Bethany Wells
Designer
Trained in architecture at the Bartlett and Royal College of Art, I am an award-winning performance designer working across dance, theatre and installation, with a particular interest in site-specific and devised performance.
I trust in the power of performance to open up space and time to new possible realities, and am interested in expanding what can be achieved politically and socially by collective live experience. My practice is trauma-informed, in terms of both process and audience experience. I see all my work as a form of spatial, social and sensory activism.
In my solo practice, Artists’ Child, I work with spatial sound and modular synthesis to sculpt unconventional performance experiences. I am currently writing a techno opera, and working to establish an experimental spatial sound studio, Listen Behind You.
Recent work includes: Wish You Weren’t Here (Theatre Centre, Sheffield Theatres), All That Lives (Grief Series, Leeds 2023), The People’s Palace of Possibility (The Bare Project, Arts Admin and Lyth Arts Centre), Extreme Unction Vol 2 (Nwando Ebizie, ArtsAdmin), Birds And Bees (Charlie Josephine, Sheffield Theatres/Theatre Centre), You Heard Me (Luca Rutherford, Northern Stage and UK tour), Choreography of Care Symposium (Claire Cunningham, Tanzhaus nrw, Dusseldorf), Written In The Body (Charlotte Spencer Projects, Brighton Festival), This Endless Sea (Chlöe Smith, Berwick Upon Tweed), The War Of The Worlds (Rhum and Clay, UK and US tour), Thank You Very Much (Claire Cunningham Projects, MIF/National Theatre of Scotland, European tour), Faces in The Crowd (Gate Theatre), POPS (Charlie Josephine, High Tide), The Department of Distractions (Third Angel, Sheffield Theatres) Us Against Whatever (Middle Child, Liverpool Everyman and Hull Truck), DISTANCE (Alex McSweeney, Park Theatre), Party Skills for The End Of The World (Nigel Barrett and Louise Mari, Manchester International Festival, Shoreditch Town Hall), TRUST (Gate Theatre), All We Ever Wanted Was Everything (Middle Child, Paines Plough Roundabout).
Associate Artist, Middle Child, Hull
Awarded, 110 Anniversary Scholarship, University of Leeds [2014]
MA Architecture, Royal College of Art [2011]
BSc Architecture, Bartlett, UCL [2007]
