Dante Or Die Theatre

General information

The company is led by Co-Artistic Directors Daphna Attias and Terry O’Donovan in collaboration with producer Kirsten Burrows and Company Manager Faith Rowley.

Recently, we have enjoyed critical and popular success with Almeida Festival & South Street Sitelines Festival co-commission I Do. The show, set in six hotel rooms, has had sold out runs in London, Reading, Winchester and a tour of Ireland (Clonmel Junction Festival, Limerick City of Culture & Earagail Arts Festival). The four star review in The Evening Standard called it “a meticulously crafted site-specific play”. We are currently in an Arts Council England-supported development period for our new production, Handle With Care. Performed in working self-storage buildings, the show connects theatres with a local self-storage facility across the country and is commissioned by Harlow Playhouse, The Lighthouse Poole, South Street Reading, The Lowry and Offstage Theatre Royal Winchester & Hatfair, with support from Shoreditch Town Hall.
Dante or Die has always specialised in immersive work, often in unusual sites such as underground car parks (Caliper Boy), backstage areas of theatres and a department store (La Fille à la Mode) and a ship on the Thames (Ferrytale) with support from organisations such as National Theatre, Royal Opera House Linbury Theatre, Laban Theatre, Lillan Baylis Theatre, Theatre Royal Haymarket and Almeida Theatre.
In 2014 the company was commissioned by the Small Wonders consortium to create a new outdoor production for children. Clunk toured nationally to festival such as Milton Keynes International Festival, National Theatre’s Watch This Space & Winchester Hat Fair. Concurrently we were commissioned by the V&A Museum to create Treasure, a performance in one of their gallery spaces with children and their families from Westway in Ladbroke Grove. Terry has directed to large-scale participatory productions with professional and community casts in collaboration with Zap Arts in Brighton, Eastbourne & Newhaven and was nominated for Best Production in the Irish Times Theatre Awards for his original site-specific production On The Wire in Limerick.