The Shape of Things to Come 2025

4 Walls. 5 Shows. 6 Weeks.

Volcano is commissioning five new short performances (around 30 minutes) for our Swansea High Street venue starting in April 2025. Now in its fourth year, this initiative, originally launched as Solo Duets for the Future, continues to inspire performers to explore new ways of creating and sharing work with live audiences.

This year, we are introducing The Room – a simple, adaptable space that serves as the foundation for each performance. By focusing on a single set, we hope to inspire bold, innovative works that challenge traditional boundaries of performance, while encouraging fresh perspectives on how a space can influence the work within it.

The aim of this commission series is to spark creativity and invite artists to push the limits of performance in imaginative and unexpected ways. It is about looking forward, exploring new possibilities, and offering something engaging and thought-provoking for audiences. Each piece will explore a range of themes, from personal reflections to global futures, always with an eye toward creating connections and provoking conversation.

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The Programme:

The Alcoholic’s Tarot by leon clowes

Performance Dates: 08/05/2025 – 10/05/2025
Show Times:

• Thursday 8th: 8:00 pm

• Friday 9th: 6:30 pm & 8:00 pm

• Saturday 10th: 2:00 pm & 5:00 pm

“Addiction is explicitly excluded from the legal definition of disability.”

Using a steady deck, leon will open the door to ‘the room’ with a balanced hand of humour, vulnerability and audience participation. 

  The audience will be invited to witness personal stories of chaos, regret, and revelation, and asking where we draw the line between normalising alcohol abuse in society and the effect of shaming those who have an addiction. 

  leon clowes expresses his art through working with sound, Queer and social themes that invoke nuance and difficult conversations. His theatre practice includes working with real people who have stories of their own, to raise awareness towards these issues and social change. 

 His work towards these issues has involved working with the SPILL festival on a piece called ‘Nan Kids’ which garnished much attention from the BBC in 2021, ‘Sites of Shame’ at SET Lewisham Gallery in 2022 and ‘Queer Mats’ throughout various venues around the U.K. in 2023.  

Route 4 by Arnold Matsena

Performance Dates: 22/05/2025 – 24/05/2025
Show Times:

• Thursday 22nd: 8:00 pm

• Friday 23rd: 6:30 pm & 8:00 pm

• Saturday 24th: 2:00 pm & 5:00 pm

“Time sensitive.”

What’s it like to be somewhere new for the first 30 minutes? Is the ground different, does the air smell funny and is it inviting after a long journey?  

 Arnold transposes the room into a space most people have never had to visit or could never imagine visiting. Through movement and dance we will witness the war between the land and the sea. Will this be a place of hope or a cold reality?  

 Arnold is a dancer and an artistic director with close to twenty years of experience specialising in Hip-Hop and contemporary dance.  

 Even though Swansea is his home base, Arnold has been focused on being a facilitator and can’t wait to show a different side to him as a performer.  Arnold was crowned Mr Wales in 2012 and since then he has been focused on pushing the arts in Wales to the world stage, supporting and nurturing the next generation of artists in Wales.  

What the F*ck is Going On? (or How I See Things) by Ryan Davies

Performance Dates: 29/05/2025 – 31/05/2025
Show Times:

• Thursday 29th: 8:00 pm

• Friday 30th: 6:30 pm & 8:00 pm

• Saturday 31st: 2:00 pm & 5:00 pm

“A TED talk on acid.”

Ever wondered what our future will look like? Well, to see it, we need to witness what’s in front of us. This is our present, from Ryan, who is set out to bring social issues surrounding A.I. and its intrusion into everyday life from a working-class perspective.  

Using ‘the room’ through projections, satire and technology, Ryan will draw attention to the world that we have come to know as one of ever-increasing rapid isolation in the uprising of A.I. technology, that we have let into our homes, our schools and our workplace.  

Ryan Davies is an artist, creative technologist, and filmmaker whose work spans theatre, live events, and expanded cinema. Hailing from a post-industrial town in South Wales, his working-class roots have developed his artistry of storytelling and cutting-edge technology. 

 Throughout his practice, Ryan has gained momentum from being an Assistant Director and Theatre Facilitator to expanding his horizons by engaging into digital and visual arts and further into formal education where he studied BA (Hons) in Video Design for Live Performance at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. 

Never Fully Here by Moana Doll

Performance Dates: 05/06/2025 – 07/06/2025
Show Times:

• Thursday 5th: 8:00 pm

• Friday 6th: 6:30 pm & 8:00 pm

• Saturday 7th: 2:00 pm & 5:00 pm

“All the room inside me – an internal vastness that transcends external limitations.”

A gentle exploration of immigrant identity through the insights of a solitary person caught between worlds. 

 The performance explores multiple explorations of storytelling through the body and speech, while navigating the borders of belonging neither here nor there – not foreign enough, yet never truly British – especially in the post-Brexit landscape.  

 Moana Doll is fresh out of Drama Studio London with an MFA in Professional Acting. Her work consists of threading together devised pieces through Physical Theatre, Clowning and multilingual storytelling.  

 Her ambition is to develop work that crosses borders freely, contributing meaningfully to the U.K.’s artistic landscape while continuing to grow as a versatile, physically expressive performer who can communicate across cultural and linguistic borders. 

Juiced to Death by Joanna Simpkins

Performance Dates: 12/06/2025 – 14/06/2025
Show Times:

• Thursday 12th: 8:00 pm

• Friday 13th: 6:30 pm & 8:00 pm

• Saturday 14th: 2:00 pm & 5:00 pm

Aging is not for wimps.

Joanna is out to explore what is means to be a woman in 2025. Are the super smoothies that we devour worth it? Is it possible in the world we live to embrace age with open arms? 

Joanna will explore ‘The Room’ through a woman who is trapped in a never-ending blender of juices, Botox, diets and constant pursuits of self-improvement. Questioning yourself at every corner of your life could trap you in a box. Can there ever be an escape? 

Joanna Simpkins hails from Hull in Yorkshire and is no stranger to the Welsh coastline. Having trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, she has spent several years  working with Welsh Theatre companies, including a production of The Seagull with Volcano in 2015. 

Her work varies widely from Contemporary plays, Classic texts and Physical theatre and can’t wait to explore these avenues through her own voice, using her lived experience.