After ten years of innovative research, cutting edge experimentation and national and international groundbreaking touring, Extant was invited at the start of 2008 to join Arts Council’s portfolio of regularly funded organisations.
This makes Extant the first company of visually impaired artists to have gained this recognition and status.
The new regular funding means that finally Extant can now put in place some essentials that we have hither to function without, such as office premises and administrative staff. This will take a huge amount of internal pressure off the company and its board, enabling us to deliver our projects in a more efficient way.
Chair of Extant John Beaumont says:
"As we approach the significant mile stone of gaining Arts Council RFO status
I thought I would drop a line to everyone involved in Extant to reflect on this amazing achievement and to pay tribute to the people that have made this happen. Gaining RFO status will allow us to transform Extant. Firstly, I am delighted to announce that Maria will now have a formal role as CEO and
Artistic Director. I think everyone will recognise how fantastic this is for Extant to have someone formally on board with the creative drive and energy to take
Extant forward and continue to push boundaries. Secondly, we will be appointing a General Manager. The general manager will provide much needed administration support and ensure that Extant is well positioned to meet the requirements of Arts Council and other potential funding organizations.
I would also like to take a moment to say thank you to those people who have made this happen. Over the last year we have seen significant changes on the board and we have added several people with a view to taking Extant forward. Thank you to everyone on the board for their input and support - I hope this will continue as we move forward. But there are two people without whose time and efforts there would be no Extant. June and Maria. Both of you have given up a huge amount of time and put in enormous effort to get us to this point. It has been a real pleasure working with you both and without your continued efforts we would not have got to this point. We are very lucky to have you both and I look forward to continuing to work with you to help make
Extant even more successful. Once again. Thank you!"
John Beaumont
Over the summer and Autumn of 2008 Extant will be moving into our newly acquired office at the Oval House, recruiting new staff and setting up new systems to ensure the smooth running of our planned future work.
Our new contact details are:

Address:
EXTANT
Oval House
52-54 Kennington Oval
London SE11 5SW
T. 0207 820 3737
M. 07956 557 390
E. ace@extant.org.uk
We would like to thank all our supporters over the years that have enabled us to get to this point in our development, and we now look forward to an exciting and successful future ahead
With funding from Foyle’s Foundation and the Sobel Trust, Extant has begun our Youth Theatre project. Starting in January we set up 3 20-week sessions of workshops in 3 different schools in Sutton, Bethnal Green and Greenwich, which later changed to Lambeth.
We have a pool of visually impaired workshop leaders who run the sessions with a project manager to co-ordinate the schools and Creative Director to design the overall programme content. The sessions have been going from strength to strength, with group members working on different performance styles and devising an end of term presentation to be shown in July.
To find out more background, read quotes or for images visit Youth Theatre
The Effing and Blinding Cabaret performed on March 20 at Wolverhampton's
Arena Theatre to a sold out audience. The show was massively well received, with nearly all the audience staying afterwards for a question and answer session with the cast. The show has been so successful that the funders
Black Country Touring have included it on their menu of shows for other venues to book in the region and requests have already come through from
Sandwell.
Next the Cabaret played to a full-house (with a waiting list) at French restaurant in the dark, Dans Le Noir, Clarkenwell London. This was a return to the venue for the cast, who first cut their cabaret teeth here last year. The content of the show changed for the themed night on Wednesday 23 April, taking Shakespeare's birthday and St Georges day as a springboard into an evening of surreal design, where Alan Sugar appears to order his apprentice’s to deliver a successful show for these diners in the dark, or they will all be
‘fired!’ The show was so successful that the restaurant have booked the company in to present another cabaret on Friday 4 July, obviously with an

American Independence feel this time - Extant and Dans Le Noir will also be submitting our novel partnership to the Arts and Business 30th awards this year, so fingers crossed…!
In June the cabaret will go to Finland for the Cross Over Festival held in
Helsinki - A two-day international festival of disability arts. The festival organisers are covering flights, board and accommodation for the Effing and blinding cabaret to attend the festival from 3-7 June.
On September 5th the cabaret plays on Walk The Plank’s moored boat at
Albert Dock for the DADA Fest 2008 City of Culture in Liverpool. Extant is also currently negotiating for an end of year cabaret show to be held at an East
London venue in early December… More on this soon!
Black Country Touring booked a Forum Theatre piece by Extant, which was performed on Saturday 19 April at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery. We worked with three actors, Tim Gebbels, Kate Portal and Christine Laurence to devise a series of scenes based on interviews carried out with members of a
West Midlands visually impaired support group SAIBA [Sandwell Active
Independent Blind Association]
The presentation ran along the lines of Extant's highly successful Eye For Um
Eye show last year with Maria playing the MC Joker figure, facilitating the audience to discuss and re-play the issues in the scenes. The audience included among others, members of SAIBA and local MP Pat McFadden.
“The contribution was excellent and the audience response was very positive.”
Black Country Touring .
“It was an enjoyable, amusing and thought provoking event.” SAIBA member
”I would be particularly interested in the exploration via drama of how the subtleties of communications disable visually impaired people in their social engagements.”
SAIBA member.
“I greatly enjoyed doing this and learned a lot as an actor and found the actual performance really rewarding - it was
How live theatre ought to be but seldom is some how.”
Tim Gebbels- Actor.
Extant ran a Forum drama workshop for a group of residential visually impaired students at the Devon based college during their Founders week in
May. It was the first time we had included Forum in a one-off workshop and the session was highly successful with the group of 16-23 year old young people.
“I think the discussion and forum of scenes was extremely important and the group got allot out of having the space to say what they think and express this

creatively. I think the session might have challenged the thinking of both participants and some of the staff members, especially around freedom and college rules.” Liz Porter - Workshop Co-leader.
The Head of Drama has requested that Extant returns to the college to do some further Forum drama work with their members of staff later in the year.
Extant has been approached by the Wallace Collection, Manchester Square
London, an art gallery and museum of French 18th Century painting, furniture, porcelain, arms and armour, as well as gold boxes, miniatures, sculpture and
Medieval and Renaissance works of art. The education officer has asked us to run a full day drama session for the public based on the opening of a new exhibition on two French eighteenth century paintings by Jean-
Siméon
Chardin and François Boucher, depicting tea taken in polite mannered society.
This will take place on 9 July from 11am
– 4pm, and the session will be led by
Maria Oshodi and Heather Gilmore supported by isual artists Lynn Cox and
Jo Brendon.
For more information or to book a free place please call:
Tel: 020 7563 9577 www.wallacecollection.org
2. Following our current phase of organisational development, several new performance and training projects will be launched in the New Year, marking
Extant’s new graduation as a stable and vibrant arts company.
Extant was asked to consult on the development of creative access ideas for the acclaimed performance extravaganza The Mask of the Red Death that played for six months at Battersea Art Centre from September 07
– April 08.
Over the course of the play’s duration, Maria was invited to experience the show several times and discuss with its producers how best to evolve live description for the promenade piece that filled the whole of the building.
When the right balance was struck, the venue ring-fenced tickets for visually impaired audiences in spite of the show being sold out and announced a special offer of pay what you can for these tickets.

"It was fantastic" "Amazing" " Really excellent inventive approach to guiding and description " and
"Thank you so much for telling me about this show. I had a fantastic time! I don’t know if you were in any way responsible for setting up the pay-whatyou-want
Tickets for blind people, but if so, excellent work as I don’t think
I would have been able to justify £40."
A character called ‘the Traveller’ met the visually impaired audience member at the door and after introducing themselves in character, guided them for 3 hours and described what ever they wanted of the 19C interactive Parisian set, consisting of a Victorian music hall, slums, shops, grand bed chambers, opium dens, rooms full of stuffed animals… the list of experiences goes on…!
Extant commends Punchdrunk and The Battersea Art Centre for this conscientious and inspiring approach to access in performance!
In March we received a request from Annette Mees, for an actor for an experimental piece called Thinking Aloud at the ICA.
We put the call out and Heather Gilmore took part in the site-specific story set at the bar in the ICA.
It was told by transmitting the characters' thoughts to the audience via personal Radios. Imagine you could hear the thoughts and inner monologues of the people sat around you right now
– would you like what you hear?
The audience members, each armed with a personal radio, moved among a mix of actors, other audience members and oblivious bystanders. Listening to a pre-recorded soundtrack, which is being broadcast via a radio transmitter to every person simultaneously, the audience have to watch out to find the characters, mixed in with the normal ICA bar visitors, whose thoughts they are listening to.
Heather took on the role of LINDA, visually impaired mother of the artist whose exhibition was opening.
“The ICA project was great fun and well received. They were a lovely bunch of people to work with and I really enjoyed myself. It seems Annette and the cast are very keen to develop the idea. We had very little rehearsal time, so it was a bit hairy. It was also strange to be listening to the recordings of all our character's inner thoughts and at the same time improvising. It was real multitasking!” Heather Gilmore.

Oval House theatre announces free assisted performances to disabled audience users – For more information contact
Debbie Vannozzi or Nazneen Nawaz
Telephone: 020 7582 0080 ext 202 or 222
Young Vic
Audio Described performance on Saturday 21 June at 2.30pm.
The Good Soul of Szechuan, a muscular new translation of Brecht's lyrical masterpiece by David Harrower directed by international opera and theatre maestro
Richard Jones with songs by David Sawer, opens on 8 May. Starring Jane
Horrocks, this is sure to be a spectacular show.
The gods visit earth. Shen Te, a good-hearted prostitute gives them shelter.
They reward her with money. She opens a tobacco shop. But how can good people be good in a world full of want and cruelty? www.youngvic.org)
Box office on 020 7922 2922
Concessions are available for those who want to take up the use of the description headsets and complimentary tickets for companions (where required) are available. Ask for details from the box office when booking.
Experience great new clips of past productions, workshops and music from our projects! Visit http://www.extant.cc/Audio_Visual_Gallery.html