Open Call for 'Performance Live' - 15 new performances for TV

Last November, the BBC joined forces with Arts Council England and Battersea Arts Centre to broadcast a night of performance On Stage: Live From Television Centre. Five groundbreaking theatre companies from across the UK devised short productions that went out on BBC Four and iPlayer.

It was a rare intervention from the world of independent theatre - familiar to those who love festivals and live performance - into the television schedules. The result was a daring and genre-busting evening of entertainment and great art. There was dance, anarchy, provocation, heartfelt confession and Keith Chegwin holding a giant toothbrush.

On Stage: Live From Television Centre piloted new ways of funding, commissioning and producing arts programming and forged new relationships between theatre makers and television crews. For all involved, it was one of the most scary, white-knuckle but inspiring productions we'd been involved in. And by all accounts, audiences felt the energy too.

An editorial in The Guardian hailed the spirit of the evening:

Sunday’s experiment showed how much can be brought to TV by a collision with the fresh thinking and spirit of independent artists. Live From Television Centre should not be left as an intriguing one-off, but the start of a new spirit in the BBC.

Well, last week the BBC, Arts Council England and Battersea Arts Centre launched an Open Call for Performance Live - a scheme that will see us broadcasting up to fifteen new performances, devised especially for television, over the next two years. 

As with On Stage: Live From Television Centre, we want to put the artists and performance organisations at the heart of the production process. We want to capture a broad range of performing arts talent in the UK - theatre, dance, spoken word, but also those who innovate and merge genres. We want to see familiar talent doing something new and the big names of tomorrow showcased for the first time. And we want to see performing artists and production teams taking risks and learning together to create great art. 

As Fry and Laurie once said, 'the first rule of the game zone is: there are no rules. The second rule is: don't go into the kitchen. It's out of bounds.' Well, the only difference here is that with Performance Live you can go into the kitchen. Whatever that means.

Jonty Claypole is Director, BBC Arts

• The open call for Performance Live closes 19 May. More details can be found on the Battersea Arts Centre website.