Breaking Cycles has created a number of productions which have sold out to audiences in the North West, across the UK touring circuit and Internationally. 


The Pugilist (The Play)  - Directed by Bob Pierce
Barry is a tired boxer slipping towards retirement but still caught up in the trappings of success.  Goffa is his second (his corner man) and his confidante.  Through his childlike innocence, Goffa is the only one who sees Barry for who he really is.

The Pugilist is a simple story about the trials of boxing and life told with aching humour and compassion through one bucket, mop and man.

Statement:
When I first worked on the piece I wanted to adapt Jack London’s  “A piece of steak”, a beautiful story about an ageing boxer and the complexities of age verses youth.  I decided to collaborate with Faulty Optic a puppetry company.  I wanted to use traditional story telling and puppetry.  I loved the idea but it would prove hard to realise as I had little skill as a puppeteer.

I went into the studio at the Battersea Arts Centre under the guidance of Tom Morris and directed by Bob Pearce.  This turned out to be a great partnership; we started from scratch and created the story of the rise and fall of Sweet Boy Barry.  I like this piece because I get to do a little stand up comedy and it’s a fun play to play.

The only pieces of set are three tables sat on their ends and tied together.  This acts as a wall and the canvas of the ring. Working with Bob helped me pull out some beautiful images and a simple story with a simple massage, ‘in all your success, don’t forget who you are’.

“ I looked for him everywhere and I took a right and he was right there, right in front of me, like right here right now, with a knife in his right hand, I was like right then lets have it.”

 
The Holiday
The Holiday is a physical sonnet, a dark and instinctive proposition on escapism that grasps and retains the raw emotion and energy of movement based theatre, body popping, poetry and rhythmic bass.

Statement:
The Holiday is a fifteen-minute real time piece. What I mean is that the duration of the show is the length of time that this character would take in real life. This person has no name and the place is non-specific, this is an every day man going though a break down. Not being able to communicate. Being belittled by voices in his head.

The form that I chose to use is three verses written in a stream of conscious, three choices and a sample from Prince “sometimes it snows in April”.  The physical from is popping using the dance as a mechanism to portray mental anguish. The movement is enhanced by the poetry cutting and pacing the piece together, swinging from one sense of meaning to another, some times in a single line.  The idea is to illustrate the emotional landscape.

“Plodding down the parade, my presence invisible to the pretty people prettily pushing pass me while they pontificate to their pretty friends about how they are going to send their pretty ends.  Their hips swing like pendulums, producing gems and words of wisdom, ‘lord peel me from this glass ceiling’.  Being pulled up and patted down, being perused by police as I pass time because the pretty people don’t commit crimes.  Left prostrate on Paddington pavements, all because a pretty pedestrian got paranoid.  She said the ugly guy did it, did what?  He pulled faces at the pretty primary children.  Now this protagonist is plugged into a person without a pray.”
 
The Holiday is one of my favourite pieces and it tells so much with out saying much at all.
 

Style 4 Free            
An improvisation inspired by hip hop and jazz, danced like a slapstick puppet creating disjointed text over muffled beats.  With sampling from kung fu movies, cartoons and The Olympics, nothing is sacred.  Each improvisation will hail a new story and new free style.

Statement:
This piece came into existence when I received a call from Brenda Edwards saying she was producing a black show case called “Hip” where *Namron was to be celebrated for all the years he had given to dance.

Style 4 Free is really freestyle, based on skills, imagination and a quick eye for a joke.  When I perform this piece I open my mind and allow myself to be truly free in the space.  I use the energy of the audience to guide me in which direction they want to go.  I become a human sampler.  Film, TV, Cartoons, anything that comes to mind. This is me, Benji Reid in stand up mode.

*Namron was the first black male to work with London Contemporary Dance Theatre.  He wowed audiences all over the world and was the inspiration to many young, up and coming performers.  For a man built like Hercules he moved with such grace and elegance. I was lucky enough to be taught by him for the three years at NSCD. He was like my dad, sometimes I would call him that.

 
13 Mics
(Co-written and co-directed by Benji Reid and Jonzi D)
Benji Reid is a hip hop veteran, a European body-popping champion.  He will stand before us, centre stage and ask "is hip hop dead?’  13 Mics is his reply, mimicking the mayhem of answers as he astral travels from bebop to hip-hop creating a montage of the 20th Century and taking us from soothsayer to gangster rapper; hip hop backpacker to bling bling.  Raucously acted and hilariously observed, this is hip hop theatre performed through legendary dancing and rapping, and encased in the funk laden sounds of some serious live bass guitar, drums and dj-ing. 13 Mics is like nothing else.  It is one man’s passion for hip hop exposed through his imaginative, chaotic and anarchic force.

Statement:
I dreamed of the image, of me being surrounded by a web of microphones. I knew I had some thing to say but what?
When Jonzi D and I went into rehearsals we knew one thing, we had thirteen microphones and there was a story to tell. We experimented with object manipulation, I wanted to bring each mic and stand to life. I wanted to know the story of the microphone. We had fun coming up with some truly funny stuff but not anything we could use. We would talk every night trying to unearth the narrative, but the break through only came when reading ‘hip hop connexion’, an article on Q-tip and the death of hip hop.  That idea struck a cord with me, as I felt the original energy and vibe of hip hop had shifted and was more focused on niggers, bitches and bling.  I was bought up through hip hop as a culture of love, peace and harmony and knowledge of the self, so from this, we went to work developing the charters for the show. The band really helped bring the whole concept to life.

 
B Like Water  
(A co-production with Contact Theatre, co-directed by Benji Reid and John McGrath, written by Lemn Sissay)
On the cusp of falling - on the verge of flying, Benji Reid jumps from poetry to body popping and back again in a heart stirring exploration of the role that heroes play in our lives.

'Paint the Heroes, the queens and kings. Paint yourself wings.  Paint yourself wings.’ Words by Lemn Sissay

Statement:
I had the opportunity to work with one of strongest voices in contemporary poetry today, Lemn Sissay.  John McGrath and I had spent a week in Birmingham just playing with flight on the end of a bungee.  This has been the biggest challenge to date; I wanted a piece that would be able to live with 13 Mics.

O Jay (Musical Director) and I had been touring The Holiday for some time and we both love the piece because in one respect the theme is timeless and the subject is endless emotional and physical break down.  In the end of The Holiday the protagonist jumps.  I wanted to start B Like Water at the end of The Holiday, as a sequel if you will.  Ojay and I had an idea of angels for the songs and movement in B Like Water. I really needed to feel a sense of closure to the whole idea of some one taking their life.

I wanted to move into a more spiritual zone that would examine my respect for black heroes and how we connect to them. The narrative is a fall and what happened between the jump and salvation, and how the angles save the protagonist’s state of mind.  Very simple.  Of course there is the physical proposition of being suspended from a line, I wanted to play with weightlessness. This has proved to be very hard, I have never developed such a painful piece.  
The title ‘B Like Water’ comes from an interview with Bruce Lee.  In order for us to overcome our fears, our oppressors, our economic entrapment, we need to be like water.  Whenever the world throws a bolder in the stream of life, we must learn to flow around it, over it, underneath it, and record it in time.  We take our love and positive energy and flow through time creating little streams called our children.
There is some thing simple and beautiful about this piece.