Oily Cart Brings JAMBOREE on Tour

Oily Cart has announced its latest and new touring production - Jamboree - the first conceived by new Artistic Director Ellie Griffiths. Jamboree - part gig and part sensory theatrical riot - premiered at bOing! Festival in Canterbury, Kent and will tour schools for pupils with complex needs across the UK from 16 September.

Jamboree is a vibrant and wholly interactive experience featuring Balkan-inspired tunes co-created with young people with profound and multiple disabilities, surround sound, and a series of sensory events, all within the colourful Spiegeltent-inspired set.

At the heart of Jamboree is music created in collaboration with teenagers with profound and multiple disabilities. At each location on the tour, sousaphone player Aaron Diaz (who is part of Balkan band The Destroyers) and Serbian folk singer/percussionist Jovana Backovic (lead singer in band Arhai) - will be embedded in a school to jam with young people who have different ways of communicating. The students' creative input will feed into gig-performances at the end of the week. The end result is an experience young people with complex needs have influenced and a show where no two performances sound the same.

Artistic Director Ellie Griffiths comments:

"Jamboree is the first time Oily Cart have really explored how the young people we make theatre for can have influence on the content of our shows. It's given us fresh ideas we could never have imagined. This project gives an opportunity to the young people we work with, to make their voices heard. In a world where the roots of knowledge and power are verbal, this show celebrates a wider spectrum of communication. I hope Jamboree goes a tiny way towards shifting people's expectations about what young people who are labelled as being non-verbal have to offer."

Jamboree also features performers and Oily Cart favourites Mark Foster and Griff Fender who have worked for Oily Cart for 33 years between them. Griff had several careers starting with some years as a singer and songwriter in the British chart band Darts clocking up six top ten singles and three top ten albums and touring in Europe, Asia and USA.

'Another stunning performance, Jamboree was multi sensory, exciting and engaged everyone. Truly emotional powerful stuff and just wish I could take my daughter to something like this every weekend!' (Audience Reaction)