage. Bailey is the set designer for Tony Award-winning and highly decorated musical sensation SIX: The Musical. She graduated from the prestigious Motley Theatre Design Course and was awarded the Linbury Prize for Stage Design for Roy Orbison In Clingfilm at the Royal Opera House. Bailey has been a JMK finalist three times, was awarded the Maria Bjornson Fellowship Prize from the Royal Academy of Music, and was nominated for Outstanding Scenic Design in a Musical in the 2022 Drama Desk Awards.
Emma Bailey - Set and Costume Designer
Eszter Marsalko is an artist working in live performance and on screen. Eszter has worked as writer/dramaturg/director/choreographer on a range of projects, including small-scale theatre, outdoor performance, variety, large-scale opera, dance theatre, and film.In Scotland, Eszter has worked with the Royal Lyceum as well as productions with Scottish Opera, Curious Seed, Hidden Door, Puppet Animation Scotland, and Grid Iron Theatre Company. Internationally, Eszter has worked for Volksbühne (Berlin), Hungarian State Opera, Weimar National Theatre and Nordland Visual Theatre (Norway). Eszter makes her own work through her companies Snap-Elastic and ghostbag.
Eszter Marsalko - Dramaturg
Greg Sinclair is a performance artist, composer and cellist from Edinburgh.
Greg makes embodied composition performances in a variety of forms: from small, intimate happenings to large-scale stage works. His work is often made in collaboration with other artists, children, young people, community members, or its audience.
His most recent work, Tongue Twister, was commissioned by Imaginate for the 2025 Edinburgh International Children’s Festival. In the performance Greg wears outlandish costumes whilst performing tongue twisters in 13 different languages. They are currently developing Holy Magic, a solo dance theatre piece inspired by Medieval dancing plagues and 1990s Rave culture.
Greg also composes music and sound design for theatre, dance & live art, and they perform in other companies work. He has recently worked with Shotput, Magnetic North, Curious Seed, Mamoru Iriguchi and Oily Cart.
Greg Sinclair - Co-Director
Musician and theatre maker Jon was born at a prodigiously young age. Following several fallow years, devoted primarily to learning pokemon names, they collaborated with alt-j, Netflix, the Royal Opera House, Soho Theatre, the Barbican, Shakespeare’s Globe and the City of London Symphonia, appeared on Later… with Jools Holland, NPRs Tiny Desk Concerts and the Glastonbury Acoustic Stage, and won the 2022 Olivier Award for Best Family Show. In their personal time they are writing a life changing activist cabaret called Deeply Personal, Sweetly Soulful, Searing and Brave.
Jon Whitten - Performer
Nerea Bello - Performer
Nerea Bello is a Basque singer, performer, and researcher based in Scotland. She moves seamlessly between solo, collaborative, and theatre work. Nerea is passionate about rediscovering forgotten sounds and unearthing traditional ways of singing, celebrating raw, unadulterated voices that fearlessly express vulnerability and emotion.
Past projects include Life is a Dream (Royal Lyceum), Sing the Gloaming, Shrill (Scissor Kicks), Move (Disaster Plan), Away with the Birds (Hanna Tuulikki), Women of the Hill (Hanna Tuulikki), Votive (CCA, Glasgow), and Nomanslanding (Tramway, Glasgow), among others.
Her composition and use of music in performance have been recognized with nominations for the Critics’ Awards in Theatre in Scotland for Amada (dir. Cora Bissett) and Move (dir. Julia Taudevin).
Shiori Usui - Performer
Originally from Japan, Shiori is a BBC Proms commissioned composer, improvising musician (playing mainly inside of piano and performing with various vocal textures), and performer based in Dundee. Shiori is currently developing a sensory theatre show for/with disabled young people happening in a hydro-pool, using sound and music as core materials of the work.
Many of Shiori’s compositions are inspired by the sounds of the human body, the deep sea, and many other weird and wonderful organisms living on Earth, and have been performed by numerous international ensembles and orchestras BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Collegium Novum Zurich, Switzerland.
As an improvising musician, Shiori has performed with artists and groups such as Seth Bennett, Rie Nakajima and Ilan Volkov, and as a theatre performer, Shiori performed in Sound Symphony by Ellie Griffith for/with autistic young people, and Float by Kerry Cleland for babies and their grown-ups.
Zephyr Liddell is a Scottish costume designer and artist. Celebrated in the Saltire Society’s ‘40 Under 40’ for her design work, Zephyr creates in colour, makes costumes and fabricates worlds. Zephyr attended Glasgow School of Art, BA(hons) in Printed Textiles and Masters of Design in Fashion (2018). She co-produced and performed with the critically acclaimed arts collective 85A, realising large-scale site-specific immersive theatre in the UK and internationally. She has designed multiple large-scale productions for Bassline Circus and is Costume Designer for Boomtown Fair Opening Ceremonies since 2023. Zephyr works across artforms realising creative projects with artists, communities, theatres and institutions, including; Ashanti Harris, Farah Saleh, Historic Environment Scotland, Cove Park, An Lanntair and Citizens Theatre. Design credits include; Grin, Mele Broomes, Every Map Has a Scale, Scottish Dance Theatre, Plinth, Al Seed, and Forged by Laura Fisher.
Zephyr Liddell - Costume Supervisor
Snap-Elastic is an artist-led performance company based in Scotland, making bold theatre, live art, cabaret, video and music. The three core artists, Claire Eliza Willoughby, Eszter Marsalko and Isy Sharman, are inspired by operatic scores and reality TV; kinetic sculpture and video games; risk, classics and club culture and are passionate about making multidisciplinary work for diverse audiences, with a focus on live performance and shared experiences.
Snap-Elastic’s first production, Puffin, explored climate anxiety and environmental catastrophe. Touring to over 20 venues across Scotland in 2019, it was performed in schools, community halls and theatres, and was hailed as “strikingly bold” by The Scotsman. In 2020 Company Director Claire created Grow Your Own Gesamkunstwerk! (GYOG!) - a YouTube series commissioned by the National Theatre of Scotland for their Playdates programme and was watched by over 10,000 people online. In 2022, Snap-Elastic collaborated with dance company Curious Seed to produce EAT ME, a queer dance-theatre piece about two women who come together to commit an act of consensual cannibalism. Both an arthouse film and live performance, EAT ME premiered at Manipulate Festival in 2022, in association with Nordland Visual Theatre and Perth Theatre.
Snap-Elastic have a distinct voice in the Scottish sector, upholding collaboration, ambition, the “aesthetics of access” and multidisciplinary live performance, whilst ensuring that artists are leading each project and making decisions on their own terms.