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Nic Wistreich

Theatre & Live


As a kid I'd put on plays with friends in the street, and make films when my mum brought home the video camera from work. Then in 1988 I played Angel Gabrial in the York Mystery Plays to 1,400 people every night for a month, and got a run-on part in a TV miniseries with an evil Hugh Grant, and decided for a while that this is what I wanted to do.

Theatre & Live events

After visiting the Edinburgh Festival as a 15-year-old, I set up with Rachael Halliwell & friends the Flying Theatre Group. We put on our first play in 1995, Escapes, a devised mix of Miller, Williams, Sophocles, Shakespeare and Willy Russel crowd-funded by 30 people we knew who put in £10-20 each.

Two years later in 1997 we performed Simon Armitage's first play, Eclipse, as part of the BT National Theatre Connections scheme; with a multi-media production with rear-projection and live video. After our A Levels, we toured to the Edinburgh Fringe after our A Levels, getting four stars in the Scotsman, and being described by the stage as "youth theatre at its best".

My heart pulled me to film, however, and I went to Westminster University for their BA in Film & TV, learning to shoot and cut on 16mm. But the digital and web revolution was happening alongside and I quit with a friend to setup Netribution, a site for indie filmmakers. We started to make documentaries for a cable channel, DKTV, to fund the website (Fish & Brit Hip Hop are below).

While co-writing a book on film finance, I directed my first and only fiction short, Creation (below), on a favours-only budget. I was drawn to VJing, co-creating an AV collective to produce AV parties (below), including the launch party for Hewlett Packard's Lion-winning HyPe project where we showcased a style we called 'clip hop' that's known as mashup, today.

Escapes poster

Escapes

Harrogate Theatre Studio, 1995
Devised collection of extracts on the theme of Escape
Eclipse leaflet

Eclipse

Harrogate Theatre Studio, 1997
The world premiere of poet Simon Armitage's first play.
"It really is powerful stunning stuff"
BBC Night Out

Eclipse @ Edinburgh

Southside Courtyard, 1997
Tour to Edinburgh Fringe.
"★★★★ Provocative direction… a startling display of promise on all sides"
Anya Sen Pearse, Scotsman
"Intelligent direction… youth theatre at it's best"
Stella Goomey The Stage
0.1

0.1

London, Bradford, Newcastle, 2003-10
Co-created AV collective, doing events for ResFest, Hewlett Packard & the Home Office.