Creative Team
Artistic Direction and Choreography: John-William Watson
Performance and Assistant Choreography: Beth Emmerson
Set Design, Costume Design and Dramaturgy: Joshua Cartmell
Sound Design and Composition: Adam Vincent Clarke
Lighting Design and Creative Captioning: Amelia Hawkes
Producing: Callum Holt
This is Not a Penguin, is NOT TO BE REPRODUCED’s current project in development.
A surreally heart-felt, cinematic, slap-stick, exploration of queer love, companionship, climate dread, isolation & mortality; set inside a remote Antarctic research outpost in 1958.
The new work follows two researchers studying a penguin that, for reasons unknown, ventured from its feeding ground to their camp before heading to the mountains; where it faces certain death. Parting from its colony, exhibiting powerful demonstrations of free will, against its own learned, environmental behaviours.
Narratively the work is intertwined with themes of climate dread, ecology and environmental adaptation; surreally refracted within the narrative to include both messages of queer and climate resistance.
To, at it’s meeting point, explore that we have one life to live and one earth to live that life on. Encouraging audiences to live their life with empathy, with care and with understanding of others and the earth they stand on.
This is Not a Penguin was originally commissioned by Sadler’s Wells in 2021. The work was John-William Watson’s inaugural piece of work presented during their time as a Young Associate at the theatre.
This new development will see the original concept evolve from a short to a full length theatrical work, developed for small/mid-scale venues and rural touring structures.
The projects’ inceptive research and development period has been support by Leeds Creative Institute, who are partnering with NOT TO BE REPRODUCED, on the research residency in Summer 2026; in tandem with environmental and academic consultancy.
