About – ☂¿who✍silly▓what?☟
Huge Sillytoe is a large and daft toe. They are also a multidisciplinary performance artist/activist and (auto)ethnographic researcher who proposes their actions and other works as explorations of their artistic-political philosophy of pragmatic absurdo-anarchism.
Transmogrifying into a full human body, amongst other forms, Huge Sillytoe creates performances using masks, puppets, musical instruments, and interactive sculptures often built from found and reclaimed materials. Sometimes they work alone or as part of numerous collectives. Harnessing their unique artistic position as a shape-shifting oversized and foolish toe, they seek to create work that challenges normative perceptions of ‘sense’ and undermines associated power/knowledge hierarchies. In this way they toe open the pathway to a stranger and fairer world, assisting others to trample this trail further via facilitating (no)work(no)shops where new practices of transgressive, emancipatory performance are nurtured collectively by different groups in diverse locations. By creating otherworldly costumes and masks, embodying the characters they birth, and helping others to do the same, Huge Sillytoe instigates alternative modes of relationality and allows performance participants to connect in unforeseen ways.
Born and raised in Durham, North East England, Huge Sillytoe is now itinerant, based during recent years between New York City, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and London, with regular research, residency, and performance trips elsewhere. Their artistic, activist, and academic work is intertwined and mutually informing. They hold a BA in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge, a MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and a practice-informed PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Glasgow following the production of a thesis entitled: ‘Alegría rebelde and performance (c)art: A comparative (auto)ethnography of absurdist performance practice amongst activists and socially committed artists in Buenos Aires and New York City’. They have been seen performing at Centre for Contemporary Arts (Glasgow), Manuke (Tokyo), MKA: Theatre of New Writing (Melbourne), Grace Exhibition Space (New York), Judson Memorial Church (New York), Experiencia Hiedra (Buenos Aires), Teatro Popular La Otra Cosa (Buenos Aires), Temporary Autonomous Arts (London), Casa Viva (Mexico City), Huerto Roma Verde (Mexico City), and many unexpected crevices in-between. Huge Sillytoe speaks fluent English, Spanish, and Toetapoelib, working Portuguese, not-quite-working French, and broken Russian. They make work in all these languages and more.
