CONSUMED by Dreambite Collective
Donation protected
OUR STORY
Hi there,
Thank you for taking the time to learn more about us and our project.
DREAMBITE is a queer, female writing collective made up of Clare Stenning, Katrina Bennett and Lydia Sabatini. DREAMBITE was formed in 2022, at the end of our Masters degree at CSSD, when the three of us realised that our combined passion for writing form-breaking work that unleashes queer and female subjectivity could cumulate into something pretty exciting. We have since been working together to create CONSUMED:
After a year of writing and reviewing the scripts, months of reaching out to various theatres, looking for directors and producers, you can imagine how excited and honoured we were when Camden People's Theatre agreed to take our play on for a week run in October! We then applied for funding through the Arts Council of England to produce the play, determined to make our bold vision come to life...
ACE turned us down. They'll tell you this themselves, it wasn't that they didn't believe in the project, rather that times are tough for everyone and the theatre industry is definitely not exempt from that. Regardless, our dream 30K budget vanished in front of our eyes.
Thankfully, that only motivated our team further. Fellow CSSD alumni Brandon Sanchez joined our team, helping and supporting with poster design, admin work and soothing vibes. We launched our social media pages, CPT announced their season and listed us as a 'Don't Miss' show! Things are shaping up.
But here's the tiny little hiccup... Our can-do attitude and die-hard love for our project can't do it all. We do need a team. We do have expenses. And we need to cover them, somehow. So here we are! Welcome to the CONSUMED crowdfunder! I'm sure if you've made it through this lengthy story, you've understood its point. We'd love your financial support.
OUR SHOW
A woman who can’t get enough
Of gummies
Of wet dreams
Of herself.
Three women, three writers, three insatiable appetites.
CONSUMED is a titillating queer drama that creeps into the unsettling corners of the female experience where the boundaries between body and mind start to blur. In the fevers of addiction, lucid dreams and self-cannibalism, these women are consumed by strange sounds, visions and desires. Time, space and identity warp around them. Are these intrusive fever dreams bringing them closer to their true selves …or are they actually in danger of losing themselves forever?
The play will be performed at Camden People’s Theatre from the 1st to the 5th of October 2024 (Tickets here). It will contain three short plays, where the writers come together to examine the complexity of existing in a female body today:
LUCID
Lucid by Katrina Bennett is about a woman losing her grasp on reality as she obsessively investigates the vivid and wacky sex dreams she’s having about her flatmates.
GUMMY GUMMY
Gummy Gummy by Clare Stenning is a sensory exploration of substance use and about the fine line between being high and being low.
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT
You Are What You Eat by Lydia Sabatini is a surreal piece of body horror telling the story of a woman who’s lost her body, and who can only get it back by literally consuming herself.
OUR WRITERS
Katrina Bennett is a scriptwriter from Warwickshire. Her debut play CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTER, developed with mentorship from Barrel Organ Theatre, performed at festivals across the Midlands in 2022 before a sell-out run at Camden People’s Theatre in May 2023. She works as a Mentor Playwright for the National Theatre on their New Views programme.
Clare Stenning is a Franco-British writer and actor. Her debut play #Virginie, was devised with Tom Corradini Teatro, then performed at the Teatro Rivoli, in Turin. Her next play, Vacillate was part of the King’s Head Theatre’s Queer Season in 2019. She has since written several short films which she has also performed in, including A Party to Forget, finalist at the World Monologue Film Festival.
Lydia Sabatini is a playwright, originally from Essex. She was part of the Bush Theatre’s Emerging Writers Group 2021/22, the Traverse Theatre’s Breakthrough Writers: In Residence Programme 2022/3 and the Mercury Theatre’s Playwrights scheme 2022/3. Her play The Light Trail, which was shortlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Playwriting, was performed at the Hope Theatre in 2022.
WE COULD USE SOME HELP THOUGH!
Here’s what your generous donation would be going towards (all of these sound boring but they’re really important, I swear)
Any additional expenses like further cast & crew fees, admin costs, travel, snacks/food, reward costs, etc will be covered by profit share.
TIMELINE
With rehearsals starting in September, our first objective is to cast our show and bring together a fantastic crew, including a sound designer, a lighting designer, a costume designer, a set designer… With your support, we can offer to pay our team, in the way we believe all artists should be.
Follow the crowdfunder for updates on our next steps!
JOIN THE FUN
By backing our play, you’re not only helping us achieve our creative goal, you’re also becoming part of our collective, because we literally couldn’t do this without your support.
Lots of love,
Dreambite
