Left to right: Jono Chant-Stevens, Dan Cox, Paul Burgess and Andy Bannister. Photo, Thomas Chant.

This summer, Daedalus performed its gig-theatre piece Gerrard Winstanley’s True and Righteous Mobile Incitement Unit at St Nicholas Priory, Exeter. Artistic director Paul Burgess reflects on the project.

We’ve been talking with the team at St Nicholas Priory for a while. It’s a fantastic building; the oldest in Exeter. Full of history, it felt like the perfect venue for Mobile Incitement. However, our first attempt, part of a planned tour in 2020, was cancelled due to Covid. This year, we finally made it. It was the first time we’d performed the show since we did it at the Freedom and Independence Theatre Festival in Whitechapel, East London, back in 2021. On that occasion, guest performer Saida Tani joined us to sing traditional Bengali songs.

Mobile Incitement, as we call it for short, was made in collaboration with The Black Smock Band – a gay eco-socialist folk band based in Deptford, South-east London. It tells the story of protest in England from the Peasants’ Revolt to the end of the Industrial Revolution, through historical texts, folk songs, and new writing. But what makes it particularly special is that everywhere we take it, we work with local people to make the show truly site-specific, with lots of local stories.