LAUREN SHEERMAN

Soil. seed-living as a weed is an intimate examination of witches in British folklore. Lauren Sheerman explores a woman's struggle to find a sense of place and belonging in an evolving urban setting. Turning to her plants for company, the ‘hag’ uncovers a whole world of women and stories that help her on a mystical and somewhat dangerous journey to find a sense of place. This personal and profound story uses physical theatre, performance poetry and ritual to create an immersive story telling experience.

Lauren is a performance artist and facilitator whose practice seeks collaboration between the inner and outer spaces of the physical body and the natural and unnatural worlds around us. Her work is concerned with the folkloric, the mythical; with eco-poetics and ritual. Weaving stories of place, time and people to create multi-disciplinary encounters. Lauren's work uses a combination of poetry, movement, and ritual to create worlds steeped in the ancient but reworked into a modern day context. Lauren's work is rarely performed in traditional spaces and looks to re-imagine the everyday mundane into something mystical and unexpected. Lauren has previously performed in warehouses, abandoned factories, and on cliff tops. Lauren's work is always created directly for the space in which it is performed creating site responsive experiences for the audiences.

Lauren was born in Coventry and studied theatre at Coventry University and following graduation has lived in Cornwall and London but is now based between Coventry and Rugby. Alongside making performance work Lauren also produces poetry pamphlets and performance poetry which she performs around the country. She also works as a theatre and performance facilitator working with children and adults (both professional and non-professional) providing fun and accessible performance education for all.