Deadly Theatre by Dan Johnson

On cassette edition, boxed with a set of instruction cards which guide people through the creative process he followed when making the album, musician and performance artist Dan Johnson’s first studio album, Deadly Theatre, takes its title and inspiration from Peter Brook’s chapter of the same name in his 1968 text, The Empty Space. As Brook writes there: “To attempt to build a performance today in confirmation with past canons is the most certain route to deadly theatre – deadly theatre of a respectability that makes it pass as living truth…The deadly trap is to divide the eternal truths from the superficial variations.” In response, Dan conceived of an album of solo percussion recordings, entirely improvised over two days in the studio, with no preparation, inventing the whole thing in as close to real-time as possible.

Dan Johnson is a musician, performance artist, and teacher. His work is rooted in improvisation and seeks to explore human nature; exposing and expanding the limits of mind, body and spirit.

TBC EDITIONS releases limited-edition runs of experimental audio, film and art works. Evolved out of The Brunswick Club, a community of artists, musicians, filmmakers and performers, who came together in 2017-2019 to occupy a former working-men’s club in central Bristol. UK.