Hey all! Your favourite chaotic gays, Dogmouth Theatre, are developing an exciting new play, 1000 Ways The World Will End (And How It Starts Again) by Alice Flynn and directed by Alice Robb! It's a bittersweet love story about queerness, survival, existential anxiety and mushrooms, following the many lives of soulmates Yrsa and Astrid as they relive the apocalypse again, and again, and again.

We've very generously been gifted 5 days of free rehearsal space at the state of the art new site, New Diorama Broadgate in London, and we're planning to use it to fine tune certain aspects of the show before we move onto our next stage of development. With a cast of 2 actors, a writer-in-the-room, a director and a stage manager, there's 5 of us in total hoping to bring this play to life.

All photo credits in our gallery belong to the lovely Misha Mah. The actresses featured in these shots, who participated in our last R&D workshop are Kalifa Taylor and Phoebe Cresswell.

WHY THIS PLAY, WHY NOW:
Dogmouth as a company was formed during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time where many people found themselves grappling with existential anxiety of living through what seemed to be the end of the world. In fact, for some people it may as well have been. Over the course of the pandemic, both of us behind this company have gone through personal journies of recognising our own individual, nuanced relationships with queerness, LGBTQ+ identity and where we fit in the world. 1000 Ways The World Will End (And How It Starts Again), in a way, is a reflection of that; it's a story about coming to terms with things you can no longer run from, when you say things you can't take back, what you do when it feels like the entire world is irreversibly changing forever and you have no way to stop it. In a world just emerging from a generation-defining event, we feel that this story is urgent, relatable and cautiously optimistic about the future, something we could all do with right now.

WHERE THE FUNDING IS GOING:
If we reach our funding goal, the money will be used to cover travel expenses for those involved, compensate our actors and stage manager, and to contribute to match funding for an Arts Council England bid! Our goal is to use the Research & Development workshop at New Diorama Broadgate as a springboard to take 1000 Ways The World Will End to the Arts Council in the hopes of securing funding for a full production! Above is a provisional budget for how we plan to spend the money if we reach our goal. This is, of course, subject to change if we aren't able to raise £1,500 by the end of the campaign. However, we will do our best to stick to the same percentage breakdown of funds, and will reduce the number of people in the rehearal room should we be unable to fairly compensate everybody involved.

Dogmouth is a small theatre company, run by two graduates who juggle freelance and 9-to-5 jobs in order to make ends meet - as creatives ourselves, it's really important to us that anyone helping out with our mad projects is compensated for their time somehow. We operate on the philosophy that 'nobody gets paid 'til everyone gets paid', as we don't believe that rebuilding the theatre industry off the backs of unpaid graduates is something we can personally get behind.

ABOUT US:
Dogmouth Theatre is a DIY, Riot Grrrl inspired theatre company led by Alice Robb and Alice Flynn. We specialise in telling stories which amplify women's voices and aim to make galvanising, darkly funny and punchy political theatre which ignites our audiences. A lot of our work focusses on feminine rage, LGBTQ+ voices, the weird and the unsettling. We get our inspiration from a wide variety of places such as video games, folklore, dark comedy and horror. You can find details about our views, goals and even read our manifesto via our social media!

Flynn is a shortlisted writer for the women's playwriting prize 2021, as well as a member of the NSDF Lab programme 2021. Alice is a director and scenic artist known for her work with Periphery Theatre on 'blue bottles' (***** - Fringe Biscuit), and Polka Theatre.