On this page you'll find a selection of experiences you can have in your seat, right now. About half of them are digital artworks documenting the experience of a different, live artwork, often involving communities singing together in meaningful places.

This first film is one of those. We filmed it a few weeks before the first lockdown, in March 2020. Then the changing context of that wild year repeatedly changed the meanings of the film - while its content remained exactly the same. Enjoy!

The other half are, one way or another, attempts to explore whether the things I value about theatre can survive the fact that we're not in the same room.
High Street Duets
by Unfolding Theatre
Written by Daniel Bye and Beccy Owen. Music by Beccy Owen
Commissioned by Historic England

Audio now. Along with Beccy Owen I was commissioned to write a series of songs responding to conversations about their high streets with the people of Lancaster and North Shields.

The results range between folk lament, punky mod, electro-pop dancefloor banger and lighters-in-the-air ballad. They make for a surprisingly bittersweet EP, a heady blend of intense love and hair-tearing frustration - feelings common in towns and cities across the land, wherever high streets fade and tatter in the face of out-of-town Tescos and Amazon Prime.
Welcome to Your New Day
Commissioned by Northern Stage
Written and performed by Daniel Bye.
​Music by Ziad Jabero.

This was commissioned as part of SCROLL, Northern Stage's  series of digital pieces designed to interrupt the cycle of doomscrolling we all know so well. Pieces for the moments too-easily spent refreshing the little bird on your phone.

​Welcome to Your New Day is an audio piece for first thing in the morning. Your day hasn't yet started and already you're off on the wrong foot.
Palm Reading
Commissioned by Absolutely Cultured and Northern Broadsides

​​Palm Reading is a live online performance encounter for you and a stranger. Meeting one another for the first time through this script, you’ll experience closeness and distance in a whole new set of ways.

To experience Palm Reading, find a partner. You could ask around via your own social media, or ask me to pair you up . Then just download the document. Make sure you read the instructions a few hours in advance.

Palm Reading is available to download here​.​
These Hills Are Ours - Clougha Pike
By Daniel Bye and Boff Whalley
​Film by Bevis Bowden

The second film in the These Hills Are Ours series - A Song for Clougha Pike​ - was released on Thursday 11th June at 8pm. You can watch it here, or click through and subscribe to my channel on YouTube.

​The third and final film, documenting the show's premiere "wild tour" from the north to south coast of Devon, running from show to show, and celebrating all we've missed over the past year, premieres in late 2021 - look out here, and on my YouTube channel.
Sleeping Beauty backstory animation
Written and directed by Daniel Bye and Sarah Punshon
Animation by Amber Cooper-Davies
Soundtrack by Ziad Jabero
Cast: Helen Longworth and Alyce Liburd
Commissioned and produced by The Dukes

To accompany our Christmas 2020 production of Sleeping Beauty, the Dukes commissioned a short animated film to whet the appetite of ticket-holders. We worked with the fantastic stop-motion animator Amber Cooper-Davies to create this lovely thing.
​WARNING: it was a real challenge to stop my kids from watching this again and again and again.
​WE'RE HERE
Written by Daniel Bye and Boff Whalley
Created with Sarah Punshon, Rachel Thomas and Prof David Green
Commissioned by Somerset House and King's College Cultural Institute
Part of the Paths to Utopia season
Film by Sheila Hayman

​A group of strangers gather in a city to sing together about the experience of living in a city with strangers. The choir was demographically representative of the population of urban Britain. Before performance day, they'd never met.
WONDERSTRUCK.
​
Commissioned by People United and Manchester Museum (2014).
Written by Daniel Bye and Boff Whalley
Directed by Daniel Bye and Sarah Punshon, with Josh Coates.
Film by Tim Knights

A song cycle inspired by the collections of Manchester Museum, about how everything in the history of the universe has led to us gathered together singing these songs.

This was the first of many projects involving Boff Whalley and a large number of singers!
An Exchange of Views was made on my phone in response to a request from Beaford.

They wanted something optimistic that would encourage their community to get outside.

​I was more than happy to attempt something stupid in order to provide that.

This was also the first thing I made under lockdown, the first attempt at finding a quality of exchange and interaction in digital media. Please watch and share your views.
Also:

For Pitlochry Festival Theatre I've written a short piece called Recovery, part of their Shades of Tay season. You phone a number and listen to a voicemail message. Maybe you'll leave a reply, maybe you won't.

This is the most analogue piece of performance imaginable and I'm delighted to feature it on this page.

There'll be more of this sort of thing throughout 2021-22 - Covid or no Covid.
Since you're here, I may as well draw attention to the fact that several of my extant theatre shows are available to view online free.

​On your left there is Going Viral, my Fringe First-winning 2015 show about a global pandemic.

Below are ​The Price of Everything and How to Occupy an Oil Rig​.

Click through for full credits.