Devoted & Disgruntled is a nationwide conversation about theatre and the performing arts, run by theatre company Improbable.

Since 2006, we’ve been using a process called Open Space Technology to facilitate these gatherings where everyone’s voice can be heard and no topic is censored. There are no key-note speakers and no fixed agenda - you decide what gets worked on at the event. If we’re going to change the world for the better, we all need time and space to collaborate on an equal footing. Devoted & Disgruntled is that time and space.

Here’s Improbable’s co-Artistic Director Phelim McDermott on why he started Devoted & Disgruntled:

“Devoted and Disgruntled was born out of frustration. I was frustrated both with theatre and with myself. I knew things could be better in theatre and I also knew the way I responded to that situation could be more creative. I wanted to stop moaning and actually do something about it. 

The Devoted and Disgruntled events and the community that has developed around them involve people taking responsibility for making better theatre and making theatre better. D&D has become a way to engage with the stuff in the wider theatre world I only knew how to complain about before.

The events are liberating because they create an environment of possibility. A place where we are confronted with the refreshing yet challenging realisation that things will only change if we decide to make them. Often this situation can leave us feeling that we have to do everything on our own. However D&D offers immediate access to the people who might support and help us do it.”

“ ... everyone is there on equal terms, whether you're the artistic director of a major regional theatre or a first-year student just beginning to make work. In a theatre world that is often competitive and jealously guards knowledge like a miser, this is a place where expertise and experience are shared with real generosity and no strings attached. Devoted and Disgruntled is not just a talking shop – it actually spurs action and initiatives such as mentoring schemes, the sharing of skills and spaces, and people coming together creatively and making work.”

Lyn Gardner