New ventures

Tl;dr – making creative things in Leicester. Get involved.

Over three years of living in Leicester, I met a load of talented people, who just give away their time either through generosity or because they don’t quite realise how special they are. Also, I made friends with these people.

The other thing that happened is my confidence in writing, and my output, increased by a lot. (Also, directing is fun apparently.) (Also also, I like doing radio.) So, when I stopped pretending to a degree/graduated (ymmv) it seemed imperative to keep doing this sort of thing, because it’s what (all I’m) good at.

One project I did while in university has proved to be the catalyst for doing all of this. Basically, things got out of hand. William Breden came to me with an idea for a musical skit, taking the piss out of musicals and cheap dates with affection. This has snowballed into a full-length show at Dave’s Leicester Comedy Festival in February 2014. However, we needed to bill it under some sort of company name, rather than just vaguely go “here’s a show”. Also, through our collaboration, there proved to be a lot of common interest in doing a wide variety of stuff independent of any groups we’re associated with.

Enter Rebel Breed.

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Rebel Breed is a Leicester-based writing company, founded and run by William Breden and James D. Ward. We’re going to be doing all the stuff we want to be doing, cheaply, but well.

Our first theatrical project is Nando’s and Nandon’ts: A Musical, as I’ve said. We’ve got a core team of talented people working on it, and we’ve been indulged with space to try it out by Proteus Productions and the Y Theatre. It’s shaping up as its own cool thing, and we’re exited to share it. Mostly, we’re holding out the massive begging “please come see it travel to Leicester sleep on our floors” until the February DLCF dates.

However, if you’re in Leicester November 12th, were planning to go to the pub anyway, or just bored, we’ve got a workshop performance above Firebug from 7.30pm. The Facebook event is here, if you want to RSVP, and we’d love to see you and hear your thoughts.

Our film projects, including short films and a webseries, are currently in development, and are expected to launch mid-2014. (We’re basically short a camera at the moment.) This is an area Will’s taking the lead on, but I’m very much excited to be involved, and will be very active in developing this area (once I get some decent ideas for it).

Rebel Breed Radio, however is very much me. This is our podcast, which will be fully launching in January 2014. You can already find our podcast on iTunes – just search for Rebel Breed Radio. The lineup will feature a number of shows, incorporating a relaunched Culture Corner, readings, radio plays, and more. Between now and January, we are re-running classic episodes of Culture Corner you may have missed, now downloadable for the first time. Since I like chatting into a microphone with talented people, and experimenting with audio drama, this is very exciting.

So if you’re reading this, and you’re in Leicester, and you have the sneaking suspicion I’m going to be coming to you asking to be involved in some random project… you’re probably right. However, if you want to take the initiative in contacting us, our email is rebelbreedinc [at] gmail.com and we’re looking forward to hearing from you.

We’re also available all over that internet:

Twitter: @rebelbreedinc
facebook.com/rebelbreedinc
youtube.com/user/rebelbreedinc (Film)
rebelbreedinc.libsyn.com (Podcast)

This is all very exciting, and I should probably go prepare more stuff for all of this, but the cat’s sat on me so I’ll probably just continue interneting. If you made it this far, thank you, and I hope you will find at least some of the above interesting and/or entertaining. Cheers! 🙂