Little Red, a dance show I co-created and co-directed with Barrowland Ballet will be closing this year's Edinburgh International Children's Festival. 2nd - 4th June 2017 at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.

Last year I made a new show called Little Boxes with director Amelia Sears and Theatre Centre (in London). The show was based on conversations with 10 and 11 year olds that took place across England (and I mean England, not the UK). 

The show was a first attempt to try and question what gender is, what it helps us to do and when it stops us from doing. And how are the social structures in the wider world using gender to police the behaviour of little people. 

​It was an amazing project. There's a page on it here. 

And sometimes I found it wholly depressing. I started to see the whole world as one big attempt to police the behaviour of little people and the people that look after them. Even the people that don't look after them, but just sometimes come into contact with them, or were once one themselves. So, basically, everyone. Unless you were born 56 years old, which I suspect some people might have been.

Then I got to take part in PUSH; a European funded project exploring gender and sexuality in work for kids.

And my brain exploded.

Especially when Yvon Bonenfant came and explained that in every child there is a desire to have what is extra-normal in them recognised and then celebrated. And that as artists we should be making work that is in itself extra-normal. Not reinforcing the social restrictions that are always put upon children and which by adulthood have often become rods of steel that will not bend, even when it makes us desperately sad; when we feel dead from it all. 

And so I am on a mission; to find and try and theatricalise the extra-normal. This might mean I have to fall over in the supermarket sometimes, or make strange noises in the park, or dance in clubs and celebrate all that is weird and refuses to be normal. 

Mikey and Addie is doing great-guns at Summerhall this August. Andy Manley has even managed to learn every single word and say them in the right order, which is impressive considering how many of them there are. It got a good review, just here.

​It's also part of the Made in Scotland showcase. 

Finished a 1st Draft of D of E, a play about alien abduction, lizard illuminati from Alpha Draconis and a Duke of Edinburgh hike gone wrong. With any luck it will be in the National Theatre Connections festival in 2017 and I will get to see the madness on stage. 

Rehearsals are up and running for Little Red. A new dance show for Tramway 1 this Christmas (1-23rd December 2015). Working with the same team behind Tiger and Tiger Tale, music by Kim Moore and with design and lighting by Fred Pommerehn it's going to be a jump into the dark as Little Red finds out there's more in the forest than a few flowers.  

This Friday and Saturday (23rd, 24th October 2015) Tiger Tale will be at Sadler's Wells. A lovely show for anyone over the age of 7 it has recently toured Japan, China and Egypt. 

Lovely to hear that Tiger Tale went down well at the Dublin Dance Festival this week. A great ✪✪✪✪✪ review.

My friend Ja-wé is turning 40 today. He said I needed to think ahead and worry less about the present. So I have decided to invest in property and not go out any more. 

Still writing a play and casting for an as yet un-named sitcom that I have written with Ben Lewis. 

Casting is strange. If only all actors knew how very random it is. My advice would be not to self-tape on an iPhone. And definitely think twice before involving a bucket of shit, a toy pony and a glue-gun.

I love music. I can't imagine not having it. This world would be dead. That's my update. I wish I were a better blogger and had recipes or something. Or cats. Or I had made a rocket from Kiehl's Midnight Recovery Concentrate bottles and fired it at the moon, immediately smoothing out its craters and gullies, making it look 20 years younger. All I've got is a hum and an orthopaedic desk chair. 

The Voice Thief has been nominated for 4 Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland (CATS): Jenny Hulse for best Female Performance; Best Show for Children and Young People; Karen Tennent for Best Design; and finally Best Technical Presentation. 'Splendid' said the Wolf to the Archdeacon. 'Lovely' said the dancing girl to the yo-yo dancer. 'Eat my hat!' screamed the babies and we all went to town in a little brown boat.