METIS PROJECTS
Directed by Zoë Svendsen, METIS is a UK performing arts company creating interdisciplinary performance projects through rigorous research. A fascination with maps, space, technology, travel and history drives our work in a range of media. METIS involves a diverse network of artists, creating richly detailed audience experiences.
ZOË SVENDSEN
Zoë Svendsen is a director and dramaturg, who makes participatory theatre performances exploring contemporary political subjects, including Factory of the Future (Oslo Architecture Triennale 2019), developed through artistic research residencies in the UK and in Oslo, Norway and presented as a video installation; WE KNOW NOT WHAT WE MAY BE (Barbican Centre 2018), a performance installation imagining living under alternative economic conditions for a future beyond climate crisis; World Factory (Young Vic and UK Tour; shortlisted for the Berlin Theatertreffen Stükemarkt 2016), exploring consumer capitalism through the lens of the global textile industry; 3rd Ring Out (TippingPoint Commission Award; UK Tour), an emergency-planning-style ‘rehearsal’ for climate crisis.
Zoë also works as dramaturg, and has collaborated on several occasions with the directors Polly Findlay and Joe Hill-Gibbins, on the theatrical rethinking of classic texts for productions at the Young Vic, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Zoë is a lecturer in Drama and Performance at the University of Cambridge, undertaking practice-led research, and her work has been developed in several artistic residencies, including at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, and the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, Cambridge.
Zoë has recently written a 5-minute play on climate crisis, commissioned by Climate Action Theatre, New York, for their biennial global project.
‘One thing we might learn from World Factory is that if there is such a thing as responsible capitalism then it is in its death throes or was faking it all along.’ Exeunt Magazine
‘One of the guiltiest pleasures going’ What’s On Stage
‘Lively and ambitious …World Factory makes us complicit in the process of exploitation before pulling us back to see a bigger pic- ture that ain’t so pretty.’ The Times
‘Smart, mischievous and genuinely thought-provoking.’ Financial Times