Franki’s work as a theatre director and consultant includes, artistic director of ‘The Troubadours’ a performing group of fools.

The Troubadours are Traveling Players, fools, actors, minstrels, and dancers, stand up comics, poets and storytellers, they come to entertain, and transform with their theatrical antics. Their ‘plays’, the comic tragedy of life, that reflect the human condition and the absurdities of community life, the tragedy of normality, and the joy of being.

The players bring with them the uniqueness of their differing cultures – Dutch, Italian, German and English and their celebration of traveling and playing together.

The Troubadours’ work is geared to the needs of each individual event, so that each event is unique.

The Troubadours, can play:

Theatres,

Walkabout,

Festivals,

Site-specific venues,

Street (Creating drama that involves the public as spect-actors)

All Troubadours are trained in the empty space research studio, and are part of a research project investigating performing as fools both as a group and solo. The empty space work can be used both directly in relationship with an audience and as a process of devising either scripted/choreographed pieces or structures for loosely devised pieces.

Working with Themes: plays, myths, situations, issues and topics, foolish renditions of classic themes such as Love/Sexual Relationships, Power, Money, Birth and Death, this foolish group explores great and petty dramatic themes.

Playing in Styles: Music, Dance, Drama and Comedy

Audience development:
in order to share the treasures that occur in the empty space, groups of fools are in the process of developing  relationships with their local audiences, exploring the art of being an audience, in order to commune with players in a theatrical space that is sacred.  In this fools are pioneers, inviting audiences to be present to a theatre experience which is both touching and irreverent.