Slow Cooking with Selina Thompson & Toni-Dee Paul – Episode 4

Meal: Brown Stew Chicken (Toni-Dee) and a personally-crafted Vegan Soup (Selina)


Welcome back to Slow Cooking.

This episode is a very special one, not only because we got the privilege to enjoy the food and companionship of these two incredible artists, but also because it was the first one we did live!! In an actual theatre with live audiences!!!

Performance artists Selina Thompson and Toni-Dee Paul cooked two incredibly tasty recipes for us, and shared the insights and history of their creative practice, which has often revolved around food and the act of cooking for audiences. The episode was recorded at the wonderful Theatre in the Mill, right bang in the centre of Bradford and the University grounds. Bradford is a city of delights. From its’ multicultural communities, to his rich history of migration and trade between peoples, to the incredible food. It is, in my opinion, the best town in the UK for food! We’ve been here all week and have been tasting the most variety of gorgeous, tasty food, from Sunday Roasts, to Fish Karahi, or Tom Kah and Pad Thai. Just gorgeous!

We spent the day together, cooking at the Millside Community Centre in what can only be discribed as a cross between an episode of The Bear and a bunch of live artists creating chaos! Together, we shared space, experiences, practices and most importantly, food. Then, we drove with all the food to Theatre in the Mill, to share it with our friends and audiences. Our communal manuscript was drafted there, by all of us, together, and broadcasted live on HowlRound TV.

This is Slow Cooking with Selina Thompson and Toni-Dee Paul.

Bom apetite 👨‍🍳🥘

TEXT: https://performingborders.live/interviews/slow-cooking-with-selina-thompson-toni-dee-paul-interview-2/

PODCAST:

VIDEOS:

Part 1

Part 2

🥣

Slow Cooking Episode 4 – Part 1 & Part 2

Created by Xavier de Sousa
With special participation by Toni-Dee Paul & Selina Thompson
Narrative by Xavier de Sousa
Food creation and cooking by Toni-Dee Paul & Selina Thompson
Filmed by Richard Warburton, Lydia Chouler-Tissier
Edited by Richard Warburton
Filmed on location in Bradford, England including Bradford market, Millside Community Centre & Theatre in the Mill
Additional footage provided by the artists & HowlRound Theatre Commons
Commissioned by Theatre in the Mill, performingborders and Migrant Actions Productions. 
Strategic Producing & Consultancy by The Uncultured
Additional funding by Arts Council England

BIOGRAPHIES

Selina Thompson is an artist and writer whose work has been shown and praised internationally. Her practice is chiefly concerned with grief, love, and the world to come, and she seeks to make work that is visually striking and lyrical, even while grounded in politics. She has led the company since its inception in 2016, and is primarily concerned with it centering those historically excluded by the arts, without compromising on rigor or experimentation. She won the ISPA Distinguished Artist award in 2023, and her credits both with and outside of the company include BBC4, BBC Radio 3, The Royal Court Theatre, The Public Theater, and BAM as well as theatres across the UK, Europe, South and North America, and Australia.

Toni-Dee Paul is an independent artist working across form, a writer (In Other Words, Field Notes), workshop leader, facilitator, collaborator, and “thinker-in-the room”. Her current body of work, made with ‘infectious warmth’ (Exeunt) is a series of performances & installations made for cemeteries, refugee centres, kitchens, churches, and theatres. Since 2015 she has been commissioned by Fuel Theatre for the New Theatre In Your Neighbourhood project, been a contributing story group writer for climate justice project Hello X, created performance as public intervention for Queerly Departed, and presented works in SICK Festival, Queer Migrant Takeover, and Works Ahead. Currently, she’s working on ‘Doze,’ a chronic-illness centered project exploring rest as resistance. Outside of her artistic practice, Toni facilitates new approaches to care and wellbeing for other artists, is associate director at Selina Thompson Ltd, and associate artist of award winning company One Tenth Human making intricate, intimate, and wildly entertaining live imaginative events for children and families. Toni also facilitates part-mutual-care-part-art-making-part-activism project Balmy Army and is a trustee of Leeds-based international performance festival Transform.

Olive Mondegreen is an escapee from the music industry. After releasing ten albums in ten years and touring Europe multiple times, she moved into using her music to support choreographers. Her third full length score debuts November 2024 for the show “Juice” in Heilbronn, Germany. Since the pandemic, Olive has also worked as a podcast editor and producer for multiple shows including the weekly anti-hustle careers show “What The Hell Is My Job” and the modern history “My Queer Museum”. She enjoys having no social media.

Xavier de Sousa (he/they) is an multidisciplinary performance maker and culture worker based between Portugal and the UK. 


They co-curate the digital research and live art commissioning platform performingborders, and Citemor Festival (Portugal). Previously developed and co-curated performance events Queer Migrant Takeover and CUT Festival, as well as New Queers on the Block, Marlborough Productions’ Artist and Community Development programme. Their creative practice also encompasses writing, having published various creative, reflective and research-based texts for publications such as METAL, Penguin, Les Cahiers Luxembourgeois and Centre national de littérature – Lëtzebuerger Literaturarchiv. As a producer, they launched the free-resource space Producer Gathering together with Sally Rose, and worked on the development of the Producer Agreement, the first agreement of its kind in the sector for unions BECTU and ITC. Previously, they produced for independent artists such as Louise Orwin, jamie lewis hadley and Evangelia Kolyra, amongst many others.

Xavier’s performance works include Almost Xav (Southbank Centre), and the trilogy of collaborative shows about belonging and power structures, POST (Ovalhouse, international tour), Pós- (Teatro do Bairro Alto & CITEMOR) and REGNANT (HOME, LiveCollission). They have recently launched a performance-exhibition What Becomes… (METAL, East Street Arts) and a series of multi-media podcasts Slow Cooking. Previously, they collaborated with Tim Etchels, Rosana Cade, The Famous Lauren Barri-Holstein, Needless Alley Collective and presented work with Ovalhouse Theatre, HOME, East Street Arts, Latitude Festival, Tate Modern, METAL Culture, Southbank Centre, The Yard Theatre (UK), Untethered Magic (Kenya), Warehouse9 (DK), CITEMOR Festival, Teatro do Bairro Alto (Portugal), Operastate Festival (Italy), Onassis Culture Centre (Athens), IIT Gujarat (India), Kalamata Dance Festival (Greece), Más Allá Del Muro Festival (Mexico), amongst others.

Xavier is a founder of Migrants in Culture and is a member of BECTU and ITC – Independent Theatre Council.

Website: www.xavierdesousa.co.uk | Twitter: @Xavinisms | Instagram: @Xavinisms