Spacecraft formed in Dublin in the late nineties as a shared art-for-activism practice. Original members were Media-Arts graduates, visual artists, circus and street performers. Influenced by The Situationist International and Dario Fo, we evolved a hybrid interactive performance practice that explored complex themes with audiences, through playable stories. Staged in informal, public or purpose-made physical spaces, we sometimes used video for additional worldbuilding and pre-narrative. From the late nineties until the early two-thousands we produced multiple satirical plays, as well as parades, street theatre pieces, and a series of theatrical ‘public executions’, culminating in our (award-winning!) Execution of the Celtic Tiger, by guillotine, in front of Dublin Civic Offices.
In nineteen-ninety-eight, along with friends demonstrating (counterfactual) ‘traditional Irish earth-dwelling’ construction in Glastonbury’s Green-Crafts area, we created our first subterranean amphitheatre. A pioneering immersive project, our ‘hidden venue’, commonly known as the Underground Piano Bar, turned twenty-five last year. Despite this surprising longevity, it has retained its ephemeral, anarchic nature. It is built anew by the crew every time.
We've travelled some distance as artists and people since the nineties, but our original sensibilities are still reflected in how and what we create together. We started as SpaceKraft*, in reference to the power and possibility of autonomous creative space, as well as the craft of making performance spaces. Our point of convergence remains the unusual, the unlikely, and the impossible, and creating spaces that allow such things to occur.