A New Year, a New Beginning..

Its been a two year and half year slog to get Theatre Of Ophidia up and working, two years isn’t a great deal of time if you compare the works of others but I just feel after two years “something” isn’t working.

There have been some real positives – working with the likes of John Harrigan of FoolishPeople, Orryelle from the Metamorphic Ritual Theatre and Raymond Salvatore Harman. However the negatives often outweigh the positives.

The cancelled shows, the strain of completing scripts and the lack of ticket sales. I didn’t start the project for financial gain but continual losses mean that I have to try and understand the greater processes that other theatre/production companies utilise to find funding and partnerships. I started ToO to see how ritual would/could be digested by the occult uneducated public, I can see now that not only have my goals not been reached or explored. I can also see that I do not have a clear objective which is quite frightening. I started ToO to try and create some form of public ritual, for whatever reason instead I’ve been writing gothic horror with a twinge of the occult. I have to have thinking time to decide if this is my “style” as such and whether I continue doing it.

I have decided to pause Theatre of Ophidia for the time being until I have become more knowledgeable about the machinations of “theatre” and how I can successfully deliver “ritual” in a hyper-reality context.

Although Theatre of Ophidia is now in stasis, already a previous script, “Eidolon” has been commissioned for performance next Summer in Oxford and I will be delivering a piece for Edinburgh in May. For the mean time I’ve created Key 12 an area or cyber-space that will allow me to demonstrate my multimedia art and associated projects.

See you around and thank you for your time

Martin Jeffrey