SIZE OF COMPANY
5 on the road

SCALE OF VENUE
Small to medium

PERMANENT STAFF
Artistic Directors
Lucinka Eisler (Inspector Sands. Artistic Director Stamping Ground)
Giulia Innocenti (Inspector Sands)
Ben Lewis (Inspector Sands)

ARTISTIC POLICY
Inspector Sands and Stamping Ground Theatre make vivid and compelling theatre for national and international touring. The companies seek to reach a diverse audience, creating strong theatrical worlds where the interplay of physical performance, text, light, music, and original sound is integral to story. The companies have a particular interest in the ways that global events and social trends inform everyday relationships and human interaction on the smallest scale.

REVIEW EXTRACTS
Beautifully observed…I laughed until I cried.
The Guardian (Hysteria)
The wordplay is as nifty as the body language... So well done that even as you howl with laughter, you can’t help but feel the edge of genuine anguish.
The Herald (Hysteria)
A magical piece... hilariously funny theatre.
Sunday Independent (A Quiet Afternoon)

CURRENT PRODUCTIONS
If That's All There Is
A mini-epic of longing, envy, disappointment and psychobabble, starring a therapist-cum-vigilante, her moody daughter, her happy son, her pent-up patient and his thrill-seeking fiancée. This is a play about the desire to live passionately, as inspired by the Peggy Lee song ‘Is That’s All There Is’. For anyone who’s ever wanted to stand on a storm-drenched plain howling for lost love.
90 mins , 3 on stage, 5 on the road
Hysteria
A pressure-cooker tragi-comedy of dinner dates, solitude and the age of anxiety. Winner Total Theatre Award for ‘integration of space, sound, light and physical performance’.
60 mins, 3 on stage, 5 on the road
A Quiet Afternoon
Memory, pride and unfulfilled dreams: football becomes a metaphor for human experience, through the eyes of four men in a deserted pub. Black humour, absurd word-play and football-based choreography.
60 mins, 5 on the road

WRAP-AROUND
The company runs workshops for performers from a wide range of backgrounds and has a strong interest in meeting audiences/artists in host countries through this kind of activity. The emphasis is on improvisation, a physical approach to character and the creation of original material, often using short stories or images as a spring-board. There is also a workshop available based on the interaction of performers with lights and sound.
The company is also available for talks, post-show discussions and longer residencies.

RECENT INTERNATIONAL WORK
2008 China: Hysteria
2007 Germany, Romania, Russia: Hysteria
2006 Armenia, Germany: Hysteria
2005 Ireland: A Quiet Afternoon

TOURING AVAILABILITY
If That’s All There Is, Hysteria and A Quiet Afternoon are available from January 2008.