Readymade Theatre is a performance and live art collaboration born in 2014 by Austin Sherlaw-Johnson and Stavroula Kounadea while working together on the production of John Cage and Teen Duchamp Play Chess in Front of a Live Audience (2015), starting as an irreverent homage to Reunion (1968) and ending up as a pastiche of the finest and most misunderstood artwork of the second half of the 20th century. Readymade also created Fulfilled Existence (2017), a durational performance in the window of an empty shop for Fringe Arts Bath, in the centre of Bath. There the performers, while in the shop window like forgotten dummies, attempted to blow up enough balloons to fill the whole of the available display space while reading out loud from books on the importance of hard work. They were dressed in glad rags, applied a lot of sunscreen and between them blew (and tied a knot on) over 350 balloons throughout the day.
Austin and Stavroula also collaborate on each others’ solo performances and are key figures of the growing performance and live art scene in Oxford.
Fulfilled Existence:
John Cage and Teeny Duchamp Play Chess in Front of a Live Audience:
Stavroula Kounadea 