Ridiculusmus is a multi-award winning theatre company that has been producing seriously funny theatre since 1992.
” If you think of amazing performers who you hang onto every word they say, their performances so incredible along with the actual writing, the two guys from ridiculusmus spring to mind.” Dave the electrician
“I swear, you’ll have never seen anything quite like it” The Independent
The company’s co-artistic directors, David Woods and Jon Haynes, have established the company as a flagship UK performance group touring nationally and internationally with works passionately wrought from minimal resources that achieve the oxymoronic aim of being both serious and funny.
“One of our most refreshingly provocative theatre companies” Time Out
The company has created over 25 original theatre productions and is regularly commissioned by venues including the Barbican, National Theatre, Royal Court, Soho Theatre, BAC and Arts House, Melbourne.
“They are without doubt, two of the most innovative talents working in British theatre” British Theatre Guide.
Winners
Herald Scotland Archangel Award
Total Theatre Significant Achievement Award
Peter Brook Open Space Award
Time Out Live Award
Total Theatre Award for Best British Production
Herald Angel Award for Innovation
Green Room Award for Best Performance
Granada Media Comedy Writing Award
If the Two Ronnies were cast as the Gravediggers in Shakespeare’s Hamlet re-written by Samuel Beckett you might have something like Ridiculusmus’s “Alas! Poor Yorick”. Mixing the mundane with the magical; moments of banal idiocy are interspersed with ones of cinematic elegance to an underscore of groans, grunts and the odd Shakespearean aside. […]
Our latest play began its life with acclaimed seasons at Artshouse Melbourne, Battersea Arts Centre, London and Summerhall, Edinburgh as part of the British Council Showcase.
So… premiered at Turku fringe where it won the Grand Jury Prize and Brighton Fringe in May 2022. A two hander about a pair of brothers, one in a quarantine hotel, the other in a terraced house in Sheffield. Their mum has died, their solicitors hover; a metaphor of reconciliation and de-polarisation that started as a Brexit response, then a […]
(a 2 hander version) made by us with Jude Kelly and designed by Zoe Atkinson originally co-commissioned by The Brisbane Powerhouse and Barbican Centre. Revived at The Malthouse Melbourne Feb-March 2020. Jon and Dave play Jack and Algernon – and all the other parts.
Ridiculusmus is a multi award-winning theatre company that has been going for 32 years and is just hanging on by a thread. Since our annus horribilis of 2015 – a fire in Battersea Arts Centre destroyed our office and archive, we lost life-saving NPO funding – it has been a struggle to say the least. In the last year alone we’ve had ten funding rejections and now have very little left in the bank. We have cut our costs to the minimum and are only able tour our work to you by travelling on public transport, having no technician or set, asking theatres to find essential props for us, doing all the admin ourselves, sleeping on sofas or sharing discounted motels and relying on a small but invaluable network of supportive friends to accommodate us in touring gaps. In short, we are desperate to carry on doing the thing that we’ve been put on this planet to pursue and would welcome and be extremely grateful for your support.
If you would like to give a donation, no matter how small, it would be greatly appreciated.
If you would like to help, please deposit into: Co-operative Bank. 08-92-99 / 65463750 / Ridiculusmus Theatre Company
Partnerships
We work with a huge range of partners – from Battersea Arts Centre in London to Arts House in Melbourne, universities and world-renowned Finnish psychotherapists, plus a pantheon of talented artists, technicians and creators. We are very grateful to those who have invested in our work in various ways over the years and continue to support us, including:
david@ridiculusmus.com +61 (0)432 685999