Production

Kriya Arts produces multi-award winning, high quality events for a variety of clients and in a wide range of mediums.

Since the pandemic the company’s primary focus has been exploring pilgrimage and listening as active tools for change. In 2021 we created Listening to the Land Pilgrimage for Nature, in partnership with No Planet B Initiative, which was our most ambitious project to date. Leading 28 members of the public on a pilgrimage walking 500 miles up the country, we presented a performance we’d created along the route, based on what we’d heard from listening to the land and the people encountered along the way, which we then presented in the Green Zone to delegates at COP26. The pilgrimage led to the creation of a hub at Kelburn Castle, our landing ground and sanctuary during COP26, and through our partnerships with the Wisdom Keepers and human rights lawyer Farhana Yamin, significantly increased the number of indigenous leaders at the event by also accommodating them at the Castle. From meeting these leaders this then lead the Earl of Glasgow to give a speech in the House of Lords, advising they take the climate crisis seriously.

This was born out of a pilgrimage walked previously by director Jolie Rose (then Booth) in 2020 that completely changed her life and made her become aware that the act of pilgrimage is in itself a piece of theatre, with the pilgrim playing an archetype and the many people met along the way playing the audience, who, through the stories of their encounters, also took part in shaping the narrative of the performance. Off the back of this, in September 2022, ten of the pilgrims who walked to COP26, including Jolie, created a new project entitled the Strolling Mummers. It began with the Pilgrimage for Unity, when they walked 250 miles from Dragon Hill in Wiltshire, to Caern les Boel on the Cornish Coast, performing an ancient mummer's play of Saint George and His Many Enemies along the way. The aim of this project was to focus on the idea of unity and the myriad of ways people are generating hope through practical endeavours and personal practices to build resilience in the face of an uncertain future, through embracing community, and remembering and reclaiming our indigenous culture. Then in 2023 the mummers set off again, this time walking from Edinburgh to the Isle of Wight, performing a play they’d penned themselves entitled Arthur’s Awakening; A Rousing Tale. This was a Pilgrimage for Re-Pair, exploring how people can heal and then thrive from living in a world where we’ve re-paired, in a million different ways, that includes our inner and outer worlds, ourselves with our enemies, and humanity with the planet. 

This all led to La Luna Coven, which was initially a ticketed event that ran as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival and allowed anyone to have the experience of being part of a coven for the evening, with four moon ceremonies that marked the moon phases throughout the month of May that connected people deeper to the cycles of nature and to creativity, but which went online during the pandemic and continued to run digitally ever since with fortnightly dark and full moon ceremonies. In 2023, Boomtown Festival commissioned La Luna Coven to be the ‘end room’ of the Live Action Role Play game that's at the heart of the festival. In 2024 La Luna Coven walked to the festival on a pilgrimage from the Isle of Wight, up to the land temple just outside of Winchester that houses Boomtown, where they opened the festival, with priestesses on both the main stages, blessing the partygoers, the land, and the beautiful intentions of the festival makers, who are working hard to create something sacred, connected, and fuelled by the imagination.

Before the pandemic Kriya Arts was focusing more on fringe theatre. In early 2020 we took Kit Redstone’s new show Passengers created under the direction of the award-winning director Jessica Edwards, over to the Adelaide Fringe Festival, commissioned by the prestigious RCC Venue. This was off the back of them seeing the show at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019 at the Summerhall venue, where we won the Lustrum Award.

“You’re like a Swiss Army Knife of theatre”

- Jessica Edwards says of producer Jolie Rose

In 2018 we won the The Brighton Fringe Visual Arts Award in Association with HOUSE and AOH, for the Museum of Ordinary People at The Spire as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival 2018. And took Sisterhood to Pleasance Beneath for the whole of August where it gained five and four star reviews, plus the accolade of Ground-Breaking Work from Fringe Review.

In 2017 we went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with Rhum and Clay's new production TESTOSTERONE, as part of the British Council Showcase. The show performed at Pleasance 2 throughout the whole of August and won the The Indies Best Theatre, Family, Musical or Dance Show at the Pleasance.

At the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2016 we were up there with the first fully fledged Kriya Arts production. HIP is a one woman show created and performed by Jolie Rose as an Extra-Live production. The five show run received critical acclaim and has subsequently toured extensively throughout the UK and internationally in 2017. This then led to an interactive walking tour theatrical experience; HIP Trip of Brighton: A Psychedelic Wander that premiered at the Brighton Fringe Festival in May 2017. 

Building on previous successes, Kriya Arts produced multi-award winning Backstage in Biscuit Land which toured nationally in 2016 as part of the House network and BAC's Collaborative Touring Network. It then went on to tour in Canada and the US with the support of the British Council. In 2015 Backstage in Biscuit Land was presented as part of both the British Council Showcase and iF Platform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In November 2015 the show featured as part of BBC4's On Stage: Live from Television Centre. At the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2014 it won Total Theatre's Emerging Company Award.

Kriya Arts also produced Tangram Theatre Company's ThreeWeeks Editor's Choice Award winning "Scientrilogy" which included Origin of Species... the Off West End Award winning Albert Einstein: Relativitively Speaking and most recently The Element in the Room.

In 2015 House awarded Kriya Arts their greenhouse fellowship working with Harlow Playhouse and Hertford Theatre to support a step change in their approach to diversity and access. 

Kriya Arts has a large database of venues, industry contacts and PR connections. Our unique touring style can be tailored to suit your needs. No project is too great or small. We have at our disposal a vast network of talented folks who can help you in any task you throw at us... or at least we can point you in the right direction.

Specialties 

Problem solving. Budgeting. Fundraising. International Touring. Networking. Public speaking. Communications. Sticking to the integrity of an idea. Project managing. Bookings. Contracts. Marketing. Promoting. Branding. Designing. Web presence. Websites. Photography. Customer liaising. Inspiring. Team work. Creative writing. Obvious track avoiding. Quirky embracing. Coolness enhancing.

Portfolio

Co-Creator - Strolling Mummers Pilgrimage for Unity (2022 to Present)

Co-Creator - Listening to the Land Pilgrimage for Nature (2021)

Producer - La Luna Coven - Online International Arts Ensemble (2019 to Present)

Co-Creator - Museum of Ordinary People - Pop-up Museum (2018 to 2022)

Producer - Passengers - International Theatre Co. (2019 to 2021)

Theatre Maker - Sisterhood - International Theatre Co. (2018 to 2019)

Producer - Rhum and Clay -  International Theatre Co. (2016 to 2019)

Theatre Maker - HIP -  International Theatre Co. (2015 to 2017)

Producer - Tangram Theatre Company - International Theatre Co. (2013 to 2016)

Producer - Touretteshero - International Theatre Co. (2014 to 2016)

Producer - Parrabbola - International Theatre Co.  (2013 to 2014)

Producer - Glass-Eye Theatre - International Theatre Co.  (2013)

Producer - We Flew Big - International Theatre Co. (2013) 

Producer - Crowtown Productions - UK Theatre Co. (2013) 

Curator & General Manager – Studio Wonderland & Grafik Warfare – Brighton Open Houses (2010-2011)

Producer/PA – Attic Theatre/Jonathan Kay – International Theatre Co. & Training Prog. (2005-2011)

Producer – 3rd Heaven Cabaret – Firegathering Festival (2005-2009)

Director & Producer – Suffolk Howlers – Touring Theatre Company (2005-13)

R&D Assistant – Zygo Arts – International Theatre Tour (2005)

Project Assistant – Zap Art - Brighton Festival’s Streets of Brighton (2003-2005)

Director – Shuffle Sister Ltd. – Theatre in Education (2002-2004)

Production Assistant – Nothing to See Here Productions – New Media Collective (2002-2010)

Director and Editor – Flow Magazine - Webzine (2001-2002)