WonderZoo and Theatre:
After graduating from his Masters degree in Art and Entrepreneurship (2012), Slain McGough Davey (formerly known as Peter Davey) stayed in Plymouth and has been running monthly gigs every month without fail from 2012-2022, under different incarnations before changing the name to ‘WonderZoo’ in 2017.
In 2014, under the name ‘PCQ Arts’, Slain McGough Davey wrote ‘Words, War and Music’, which was his first play, a surrealist take on the first world war, using 12 different languages, representing 12 countries that fought in the war, told from other nations’ perspectives. This was shown at the Barbican Theatre.
In 2019, Slain wrote another play that was shown at the Barbican Fringe Festival called ‘WonderZoo is Present’. It was a surrealist take on feminism and LGBTQI+ rights.
After this play, Slain has been devoting more energy into developing the theatre side of WonderZoo and has come the realisation that it needs to be a proper arm of WonderZoo with fresh talent and community-driven, alongside other performance work.
Over the past two years, we have done several street and indoor theatre commissions for Nudge Community Builders and filmed theatre pieces for Stronger North Stonehouse.
These include:
- ‘Silent Protest’ for Nudge, 2019. Slain dressed up in a straitjacket made by Chi, with tape over his mouth, and walked around Union Street, Plymouth, getting people to write comments on his straitjacket about what they thought about the area. This was to show that, although Stonehouse gets a bad representation in the press, the people who live and work there have positive things to say about it.
- ‘Hearts and Houses’ for Nudge, 2020. Chi and Slain went round some blocks of flats in Union Street (Edgecombe House and Devonshire House) performing poems songs and dances for residents on Valentine’s Day.
- ‘VJ Day’ for Nudge, 2020 – Chi and Slain performed songs, dances and spoken word at four locations of Union Street around the theme of world peace.
- Stronger North Stonehouse project, 2021 – 8 x 20 min films made with WonderZoo crew and local artists around North Stonehouse – spoken word, music, theatre, uploaded to WonderZoo YouTube channel. The idea was to bring positivity to the area. We had a shoestring budget and had to be massively inventive, producing 8 films in 2 months during Covid19 restrictions.
- ‘Romeo and Juliet with a Twist’ for Nudge, 2022. Chi and Slain performed a 12 minute adapted play based around Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with added elements of surrealism and pantomime humour. This was for a Valentine’s Day community event at Union Corner. The play was accompanied by Keith Pollard on keyboard.
- 'Romeo and Juliet vs Roald Dahl's The Enormous Crocodile'. We are booked to perform at Ocean Studios on the 19th May 2022, in a show organised by Hope In The Heart CIC around the idea of Lived Experience, which will include veteran Stefan Daniel talking about his lived experience in the army, as well as music and theatre by art assembly - Friends of the Apocalypse.
- 2022, WonderZoo at the The Clay Factory near Ivybridge, a 20 minute walk from Ivybridge train station. It’s a disused clay factory that has been turned into a shared working space and arts venue super fab space. Some local people had created a week long festival called Dartmoor Edge Literary Fest, which included writing workshops, performances and children’s activities. We were invited to come along and do some performance and creative workshop with the kids, inside one of the shopping containers that’s in the building. It was a cosy space and very fun day out for WonderZoo. We went back in 2023 and staged another live show this time on a stage for family's called The Roald Dahl's Enormous Crocodile meets Romeo and Juliet, with Star Wars and Cowboys.
2023 November St Luke’s gallery at The Box part of Culture Club, it was a direct response to a trip to Sheffield Millennium Gallery and meeting the artist Kedisha Coakley. The exhibition showed paintings of exotic flowers that were taken from colonised countries, as a sign of wealth and power. The performance was a direct response to the idea of different elements being brought together that might not normally co-exist, with the aim of reflecting upon the past and present and was unique installation performance which comprised of movement, sound, spoken word and imagery and included the artists Slain McGough Davey, Chi Bennett ,Leonie Prentice and writer Helen Thomas.
Plymouth Poetry Festival 2024
As part of the new Plymouth Poetry Festival, WonderZoo created an intimate gig at the Green Space with a performance with Friends of the Apocalypse that took a small story called The Room into 20 minute short play on the subject of madness.
Friends of the Apocalypse – art assembly performances, including Theatre, comedy, music, spoken word. Unrehearsed experimental surrealist performances with an ever-changing membership, led by Slain McGough Davey. Since it started over 3 years age there have been over 20 shows staged from Plymouth to London involving over 40 artists. With 4 shows in 2023 and a CD out called ‘RIP IT UP - BURN IT - THROW IT AWAY - FUCK IT AND PAY NO MORE THAN 50P’. (Released as limited edition 100 signed copies sold out)
Future:
We hope to develop a Theatre strand of WonderZoo that is grass-roots and can perform in any setting, whether that’s in a small community space, someone’s front room, or a port-a-loo.