Our annual sample of new performance returns to Contact with new works-in-development from n:u (melissandre varin) in May and Nathan Birkinshaw in June; Lisa Ford is also developing an idea for future presentation…

28 & 29 May, evening
n:u (melissandre varin) — event details to be announced in late-April.

11 June, 6pm-9pm
Nathan Birkinshaw — guest appearance in Social Experiment.

Works

n:u (melissandre varin) · العين — Le mauvais oeil — The evil eye

Reframing the العين as an energy not to be fearful of, but instead a force that can be experienced and generated by any of us. The evil eye is re-imagined as a technology to transcend topographic and cultural boundaries, linear time, and the pressure to achieve synchronicity or co-regulation. It is an ana-choreography — a movement against the polished and established — where the gazed upon and the invisible encounter one another, invoking the “always in the happening”.

The creation process is rooted in “composing nearby”, a methodology inspired by Trinh T. Minh-ha’s refusal to speak about and preference to speak nearby. This approach allows the work to challenge a domineering, linear division of time (past-present-future triptych), and a vertical classification of ways of being.

n:u is an atmosphere-maker with a practice rooted in Congolese, Guadeloupean, and Beninese heritages. Building upon (more than) human, cross-border collaborations, they unearth ancestral ceremonies to be with change. They play with unexpected pairings between materials, bodies, and concepts — disrupting colonial binaries and dominant narratives.

Nathan Birkinshaw · How To Be Content

“Making peace with the fact this might be it.”
An exploration of contentment, led by a man brimming with mediocrity.
Through film, performance, song, and an increasingly questionable process, comes a show that investigates how to find meaning in the mundane — that somehow becomes increasingly more performative itself as time slips by.

Nathan is a performance artist, comedian, and theatre-maker whose work blends humour with the explorations of being human and the general absurdity of what comes with that responsibility (or lack thereof).
With an unhealthy obsession with the internet, you’re just as likely to find him there as well as showing work in theatres, back rooms of pubs, and having work appearing on BBC Radio.

Lisa Ford · Four rows back and on the other side of the aisle

Did you notice when they caught your eye, brushed past your elbow, tapped the table, left a coffee cup, raised their voice, held the door?

Lisa is a theatre-maker and dramaturg, she takes threads, some yours, some hers, some found in streets, in shop doorways, or in libraries. Often the threads are words and images or conversations with people, she weaves these together to create a fabric of collective feeling.

About

Each year since 2012, Works Ahead has invited artists to dig deeper into work presented at the previous year’s Emergency or other platform event.

A project developed out of the old Method Lab & SeedFund schemes which hÅb ran with greenroom until 2011, Works Ahead has offered 39 small, supported, work-in-development commissions for artists over the past fourteen years — often in partnership with Contact.

Credits

Works Ahead 2026 commissioned by hÅb and Contact; produced by hÅb; supported using public funding by Arts Council England. 

Project Mentor: Peader Kirk

Websites

WorksAhead.org
n:u — atmosphere-maker.org · Insta @nu.melissandre.varin
Nathan Birkinshaw — Insta @nathanbirkinshaw · YouTube @nathanbirkinshaw
Lisa Ford — Insta @lisaf0rd