WHAT WE DO

Our mission 'to gently warp the underlay of the fabric of society' underpins everything we do. We create high quality interactive performance with the public, outdoors and in public spaces. Our performances involve roaming presentations, site-specific work and the investigation of unusual locations: both large and small scale.

Our work engages, interacts, surprises and inspires the public. It aims to be both generous and irreverent, experimental and accessible.

It can be highly theatrical or present itself as reality, as a means of engaging the public, inviting play and a subversion of the everyday.

We want the public to enjoy interacting with us.

We invite bespoke commissions internationally of all scales from 2024 and beyond.

WHO WE ARE  

Mischief La-Bas was founded by Angie Dight and Ian Smith in 1992 after their adventures with the anarchic French circus Archaos. They established themselves with a two-year nightclub residency at The Arches, Glasgow, continuing with various residencies, bespoke appearances and one-off events in venues, streets, parks, festivals and public spaces.

Mischief incorporated all the elements of Smith and Dight’s backgrounds in performance and visual art, music and dance, comedy, circus and clubbing. It also brought in the surreal, in your face and in amongst the public aspect of European street theatre.

For 20 years Mischief La-Bas created and devised work in collaboration with a group of up to 25 core performers for both public and commercial events.

From 2008 the company began to receive considerable public funding through the Scottish Arts Council and Creative Scotland, and was a Regularly Funded Organisation (RFO) as part of Creative Scotland’s portfolio scheme until 2018. This allowed them to create more of their unique work, taking it to new audiences in diverse locations throughout Scotland. Collaboration was a key theme, and they worked with a broad range of artists and designers producing high quality work.  At the same time, a larger producing and administrative team built up the organisation into a registered charity in 2016.

Since Ian’s death in 2014, Angie has become the sole Artistic Director. As well as many other new projects she has developed new work around serious issues such as mental health, depression and death. She has also experimented with more integrated public interactions and created and directed the critically acclaimed site-specific show Nursery Crymes.

With its change in funding status in 2018, the organisation has streamlined itself and is developing smaller scale works for Scottish and International audiences and communities.