We turn audiences into collaborators and co-conspirators.
Since 2015 we’ve been taking audiences off the beaten track – into warehouses, shop-fronts, disused offices, phone boxes and live streams, collaborating with performers, clowns, astrophysicists, sound artists and political experts. These are shows that are boldly experimental, fostering a sense of the unknown. Wherever they take place, we gently position audiences at the centre of an absurd world that slowly opens up around them. They're often described as being raucous, funny and surreal.
It's our mission – and practice – to win over people who think experimental theatre isn't for them. We like making theatres full of people laugh, which is a great way to start.
Forest Sounds began as a Resident Company at Theatre Deli in Sheffield where The Stage said our work “breaks spine-bristling new ground”. Since then the company has taken work to Alphabetti Theatre, Hull Truck, Camden People’s Theatre, artsdepot, DINA, DNweekeND, UnShut Festival, Wardrobe Theatre, Rebuild Festival, Format Festival, Edinburgh Fringe and elsewhere.
The core members of Forest Sounds are Andy Owen Cook and Alfie Heffer, who are cousins.
Alfie trained in Devising at Dartington School of Art and is the Participation Producer at Site Gallery in Sheffield, and Director of Tales From The Playground. Outside of Forest Sounds Andy has received critical-acclaim in The Stage, The Crumb, The Reviews Hub and Everything Theatre. He has a distinction in an MA in Advanced Theatre Practice from the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama.
However, Forest Sounds shows are collaborative. They've been made by:
On ‘Person Spec’:
★★★★ “An initially daft and ultimately disturbing one-woman show that you would call dystopian if it were not so crushingly familiar.” – The Guardian
★★★ “Person Spec deftly balances the piece’s humour and darkness, bringing out the inherent absurdity of the recruitment process that it is skewering.” – The Stage
On ‘The Church of Jim’:
★★★★★ “Weird, wonderful and somewhat outrageous … with a genuine intention for positivity and community… from terrifying and bizarre, to beautiful and hypnotic” – State of the Arts
★★★★ “It felt a bit like an hour and half of a warm cuddle. I don’t remember the last time I laughed so hard.” – Amanda Munro, artsdepot
On ‘A Party After the End of the World’:
“I found myself in a room full of almost strangers, giddy with the possibility of positive human interaction, and a new understanding that this work so subtly and cleverly has highlighted our separateness and brought us all together.” – State of the Arts
“If the whole night was an exercise in melting the social anxiety of a large group of strangers, then it worked as well as any drug – we could have known each other for a decade rather than an hour … We were more than active participants in the experience, we were the experience.” – The Quietus
“Theatre has a tendency to make people feel trapped in seats, like they can’t make a sound or go to the toilet, but there was freedom for the duration of the show to leave the set and go to the bar, to explore the various spaces in the party, to talk to your friends, and to feel part of something rather than distant from an elitist piece of theatre. … I found it hard to join in with the ending as I was so astounded by how clever it was. … It is this sort of writing, that experiments with the roles of the audience and inanimate objects that only comes from a very talented and imaginative writer such as Andy.” – RMC Media