In its last eight years, our long-running incubator has seen over thirty-five new works ranging from a bearded ballerina to a naked ensemble of women; many go on to tour, some win awards; placing greenroom and hÅb’s Method Lab firmly as the place to see the ones to watch.  With support from this year’s project mentor Peader Kirk, 2010 promises funny, touching and sometimes quite frightening meditations on life, love and loss; featuring:

Leentje van de Cruys Belgian knitting guru and the host of the best party ever continuing her quest to fit in and be loved in a foreign country presents HORSE. HORSE is a story about a woman who thinks she is a horse. But that’s normal, because she is indeed a horse. The problem is that she thinks she is a different horse than the horse she really is; a different horse from the horse you see in front of you.

‘I once knew a rabbit who thought he was an incredibly dangerous predator. So he attacked a dog. Because he didn’t understand that he was only a rabbit. Well, I am not like that. I know very well what I look like. I know very well what you see when you look at me. It’s just that I think that how I look isn’t quite right’

Based on a short story by Dutch author Esther Gerritsen, HORSE is the new show from Leentje Van de Cruys, Belgian knitting-guru and host of previous greenroom events The Best Party Ever and Knitting to Worry About.

You Were Saying is a bittersweet semi-autobiographical comedy written and performed by Chris Fitzsimmons – a young man with too much time on his hands.

“I was waiting and thinking

and thinking about waiting

In an empty town

where the silence was deafening.”

There are streetlights overhead as he waits patiently under the clock for someone new to arrive. He checks his mobile to see if he has received any messages and considers that he may be making one of many new mistakes. The day before yesterday he received a letter from the council about his wheelie bins. Yesterday, he argued with someone about the bible, God and the afterlife. Tonight he is thinking about lost voices, Eartha Kitt and how everything changes.

PLUS: Gemma Neep, a free SeedFund mini-performance from our resident commentator on Facebook stalking, Swine Flu and alienating your neighbours.

Gemma is a solo artist, making awkward comedy, who is interested in playing with the idea of introducing others as (often unknowing) fellow performers. In her current work, Gemma explains how easy it is to stalk a man using the internet – it only takes two minutes if you know what you’re doing! [ limited capacity ]

PLUS: An ongoing work from Wayne Jackson

Wayne has been devising and performing ‘Funny, baffling, mystical, absurd [and] mindbending’ work for the past five years with his company ‘Escape Theatre’. After receiving support from greenroom and Arts Council, with them he is now developing his own work. He has recently completed his Masters where his interest in the concept of liveness began and he is now exploring the fleeting moments within performance which lie somewhere in-between the live and the mediated.

His most recent project, showcased at Emergency 09, originates from an experience he had when he was three (three and a half or four) when he swallowed a pound coin. Through inter-locking and contradicting accounts he is exploring the ways in which memory can distort and alter the past and cast doubt on that which has definitely happened. Because it did definitely happen, didn’t it..? The journey is now taking him on a journey, supported by greenroom, to find the pound coin he lost twice. He will attempt to trace a pound coin around the country using its own website, which will launch as past of this years Method Lab event.

I could tell you what has happened. But what would be the point? You’re going to make your own assumptions anyway. After all, it happened to you, didn’t it? This is your story, so who else knows it better than you?

As he struggles with contradicting memories and the certainty of forgetting, he tells the story of a desire to find his lost pound coin and capture the journey it has been on. It has been over twenty-three years since he last saw his pound coin, and a lot has happened since then.