Legendary Fool Jonathan Kay hits Bristol

This month (May 31) the Wardrobe Theatre welcomes the legendary ’21st Century Fool’ Jonathan Kay.

Kay is recognised as a leading performer in the ‘Theatre of Immediacy’ of Fooling, and is a highly respected practitioner and teacher of Fooling workshops. He is the founder of the largest street theatre festival in the UK, Winchester’s The Hat Fair, and has performed and taught in Canada, the USA, Australia, South Korea and Jordan and extensively throughout Europe and the UK.

In September 2018, Jonathan launched his own anarchic theatre company, the Nomadic Academy for Fools (NOA). Auditions were held in Berlin and London, and the ten places quickly filled. The annual programme for the NOA constitutes six intensive two week workshops, where the students meet in different cities throughout Europe. The first 14-day workshop took place in Helsinki last October.

As well as teaching, Jonathan is a seasoned performer and has been fooling for over 40 years. He is part of the family at Glastonbury Festival, with over 25 successive years in the main Theatre tent, and has performed at countless festivals across Europe including Rudolstadt in Germany, Sweden’s infamous No Mind Festival and the Sunday Papers Live in London. In 2018 he was invited to give a sold out talk at TedX Manchester where he turned the event completely on its head to a rapturous audience, and in the same year had a lengthy feature and interview on BBC World News to an audience of millions.

So, what is Fooling? “A form of improvised theatre, Fooling is as unpredictable and unknowable for the performer as it is for the audience,” Jonathan explains. “Foolish theatre is explicitly non-traditional and without rational considerations, because it is driven by feelings held in the Now.

“The act of “Thinking” is improvisational theatre’s most immediate and persistent assassin. Go with Feeling, not with Thinking. Fooling is inclusive: a way of including both the ‘real’ world of the audience and the ‘imaginary’ world of theatre.”

“Jonathan Kay is one of the most inspiring and free-thinking theatre practitioners I have ever met. He is a unique, genuine and natural communicator – a one-off,” says director, performer and RADA faculty member Jeremy Stockwell. “As a teacher and a performer, he is funny, frustrating and challenging all at once. He cuts through pretension, contrivance, cliché and ego.

“There was no hiding place. I learnt a lot from him. I would urge anyone to sign-up to his courses and to see his shows. He is a philosopher, a fool and a much needed voice of sanity.”

“Jonathan’s stomping ground is on the cliff between inertia and speed, encouraging participants to fly or to learn how to land, not only in their imagination but also in their purpose,” explains Jonathan’s manager Joe Volk. “He helps us to look at the hypothetical anchors that can tie people down for a lifetime, engaging them in a compassionate, humorous and sometimes challenging way so they can liberate themselves, turning what appears to be valueless into gold.”

Jonathan Kay: Know One’s Fool Wardrobe Theatre, May 31. For more info, visit thewardrobetheatre.com/livetheatre/jonathan-kay