Artist Spotlight – Daedalus Theatre Company

Associate Artist Spotlight: Sef Townsend

By DaedalusAdmin on Monday, February 23, 2026

Photo of Sef Townsend at A Season of Bangla Drama by Rehan Jamil (2017)

Our second East spotlight is on global storyteller, interfaith peace advocate and Londoner Sef Townsend, who is of mixed Jewish and traveller heritage. Sef co-founded the East Storytelling Project alongside Paul Burgess and Shamim Azad back in 2014. Tasnim Siddiqa Amin had a chat with Sef one Saturday afternoon about his 30-year career in storytelling, his love for the East End and his latest creative projects.

Listen to the interview here:

Tell us about yourself

I’m a storyteller. I’ve been telling stories for a long time. But what are the contexts that I tell? So, I go regularly to schools, and I work with children from really young until they’re really quite old, actually. I’m also involved in peace and reconciliation work. And I’ve worked in Israel and Palestine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, South Africa, areas of conflict or post-conflict. I have been brought in to try and create some conversations between people who, according to their background, are supposed to dislike each other.

I’ve worked in Northern Ireland [where] I lost my hearing in a bomb blast many years ago. This led me to my involvement in the peace process. And from there we went to South Africa to a particular post-apartheid setup where people who’d been involved in the conflict in Northern Ireland, either as combatants or as people who’d suffered by being bereaved or having, for example, lost a leg or lost their hearing or being affected by the conflict, shared our experiences with people who had been, and were still, affected by the conflict and divisions in South Africa, and they shared their experiences and memories and legacy of apartheid. We all benefitted so much. It was a way of people learning through sharing stories.

I’m very involved in intercultural activities, as I am with East. I do a lot of work with young asylum seekers and refugees from all over the world, mainly from conflict zones. From Eritrea, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran. People come from conflict zones and have to very quickly settle into life here in the UK. It’s a very delicate work because you’re dealing with trauma. So all these things are the background to my stories. I use stories in all these different contexts, and I’ve been doing it now for 30 years.

What is your relationship with East London?

Well, because I’m of the same heritage [as] people who arrive in East London.

I arrived in London in 1980, so that’s 45 years. Before then, I lived in various places. I lived in New Zealand for many years. I’m a New Zealand citizen. I lived in the Netherlands as a young person. I lived in Sudan. So I had a background that connects with the world. And when I arrived in London, I would live in places like the East End. London Fields. I lived there. And I’ve been connected with the East End of London. Now I’m in Southeast London. I still consider that East London, but it’s on the other side of the river.

And listening to lots of stories about young Jewish men who would live in the East End of London, they’d often go across the river, across Tower Bridge, they wanted a different view on the world. And so they go across Tower Bridge, and they go to Southeast London, which is where I live now. It was different. You know, there weren’t so many Jewish people there. It just gave them a feeling of another world.

And so my relationship with East London is visiting many worlds. We meet people who come from various backgrounds. I’m often in Whitechapel. I love the Whitechapel market. I go to the Whitechapel Gallery. It’s very mixed around the Aldgate area. You know, you go to a trendy cafe, and Bangladeshi people are serving there. You go into Whitechapel High Street, people with their family are buying things that they need. It’s a vibrant, lovely area. I suppose it’s a relationship of loving it.

Could you share with me your journey with the East Storytelling Project? I understand that you are one of the co-founders.

Paul Burgess and Shamim Azad already had done a few projects. I was invited along just to show what I could do. And then we thought, well, it’s time to create something which celebrates people in the East End of London. People would come together and share. A person who had Jewish roots in Brick Lane would come and tell their story of their parents arriving in the East End and they would share it with people from a Bangladeshi background. There were some real insights. People were surprised at the similarities. The great mosque in Brick Lane, before it was a mosque, it was a synagogue. Before it was a synagogue, it was a church. And it was the real history of what had happened over the years in this part of the East End of London, a place of immigrants.

We wanted to share our stories, our parents’ stories, not just of their journey, but sometimes their folktales, stories they’d heard. And it came to the point after about a year of workshopping that people were expressing that they’d like to perform.

I was very involved in creating the workshops. I had this storytelling background which enabled me to take us through various exercises. Shamim and I got on very well as storytellers. We sort of spark off each other. Paul with his musicality. So we started creating performances.

We performed initially at Rich Mix and at the Brady Centre. And then I had an idea that after all the performances, that was it, and I thought we need to use these and make an archive. We can’t just have these stories disappearing. Let’s record them. And that’s how the East Archive started.

It’s now got stories from about 25 storytellers from almost as many countries. I mean, in addition to Bangladeshi, Somali, Jewish, we’ve got Korean. We’ve got Swedish. We’ve got Vietnamese. And there it is on the eastarchive.com. And it’s well worth seeing because there’s a real treasure there.

Could you share with us a favourite East memory?

The latest thing that we did, there wasn’t much funding, but we all wanted to do this thing. And so I think we had one meetup and one rehearsal. But I’d worked with Kauthar, who is from a Somali background. I’d worked in lockdown in sort of mentoring her into telling. And she’s a really vibrant, energetic storyteller. And I think you had brought along Marshall with his particular Bangla, queer, political; he’s very English as well as being very Bangladeshi. We had John Heyderman, who’s a great storyteller. I was the first to mentor him and I continue to be his mentor. And then we had Farah and some other tellers. There was Shamim, but myself, I was the one who was hosting. Paul was playing the violin. You were there encouraging people to come along and tell on the day. It was a very vibrant, energetic thing. With only one rehearsal, it was very good.

What are you currently excited about creatively?

Well, I’m currently excited about a book that I’m working on, which is Wild London Tales for Children. I’m co-author of two books with Anne Johnson. One is London Folk Tales for Children. The other is London River Tales for Children. But now the publisher wants us to do another book. And I’ve decided on Wild London Tales for Children. So that’s a creative process. It’s not easy writing. It’s not easy writing with somebody else. But it’ll be out there, I hope, this time next year.

In the last year, I’ve been to seven different countries, mainly in the Middle East and North Africa. I’ve got a project in Tunisia coming up in May. I was there recently doing a language course because I know Arabic, but I wanted to improve it so I could tell. So I’ll be there for the festival in May.

Although at my very old age, I was 78 in April, I sometimes think I should quiet down a bit. But I can’t resist people asking me things. I’m still regularly in schools still, and I do these different things. So as long as I can, I will.

Follow Sef Townsend on Instagram.

Artist Spotlight: Marshall Savage

By DaedalusAdmin on Thursday, November 13, 2025

Photo of Marshall Savage at Kobi Nazrul Centre (2025)

Marshall Savage, also known as Mijan, is a Bangladeshi-British queer person from Bow. Marshall is passionate about LGBTQ+ rights and welfare not warfare. Marshall doesn’t come from a creative or academic background, but he loves learning new skills and embracing new experiences wherever they lead him. He is the newest member of our East Storytelling Project.

After a late evening of rehearsals for our latest East production EAST TO ELSEWHERE, local trade unionist Marshall and assistant producer Tasnim sat at Chaiwalla on Brick Lane with a coffee and roti to talk about the East End, activism and the importance of sharing stories of migrant women.

Tell us about yourself.

My name is Marshall, I’m born and raised in Tower Hamlets, in Bow specifically. I work for Tower Hamlets and I’m also a Trade unionist. I’m very heavily involved in activism, especially local activism and organising against the far right

Fun fact?

I am obsessed with vampires.

What makes the East End such a rich source of stories?

The East End is an amazing place; it was always seen as the armpit of London, where all the immigrants were shoved that no one wanted to deal with, from the Jews to the Irish to now the Bengalis. We have this incredible knack of creating a community wherever we are. Now Tower Hamlets and the East End are probably the most diverse cultural places in London, if not the world.

And how does your specific heritage influence the way you see the East End?

The way my parents migrated into this country and the struggles they faced, and me being an immigrant and queer, made me realise what it means to fight for equality, to fight for what’s right and look into the intersection of what it means to be a brown queer person.

What is storytelling?

Storytelling is sharing really important parts of your life, it doesn’t have to be word to word, it doesn’t have to be fact by fact, it’s how we interpret how we experience life. It matters because it’s the best way to share information, look at history, travellers, they are the best way to tell stories, how we connect with people, how we get people from different places to understand each other.

Why is it important to tell your mum’s story?

I feel like a lot of women of colour came here slightly unheard. My mum came here without any connections, she had to build her own community and that is a story worth telling, it is the story of many mothers and many women who came not just to London or England but who migrated to other parts of the country or other parts of the world, who stuck out and didn’t have a voice for themselves.

What has been your experience of the East Storytelling Project so far?

I walked in there not knowing what to expect. I thought I’d see more brown faces. 2 Jewish men, a beautiful black woman, 2 beautiful brown women, I saw people from different lives and experiences all encapsulating what the East End is.

Recommendation of a book that relates to East London?

One of the books I am reading right now is called United Queerdom by Dan Glass, who was a HIV activist and East End local. It talks about the East End struggle, the queer struggle and ongoing battles to fight for equality.

Artist Spotlight Major Projects

Artist Spotlight: Amy-Rose Edlyn

By DaedalusAdmin on Tuesday, September 2, 2025

We’re delighted to spotlight Amy (they/them), who first joined us in June to install our exhibition at Omnibus Theatre. This time, Amy returns as co-creator of Queering the Earth and stage manager for Dysbiosis. Throughout an intensive week of rehearsals at Queens Theatre Hornchurch, Amy will be bringing a wide range of skills to support the team. As a queer interdisciplinary artist and theatremaker deeply engaged in political and community work, Amy already feels like a long-lost member of Dysbiosis.

Tell us about yourself and your creative practice. You’ve worked across stage management, design, facilitation, and live art – how would you describe what drives your work and where your practice is heading?

I am a queer, multidisciplinary creative based in Tower Hamlets. I started out as a theatre designer/maker alongside working in technical theatre working extensively around West End and off-West End productions for over a decade now. In the past 5 years I expanded my practice in co-founding and directing queer arts company Bold Mellon Collective CIC as a creative producer, facilitator and curator of visual and live-art. Since February 2025, I have also been an artist in residence at Firepit Art Gallery and Studios CIC developing my own visual art & curatorial practice. I am especially interested in community-based projects which weave the intersections of the LGBTQIA+ community together and promote wellbeing through the arts. Politically active and socially engaging works drive me to create and currently I feel my practice going through an exciting transformation in blending these worlds and expanding capacity so I am excited to see where it takes me!

You first encountered Dysbiosis as an audience member at the Omnibus Theatre sharing, then co-curated the exhibition, and now you’re joining as stage manager. What has it been like to experience the project from these different perspectives?

Artist Spotlight Major Projects

Artist Spotlight: Amy Daniels

By DaedalusAdmin on Monday, July 14, 2025

As we enter our third phase of our new project, Dysbiosis, we are a team that continues to grow, and so here we have it: our latest spotlight on our newest team member, Amy Daniels. Amy joined us to present our first public sharing of Dysbiosis at the Omnibus Theatre last month as part of the 96 Festival and will be leading on the lighting design for Dysbiosis here on out.

Amy has been a lover of theatre since she can remember. She studied English Literature at the University of Sussex, then fell in love with all things production during a year abroad at Stony Brook University in New York. She works on a wide range of performance, with an emphasis on the political, the playful and the pondering. Find her full credits and portfolio on her website – www.amydanielslighting.com

Tell us about yourself and your creative practice.

Artist Spotlight Major Projects

Artist Spotlight: Nuke Lagranje

By DaedalusAdmin on Sunday, February 23, 2025

For our final Dysbiosis artist spotlight, we meet director, writer, and performer Nuke Lagranje (he/they), whose work draws deeply from his experiences as a queer, neurodivergent person. In the first R&D phase in 2023, Nuke embodied one half of a two-headed, non-human creature—an abstract entity accidentally conjured by an artist. This creature weaves together elements of fairy lore, huldras, and other mythological beings, reflecting a connection to nature and the unseen.

Assistant Director Tasnim sat down with Nuke to discuss his creative practice, the intersections of queerness and nature, making new connections in the industry, and more.

*Photo of Nuke Lagranje (right) at* *Queens Theatre Hornchurch* *with Yael Elisheva by Hannah Davis.*

Tell us about yourself and your creative practice.

My name is Nuke. I direct, write plays and prose and act now and then. My focus when I write or direct is usually magical realism, social activism and psychology. I produced, wrote and directed Constant Reprises. I am Spanish-Dominican, I grew up in Madrid, moved to England for university then moved to London after graduating from Portsmouth. I am queer, Black-Caribbean and… I love dogs.

What does ‘dysbiosis’ mean to you?

Artist Spotlight Major Projects

Artist Spotlight: Shakira Stellar

By DaedalusAdmin on Tuesday, October 8, 2024

For our seventh DYSBIOSIS artist spotlight we turn to the exciting, socially engaged work of multidisciplinary musician, composer, theatremaker and poet Shakira Stellar. In the first DYSBIOSIS R&D, Shakira crafted an ambient soundscape using lichen as a musical score, imitating its structures and textures using a synthesiser. During the second R&D, Shakira delved deeper into the symbiosis between the drummer and the earth, treating music as a dialogue of vibrations and frequencies. Through this exploration, Shakira sought to subvert the ancient notion of the “Great Chain of Being,” reimagining rocks and minerals not as the lowest, but as vital, resonant voices in the cosmic symphony.

Tell us about yourself and your creative practice

I’m a multidisciplinary artist, primarily working as a drummer and composer, but I’m also a poet and theatremaker. I fuse these mediums and approaches all the time and love doing so. I follow what sparks my interest and love to try new things so my practice is always developing and growing, which leads me to meet and work with new people, which is so wonderful. I love to learn new things, I’m so happy when I am, so who knows where my artistry will go!

How does your heritage influence the way you view/value nature?

Artist Spotlight

Artist Spotlight: Paul Burgess

By DaedalusAdmin on Thursday, March 28, 2024

This month’s spotlight is on DYSBIOSIS designer-director and director of Daedalus Theatre Company Paul Burgess, who conceived the project back in 2020 before recruiting a team of creative practitioners last year to delve deeper into social constructions of Nature using a queer and interdisciplinary lens.

Tell us about yourself and your creative practice.

I’m a set and costume designer by training and self-taught in video and interactive digital, which I use in both performance and visual art contexts. I teach on the side, mainly English as a second language, at my partner’s tutorial school, Angkriz, though I’ve also taught on theatre and theatre design courses at various universities. Both feed my creative practice by challenging me in different ways. I also have various voluntary roles, mainly in the area of sustainability. These also feed into my creative work, and include being the coordinator of the Society of British Theatre Designers’s working group on sustainability and a co-director of Ecostage. I’m also on the Environmental Responsibility Subcommittee at Queens Theatre, Hornchurch, where we’re working on DYSBIOSIS. For fun, I play the violin, most often with The Black Smock Band, which connects with the music and storytelling we do as part of our EAST project. It all adds up to one interconnected creative practice.

What does ‘dysbiosis’ mean to you?

I suggested this as a working title for the project, and it seems to have stuck, so I suppose I need to explain myself!

It came initially from I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong. Having defined dysbiosis as ‘breakdowns in communication between different species – host and symbiont – that live together, ‘ Yong goes on to say:

Our planet has entered the Anthropocene – a new geological epoch when humanity’s influence is causing global climate change, the loss of wild species, and a drastic decline in the richness of life. Microbes are not exempt. On coral reefs or in human guts, we are disrupting the relationships between microbes and their hosts, often pulling apart species that have been together for millions of years.

I had already been thinking about the way we use Nature to talk about society, often in ways that are divorced from the reality of the natural world, such as the notion of the body politic, or economic competitiveness being described as Darwinian, or the absurd claim that LGBTQ+ people are unnatural. But what if the metaphorical body politic is suffering from metaphorical dysbiosis?

Artist Spotlight Major Projects

Artist Spotlight: Fran Olivares

By DaedalusAdmin on Thursday, February 22, 2024

Our latest Dysbiosis team spotlight is on Chilean performer, director, translator, tutor and theatremaker Fran Olivares. When Fran isn’t busy bringing thought-provoking theatre to life, she is also a proud mother to a 2-year-old who keeps her on her toes and gives her a whole new appreciation for the power of imagination and play!

Tell us about yourself and your creative practice.

I’m Fran, a theatre person from Chile, now based in SE London. My work spans directing, performing, translating, writing, and facilitating, all focused on themes around identity, marginality, and the female experience. Dysbiosis addresses the urgent and dreadful impacts of global warming and neo-capitalist exploitation. Personally, these issues are not abstract for me; they’re part of the reality currently affecting South America, and as a mother, the future of our planet weighs heavily on my mind.

I’m driven by the belief that making even a small difference in our corners of the world can lead to a brighter future. So, for me, my work is more than just putting on a show for entertainment; it’s also about using my body/voice as a tool for communication, a way to build community, and a platform to shine a light on the issues that matter.

What does ‘dysbiosis’ mean to you?

To me, ‘dysbiosis’ is about imbalance, and not just in nature, but in how we interact within our communities. It’s as if everything from the ecosystems to our social structures have fallen out of harmony because of the way we treat each other and our planet.

Artist Spotlight Associate Artists Major Projects

Artist Spotlight: Zia Álmos Joshua

By DaedalusAdmin on Friday, January 12, 2024

Our fourth artist spotlight is on Zia Álmos Joshua [X] (neutral pronouns) who has a unique position on the Dysbiosis project as the only member of the team who has joined remotely for both R&D weeks. Currently doing their PhD in Texas, Zia has been our academic consultant and human encyclopedia on the project.

Can you give us a quick intro to yourself, your research and your creative practice?

I am a researcher, educator, writer, performer, and activ-ish, born and raised in Brixton, London, UK, currently studying for a PhD at Rice University, in Houston, Tx, USA. My research is focused on posthumanism, and the social, political, and philosophical dimensions of taxonomy, ecology, biology, emergent technology, and consciousness, with these also shaping my creative work (autotheory; poetry; prose; performance art). I am dedicated to teaching and education, and spent the 6 years prior to my PhD at the Linnean Society of London and Wellcome Collection, working in science communication and public engagement.

What does ‘dysbiosis’ mean to you?

Dysbiosis to my mind is a complicated term; it technically means a dysregulation in the/a microbial community (the microbiota or microbiome) of the human body, one that we ordinarily live in a mutualistic-symbiotic relationship with, but for whatever reason is out of wack, and so the health of the body is compromised. How I like to think about it, is imagining the Earth and its ecosystems as kinds of bodies with well-regulated mutualistic-symbiotic relationships, and that we are presently entering a stage of existence where a lot of human-related activities and processes have pushed the boundaries of what those various bodily entanglements can tolerate, and the planet itself, or various parts of it, are entering into dysbiosis, ecosystems out of wack, spiraling out of balance.

Artist Spotlight Major Projects Partners and Collaborators Research and Development

Artist Spotlight: Yael Elisheva

By DaedalusAdmin on Wednesday, December 13, 2023

We met up with the Dysbiosis team again for a second week of R&D at Queens Theatre Hornchurch two weeks ago. Our third spotlight is on theatremaker, physical performer, drag artist, drama facilitator and many more things Yael Elisheva. They often work in Jewish spaces and use their artistic practice as a means of examining Jewish culture and religion.

What is your relationship with nature?

In my work, I play with found objects and explore how they can be used unconventionally and with multiple purposes. I grew up observing the sabbath, which gave me a strong connection to nature and rest and play. In today’s Western society – our relationship with rest is often viewed as lazy. I’d love to challenge that and offer rest as a means of rejuvenation for our planet.

How do queerness and nature intersect?

When I first heard of different animals and plants that are constantly changing genders like oysters and mushrooms, I felt so validated in my own gender expression.

How does your heritage influence the way you view/value nature?

As a jew, I have rituals and prayers that revolve around nature and gratitude for nature. I have been specifically interested in how the Jewish sabbath embodies an attitude of rest which allows nature to rest as well.

Were any aspects of the project new to you (e.g. devising collaboratively, doing an R&D, working with a designer-led company) and if so, what did you expect coming in?