Tit for Tat

Tit for Tat is an unusual juggling company that believes in celebrating the ordinary. We take ordinary objects, objectives and scenes, and we explore every nook and cranny until we make them extra-ordinary. We believe in finding the most exciting and, more often than not, the most difficult way of getting from A to B. Even when undertaking simple tasks such as making a cup of tea, painting a wall, or changing a lightbulb.

Tit for Tat have developed a unique devising style within juggling, and have performed pieces both small and large all across the UK. Whether its making chips for the public in a blur of ketchup and salt, launching furniture halfway across the stage, or becoming impossibly tangled within their own braces – Tit for Tat bring a special element of heartfelt complicity and comedic near-calamity to all of their performances.

Following on from our UK wide tour of The Most Dangerous Cup Of Tea In The World, we have been working internationally in community outreach projects, artistic research collaborations, bespoke prop design, and live performance.

Most recently we have been working with artists and graduates from Lecoq and LISPA to explore juggling as a means of narrative; using objects to create scenes of farce, chaos and fiasco to develop characters and create stories.

Our new Outdoor Theatre project, BOOKs, aims to bring together artists that we have been working with for the last year – throwing our combined theories into Tit for Tat’s frothing pot and giving it a good shake.

For this we will be working with Artists Maia Ayling (Thimble Theatre) Eva Zibler (CircusNext: Mismo Nismo) and Max Louis (Nasty, Brutish & Short) to bring a larger, more colourful, more absurd, more eccentric, more EXPLOSIVE full-length outdoor theatre show.

Watch this space!

(Not literally, computer screens are bad for your eyes, read a good book. Think about this space.)

 

Laughing maniacally in the pilots’ seats are Louis Lamprell and Ryan Murphy, who met in 2010 at Circomedia (the UK’s centre for Contemporary Circus and Physical Performance). Whilst there, they both discovered a passion for the eccentric and the absurd; applying juggling theory to dustbin lids, clothes racks, and shopping trolleys to create surreal theatre and unconventional spectacle.

Louis went on to study and explore equipment and bespoke prop design – experimenting with helium, magnets and mechanics to engineer his wildest juggling ideas. Alongside this he founded his own walkabout entertainment company Joy Magnet. Ryan went on to continue his creative juggling studies at Circus Space (National Centre of Circus Arts) as well as courses in Le Jou and Clown at École Philippe Gaulier.

 

After working internationally as jugglers, entertainers and divisors, Ryan and Louis re-met and began working together in 2012 as cabaret double act “Ryman & Lou”. They took to stages both small and large, incorporating the joy of low ceilings, narrow corridors, or overly expansive spaces into their comedy and audience interaction.

In 2013 they co-founded Tit for Tat and went on to create their first full-scale show; “The Most Dangerous Cup Of Tea In The World”. Ryan and Louis owe their UK-Wide celebration of absurdity to the support of many, with a special thanks to Kate Hazel (Winchester Hat Fair), Matthew Feerick (Wet Picnic), and Matt Pang (Pangottic) for their sage insights, wild enthusiasm and bemused patience.