Ex-Complicite boss Judith Dimant launches new company Wayward Productions

Former Complicite producer Judith Dimant has founded a new production company she says will look beyond the usual sources of inspiration to find “new ways” of creating theatre and live performance.

Dimant left her job as executive producer at Complicite last year after 25 years with the company, and now works part-time as executive director of Emma Rice’s Wise Children as well as running her own newly formed producing company Wayward Productions.

Complicite’s Judith Dimant and Poppy Keeling join Emma Rice’s Wise Children

The company is the lead producer behind Enda Walsh’s adaptation of Grief Is the Thing With Feathers, starring Cillian Murphy, which runs in London and New York next year.

Dimant said it felt “terrifying and liberating” to be starting up her own company after more than two decades at the same organisation.

“I’ve done a very strange thing at 55 of packing in a good job with security and giving this a go, but I’ve got loads of ideas and if I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it. I’ve always been really interested in finding new ways of working, and in the next generation, so I’m really interested to see what I can do,” she said.

Dimant had worked on Grief Is a Thing With Feathers while at Complicite, which is an associate producer on the show, but she said adapting novels and other source material into “new, innovative” stage productions would be at the heart of Wayward’s mission.

“I am working with someone who works in film script development, and also have a literary person helping me. I have people who will say, ‘There’s a book coming out that’s really interesting that we should look at.’

“For instance, there’s a non-fiction book that I’m looking at right now and thinking, ‘How can this become a piece of performance?’, or a long article in a newspaper could be the basis for something,” she said.

Dimant said she was particularly interested in maintaining the European theatre connections she fostered while at Complicite.

Wayward is currently developing a production of The Cherry Orchard with Toneelgroep, Amsterdam.