Eyes On Stalks (Performance Books) - Softcover

Since the advent of John Fox's spectaculars of ritual and procession in Yorkshire with the Welfare State International company 45 years ago, much of our most potent theatrical and installation art has taken place in outdoor landscapes, on rivers and hilltops, in forests and fields.
Guardian

EYES ON STALKS is a book you must read - wise, committed and beautifully written. Not too misty eyed. The title comes from WSI's old slogan 'Eyes on Stalks, not Bums on Seats'.
Sideshow - Contemporary Circus Magazine

WSI have maintained their name and their principles of cultural activism. Having provided the reader with such a rich entertaining book, Fox could be forgiven a political rant. His final chapter, however is not an angry tirade but a thoughtful passionate call for the use of the arts for cultural change and the power of the artist as a creative catalyst.
Contemporary Theatre Review

'Welfare State International are brilliant at making an audience of strangers into a community.' Guardian

Eyes on Stalks is an autobiographical roller coaster through three decades of wild inventions by theatre company Welfare State International. It covers the principal and practice of site specific theatre, extensive community residencies and new rites of passage work created by the comopany, offering readers an exciting and provocative manual to their work.

Founded in 1968, Welfare State International was an inspirational theatre company based in Cumbria, England, producing innovative work work for nearly four decades, until 2006. Famed for creating and facilitating large scale celebratory art and theatre, ranging from carnivals, lantern processions and rites of passage, to flags, banners and pyrotechnics, the company's radical philosophy of art is revealed in this volume. In a mixture of personal stories, clear instructions, poems and artists' sketches, Eyes on Stalks is a detailed and practical guide to the production techniques they employed. It includes sections on caravans and street shows, community regeneration, comedy extravaganzas and alternative naming, betrothal and funeral ceremonies. The work is lavishly illustrated throughout with thirty photographs and over 100 sketches by artistic director John Fox.