To mark the final season of Ovalhouse Theatre’s 55 year history in Kennington Oval, Owen created The Demolition Party: a unique collaboration between artists and engineers, which invited artists to destroy the theatre through performance. The season featured five productions by Emma Frankland, Rachel Mars & Greg Wohead, Christopher Brett Bailey, Carolyn Defrin & Abigail Boucher and Jaydev Mistry & Aoife Van Linden Tol working alongside Conisbee Structural Engineering and construction company Galliford Try, with each production demolishing a different part of the building. Owen took inspiration from the ground-shakers, risk-takers and mischief-makers who have gone before us; recognising that it is not the walls of the building that have given Ovalhouse a unique position in London’s cultural landscape, but the artists who filled it with acts of revolution and the audiences who witnessed the birth of cultural movements. The Demolition Party acknowledged that it is the natural order of things for destruction to proceed new growth.

“What a joyful approach to demolishing a building this is, allowing artists to turn destruction into something creative, generative”
(Time Out).

Photography by Alex Brenner and Rosie Powell