About Gecko
Gecko is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed physical theatre company, led by Artistic Director Amit Lahav. Founded in 2001, the company has created 8 critically acclaimed shows, 2 Associate Shows and 2 films. Gecko is currently touring their eighth stage production Kin, commissioned by the National Theatre, exploring themes of racism, family, migration, and home.
As an artist-led organisation, we invest a high proportion of revenue in our work, and it is this artistic product that drives all conversations and decisions. The length of creative process and longevity of a production means that work in development carries enormous significance in all aspects of the company. The creation process is incredibly rigorous to ensure the high quality demanded by Gecko; testing, learning, evaluating, and refining throughout. Through experimentation, craft and collaboration, Amit has created an organic process that highlights the power and intangible value of imagination, allowing our diverse freelance team of devising performers, creatives, and technicians to work alongside Amit and to bring their own skills, background, experiences and culture into the creation of our work. This devising process oscillates between intense periods of experimentation, reflection and technical development in and out of the rehearsal studio.
The Gecko identity is based on a deep interest in human beings and their extraordinary and challenging journeys to express feelings and emotions in society. Our work is made by and for people from a multitude of cultures in an attempt to represent everyone, regardless of age, gender and background. We use multiple languages in our work and tell universal stories through movement and emotion, sound, lighting and set design, allowing people from all backgrounds and nationalities to access our work.
Our work is inspired by our audiences and explores and reflects issues relevant to a modern diverse society; we want to speak directly to the individual and for them to engage fully with the content. We want to remove barriers to this engagement for as many people and cultures as possible. We want audiences to experience a unique, high quality theatrical experience.
“We wanted to arrest our audience’s imagination, awaken their senses and fill them with energy and vitality. From our very first conversations about making, there seemed little doubt that we wanted to explore work that was physical. By that, we mean the exploration of movement that involves great athleticism, physical contact and endurance. We developed our skills and cultivated a very definite and exciting style through the process of making work and facilitating and leading workshops relating to our style of devising and performance.”
Amit Lahav, 2001
Gecko’s Creative Engagement programme supports the company’s artistic output, inviting performers, teachers, professional artists, students of theatre or dance and the public to bravely and open heartedly delve into new worlds of connection, imagination and discovery through creativity and play. It provides an opportunity to explore the techniques and processes used to create and perform our work and a safe and supportive environment to express, heal, be vulnerable, nurture empathy, uncover truth and foster deep relationships. The company is featured on the A-Level, GCSE and International Baccalaureate drama/dance syllabi and is included in several educational textbooks for both students and teachers.