“By the time I say yes to a thing, I’m in. I know that when I’m there, I’m going to work hard, I’m going to craft. I’m going to get on my mission to try and do everything I can to make the character and role that I’m in charge of, as strong as possible as a part of the whole.” Fionn Cox-Davies is not short of creative determination, and it shows.
From throwing himself into Punchdrunk’s The Drowned Man in his final term at dance school back in 2013, adapting to the more intimate environment of Sleepwalk’s Bacchanalia, and his latest venture – funding his next steps into the music world, through a night of cabaret, song and immersive experiences – Fionn is used to rising to the challenge. He joins us in the voidspace to talk about the ups and downs of these experiences, his quest for security in the form of a canal boat, and the importance of finding your people.
voidspace:
Welcome to the voidspace, Fionn. Thank you so much for joining me for a chat today.
Just to start off, give me a little bit of background about who you are and what you do in this space.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
I’m Fionn Cox-Davies. I’m an artist, really. I’m a trained actor and contemporary dancer, but I also started singing at primary school, and never stopped doing that, either. And then, I’ve directed a film that’s in progress as well. And I’ve done lots of different bits of my own work: choreography, a bit of directing.
voidspace:
In terms of the work that’s kind of immersive or interactive in particular, where’s your focus been with that?
Fionn Cox-Davies:
I graduated from dance school in 2013, and in my final term, I auditioned for Punchdrunk. That was The Drowned Man.
voidspace::
Was that your first job?
Fionn Cox-Davies:
I’d worked a bit whilst I was training, but Punchdrunk took me out of school in my final year, and I still managed to get my degree, which was good.
voidspace:
That is immense. I suppose the whole point of the training is to get you the quality of work and you can’t really get much better.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
It was an amazing experience. Loads of my mates were auditioning and I had no idea who Punchdrunk were. Not a clue. I had no idea what I was getting involved in.
voidspace:
What was it like, as a fresh student? Still in dance school, adapting to performing in a Punchdrunk show. I imagine it must have been quite different from the work that you’d have done up until that point.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
By that time, I was 23. I’d already done acting training, and then moved to Oxford and worked as a movement director and performer. That meant I came into my dance training having already had a whole chunk of experience, and I’ve always been into the devising, choreography and generation of my own material, and you make so much of your own work in Punchdrunk. So, I auditioned, and I thought, I’m in the right room. When I got offered the job, I wasn’t surprised, on some level, because it was a really clear match in the audition room. So going into it to begin with, in terms of making the work, meeting the people, it was very exciting, but I don’t remember it being shocking. I was just in the right place.
voidspace:
And then in 2020 you worked again with Punchdrunk on the 12 hour long-form film, The Third Day.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
I really loved working on that. I’m super into the film and TV stuff, and have done quite a bit of it. It was a nice condensed, one-off thing. One of the things that I struggle with a Punchdrunk contract, or any job that goes on for so long, is that once I’ve got to a certain amount of time doing one thing, any one thing. I want to go off, try something new.
When I’ve got what I need to get from the creative experience, then I’m ready to move on. There’s that part where it kind of turns into a job, and I’m actually not so interested in having a job. It makes me feel trapped. Whatever the scenario, if I’ve got to do it for a year, it’s not going to be great for me.
voidspace:
That makes sense. Once you start getting into the grind and you’ve got the creative satisfaction of it.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
And I love making. I love having a process, finding the depth in character movement, all of that kind of stuff, which is also part of why I haven’t done any of the Sleep No More reruns. They did speak to me about Shanghai, which is really nice of them, but I’m not really interested in the learning and restaging of something, because it’s the creation process that I love.
voidspace:
You decided to come back to Punchdrunk again in 2023, for The Burnt City, and stayed for a year. Is that because you were offered that chance to devise from scratch again?
Fionn Cox-Davies:
Yeah, it was the devising process. Also, for where I was at in my life, I needed something solid. I knew I was going to have to hold tight to make it through the year, because for this one, it was specifically a year’s contract. You couldn’t sign any less. I would have signed half a year, but you couldn’t. So, it was either you take the job for a year or you don’t do it.
My father passed away in 2017. The inheritance I got from that was £15,000, which is pretty much the only inheritance that I’m going to get in my lifetime. And with that money, I decided to buy a canal boat. We lost the family home that I’d been in since I was born. I lost my father, lost the home, and then both of my grandparents the next year as well. The only thing I could really find to do with that was to buy this canal boat. I had to start building it from scratch. The dream, and part of my reason for taking the job with Punchdrunk, was that I was going to save up through the year to try and get the canal boat finished.
So, part of my consideration for taking the job was really practical. This is the only certain opportunity that I will have in my lifetime, to own anything and to have any security, in a financial sense. And it’s just so rare that you get a job that pays you for a year as a contemporary dance artist.
voidspace:
Punchdrunk did seem to be pretty unusual in that regard, in terms of that security.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
Then also the fact that Punchdrunk are amazing at employing really interesting, beautiful human beings. Having so many friends, from doing The Drowned Man and The Third Day, people who I’ve been in contact with and working with on other jobs. I knew that the gathering of friends, of people I really love and care about, would help me through the long contract.
voidspace:
It’s a community, isn’t it?
Fionn Cox-Davies:
It’s a community and a scene. I knew it would be a tough gig, from having done it before. I knew I’d struggle with it, and I know how they work, and it’s not an easy environment. But to try and get this goal of turning that money from my father passing away into something, and to do that with people that I love, also knowing that I’m going to have at least some space for creative input, those were all factors for saying yes to that job.
voidspace:
Did you help devise the character of Patrochlus in The Burnt City?
Fionn Cox-Davies:
Yeah, it was me and Juan Jose Tirado Pulido working on that, and I was devising it mainly with Luke Murphy and Will Thompson. The four of us were working together a lot. The sad soldiers.
voidspace:
Did you find the devising process easier on The Burnt City than on The Drowned Man?
Fionn Cox-Davies:
I found it more challenging, actually. Everyone’s making their own characters, basically. Material that you’re going to be performing for a whole year. It means that some people, including myself, get precious about what decision is made. If you want one thing and someone else another…
voidspace:
Everyone’s got a strong vision, which is what you need, but there’s not always going to be the same vision.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
And it’s not even necessarily just the vision itself, but the way of working. Some people want it looser and more improvisational. Some other people want to set their loop, and know what it is. And I would say neither of the approaches are better than the other.
voidspace:
That difference in approach goes right through into performance, doesn’t it? Because that is essentially different ways of handling the audience. Are you keeping your beats as fixed as possible and trying to minimise the impact of the audience, or are you keeping it more improvisational so that you can incorporate the audience’s energy?
Fionn Cox-Davies:
I would say whatever process affects outcome. I could go really wide, and apply that to life as well. Everything that you’ve done, is the thing that leads up to the current moment. In a creative process, whatever you’ve been building and working with and doing, is all going into your performance.
So that moment is a trace of a history.
voidspace:
That makes sense. It’s not all going into a fixed product like a film, or even a fixed stage show. It’s going into something that is then going to be fluid and is going to have to be reperformed, reconsidered night after night.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
If it becomes fixed and the same to me, it starts to die.
voidspace:
I know things didn’t quite go as you’d hoped once you got into the performance side, because you were injured quite early on.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
Bursitis. I didn’t help myself. It’s not easy physically. It’s demanding.
voidspace:
Patroclus was one of the most demanding roles out there.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
I found it pretty demanding but I didn’t help myself during the process. The last time I’d done a Punchdrunk show, and what I perceive I was employed with in mind, was when I was doing Marshall in The Drowned Man back in 2013. I was 23, I was hurling myself around and I had a bouncier bone system. And then coming back to The Burnt City 10 years later, somehow expecting myself to be able to do everything I could when I was 23. I misjudged something in that to say the least.
But also, I find it hard to not go there. I love moving in the way I do. I grew up in a skate park, so I have a propensity for this more extreme movement style. I used that style in the making of Patroclus, and then that, paired with the amount of performances, the amount of rehearsals and the repetition of specific movements just did me in.
My whole nervous system was shot from the experience. I really struggled that year. But there were really beautiful moments and amazing things about it. And I think if they ran another show like that, and asked me to do it, I would still say yes.
voidspace:
I know you ended up taking residency in The Burnt City’s bar cabaret, Peep after that. You’d already been doing it as your second role, hadn’t you?
Fionn Cox-Davies:
I was cast as one of the bar hosts, which I was really thrilled about because it was quite different from stuff that I’d done for Punchdrunk before.
voidspace:
It’s a lot more cabaret style: actually seeing the audience, addressing the audience, a lot of comedy as well, like quite a lighthearted little character. That’s not a side of your practice that I think we’ve necessarily seen before.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
I was just really happy about that, because I think it’s quite easy for people to get a set idea of what you can do, as a performer. There is a side of my movement, the contact duet work, and a more extreme tumbling physicality that is the dance, and intensity. But it’s nice to be able to say, actually, no, it’s not the only thing I do. It’s easy to get typecast.
voidspace:
It was brilliant to get to see that side of what you could do. And it was fun. Peep was just so necessary in the darkness of that world, to have that light relief and that little refuge from it all.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
Yeah, I loved Peep. It was a refuge for me as well, in the making and the performing and everything.
I also pushed quite hard to get some Orpheus shows happening, and that was another opening. Getting to do some singing, as well.
voidspace:
After The Burnt City closed, you started working with Sleepwalk Immersive on their first production, Bacchanalia. How did your involvement with that come about?
Fionn Cox-Davies:
In the last three months of my contract with Punchdrunk, I wasn’t making enough money to be able to finish this boat. I was living with cast mates Tim Bartlett and Miranda Mac Letten and, even though they were charging me mates rates to live there, I still couldn’t save enough to finish the boat. I was looking for an even cheaper place to live.
Then Sally-Anne Huang had mentioned a place in Woolwich, and I ended up living there for the last three months of the contract with her son, Seb Huang, Sleepwalk’s Artistic Director. I started building a relationship with him through that.
When he asked if I was interested in working on Bacchanalia as Tiresias, I had a big old think about it, because it was Seb’s first full show.
voidspace:
It’s big step up.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
It can be quite scary to say yes to someone who’s just making their first show, because you have little reference for what the work will be like. But I’m really glad I said yes. I also knew that I was coming in on it with Fania Grigoriou and Jordan Ajadi, talented performers and makers.
voidspace:
Having experienced collaborators is going to help.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
In an immersive setting, where you know that you’re going to end up making a lot of the work yourself, it really helps. I’d already worked on The Burnt City with Fania and Jordan. I’d met Ruth Howard a couple of times too, really liked her vibe and trusted her as well. So, I knew that four of the seven characters in Bacchanalia were people who had really high levels of experience in making immersive work. So, I thought there’s a really good chance that this could turn into something really great.
And then also, by the time I say yes to a thing, I’m in. I know that when I’m there, I’m going to work hard, I’m going to craft. I’m going to get on my mission to try and do everything I can to make the character and role that I’m in charge of, as strong as possible as a part of the whole.
voidspace:
It’s turned out really well. It’s good because I guess you didn’t have that long to rehearse and devise Bacchanalia and get it underway. It must have been quite an intense process.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
It was a super quick turnaround. We made it in two weeks initially. I couldn’t really stop to think.
We just had to do those first shows and cross our fingers that it was well received. And it did get really well received. We got great reviews.
voidspace:
What was it like trying to make this kind of work in a much smaller and more limited space?
Fionn Cox-Davies:
The production’s capacity to really craft the detail of the world and focus the space with the lighting and sound, to create atmospheres in different rooms, was compromised by various things. As a performer it was very much a matter of responding to what you have. It’s a different game.
But one of the biggest differences that I’m most grateful for, is that it was human scale, in a way that Punchdrunk isn’t. We were a team of nine, and every day you could go into the room and you could see everyone’s faces. You can get a feeling for where everyone is on that day. You can work on a human scale: change things because you’re seeing everyone. You’re connected in a really rooted way, because you’re all on a mission together, you’re all sharing space together, you’re all trying to make something together.
Whereas in the Punchdrunk world, it being so huge, you don’t even get to say hello to everyone in the cast that day. How can you know how everyone is? So, you don’t get the chance to reduce the moments where you’re bumping into people: where someone’s got an energy because they’re sad about what’s going on in their personal life, and another person is really busy focussing on their particular thing. And when you go up to talk to them about a scene, they aren’t in a place to engage with it because you haven’t had the time to really see each other. The ability to work on that more human scale and really connect with each other is one of the most beautiful things about the Sleepwalk experience.
voidspace:
Your reliance is so much more on that person-to-person energy in the show, as well. The advantage of not having the tech and the lights and the sound and the stuff to fall back on, is that you’re totally thrown on your resources as performers and your connection with each other.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
It can feel exposing. Bacchanalia has a cast of seven. Say three or four of those people are having a slightly low energy, or off show, that energy can spread around the space, and the shows can then feel a bit more on and off. With Punchdrunk, you can hide. If you’re having a bad show, there are so many other people out there, that there are going to be such a variety of performer experiences, of how connected, how in, how on they are, in the balance of the show. It could still be a good show even though you’ve had a bad show.
voidspace:
You’re spreading the load a lot more when there are more of you.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
Yeah, they’re spreading the load. But then there’s also the fact that there’s so much detail in the set and space that – although it felt a little bit different with my Oracle character – but generally you’ve got so much more support from the world around you. If you’re having an off night, you still feel the support of the physical surroundings: the light, the sound, the sets, the detail and the depth of world that is around you, that you don’t quite have to work as hard. When you’re having a tough show, you know that you’re supported by this. Whereas in the Sleepwalk show, you feel more exposed. When you’re having a rough show, that feels bigger, somehow.
It’s definitely not a bad thing, because it acts as an ignition, but it is a difference.
voidspace:
I’m interested in the audiences, and the difference in audience dynamic between Punchdrunk and Sleepwalk. With Sleepwalk, you’re not masked, you’re hooded instead. You feel a bit more exposed as an audience member. It’s a different space.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
My character is blind, so I’m not looking at people’s faces anyway, so I’m not trying to connect with the audience through that sense.
There’s more intimacy, because it’s a smaller space, the audience flow is different. I do really feel it when there’s an audience that has more people who aren’t used to watching immersive, because there is a way that people get used to, of being brave, going into the room rather than standing at the edge. There’s a feeling, the scene has settled down, so they can come in close. I can feel them differently night to night, when it’s a night of an audience that feels less brave or less familiar with the form.
But in terms of the masked versus the cloaked, I don’t experience so much difference with that. Perhaps there is a sense of the audience members being individually more accessible. I think I probably touch people more, playing a blind person. You read people’s faces and you know who you’re talking to. It’s all through touch. So, there are quite a lot of moments now in the show where I’m working with that, and have a hand on someone’s face or taking people by the hand. Also, as a visionary, perceiving the blend of reality between the action of the show and the audience as ghosts, that means that the audience is quite accessible to that character.
voidspace:
The Oracle, who you played in The Burnt City was a visionary type character as well. That was a role with a lot of intimacy, too.
Fionn Cox-Davies:
Because of my knee injury, I moved off of Patroclus and onto the Oracle.
Six months into the run, Jane Leaney, who originated Oracle, left. I learned from her. She did that role so incredibly, and had such a detailed map. We’d worked together in The Drowned Man originally, and she’s like family. We got on so well, so it was a real pleasure to take that role over from her. For us to get back together in a show context and have this passing of information was really beautiful. The Oracle’s one-on-one was the last thing that I developed, and got back in the show in a way that I was happy with.
In terms of the intimacy of the Oracle, this feeling that she finds a person and takes them with her, and they’re her accomplice completely, this was really beautiful. I hadn’t come across that working for Punchdrunk before, with any of the other roles that I’ve had.
That experience has really led into the creation of the character of Tiresias. They’re both visionaries. Even though the space is small, Tiresias manages to skirt the edge of the show somehow. If you really stay with me, it’s becoming a bit like the Oracle track. If you stay with me, as an audience member, you become the accomplice, and it’s a really beautiful relationship.
I really love building that in a show. People come and go, and they watch bits of scenes or whatever, but to have one person with you for the whole thing and to have a depth of connection as performer to audience in that sense, through time and experience, is really beautiful.
voidspace:
What are your plans for the future?
Fionn Cox-Davies:
Alongside doing the performances for Sleepwalk, I have been organising a fundraiser event. I am trying to raise £10,000, and that money is going towards the rehearsal and filming of my most recent three or four music tracks, with up to five other musicians. We will record it as a live session, to get high quality footage and audio to send to venues so that I can start booking slots as a support act. This is a good way to meet more audiences, so that I can find more people that my work really speaks to. That’s the biggest dream, make the art and find the people it speaks to.
voidspace:
That sounds wonderful. You’ve got an event coming up in April, towards the end of the month.
In order to raise £10,000, I’m running this fundraiser, which is going to be a big old party in London. It’s happening at the U7 Lounge, Haggerston on 20 April, doors open at 6pm. And it’s going to start off as a cabaret night with acts by Rob McNeil & Pinchieh Chen, Tim Bartlett & Miranda Mac Letten, Sonya Cullingford and more.
Following that I’m going to do a half hour set of original material with a small band. After that, it turns into a club night, with DJ sets from Maya Millet, Christian Loveless from Sleepwalk and more. During the club night there are also going to be intimate immersive/interactive experiences.
voidspace:
That sounds good. I have no doubt that that will sell like hotcakes.
Final question: what advice do you have for aspiring creators in your field?
Fionn Cox-Davies:
None of it happens unless you want it and can find a way. Keep engaging with finding a way in how to make it, whatever it is, happen. Now is a terrible time, really, for freelance artists, with the current government. Not just for freelance artists.It’s really bad across the board, for so many people and in so many different ways. But the impact of that into my experience is that right now is a hard time just to make a living, let alone do the jobs that you really want and that you’re really interested in.
It takes dogged determination and creative thinking, outside of making the work, for how you continue to engage with your chosen path. It’s a mixture of being malleable to what’s coming in, and open to all of that kind of stuff, but also really having your arrow drawn and sighted up, slicing through the air with a determined focus.
And really at the heart of it, I would say that’s what it’s about. If you don’t know the people that you need to know, it’s about thinking, as a kind human, with empathy to people and their time, how do you build the connections and the groups and find the human beings that you relate to and make sense with each other? And how can you help each other in this mad old time? That’s the important thing: how we can lift each other up, and help each other.
Fionn’s cabaret / music / immersive fundraiser takes place on Saturday 20 April 2024
Buy tickets here