about

Thresh & Bray Theatre emerged in May 2023 when four women began gathering on Dartmoor to explore what it means to create performance rooted in relationship with place. We are performers, activists, dancers, singers, weavers, storytellers, facilitators, and creators who traverse multiple roles as fluidly as we move between artistic disciplines.

Our work emerges from the understanding that we are not separate from the natural world but intimately entangled with it. Through place-based improvisation and collaborative devising, we create performances that celebrate living in a female body while acknowledging the complex realities of our time.

Our Name

"Thresh" speaks to the ancient practice of beating grain to separate wheat from chaff; the vigorous, rhythmic action. In our creative practice, we thresh through experiences, memories, and relationships with the land, using movement, voice, and story to connect with what is true.

"Bray" carries the raw power of both voice and transformation. Like the unashamed cry of the wild ass that cuts through silence, our work gives voice to what is often unspoken. Simultaneously, "bray" speaks to the grinding action that breaks down barriers - between disciplines, between self and landscape, between performer and audience.

Together, our name embodies our methodology: we beat through the surface of experience to find its core, we crush the boundaries between art forms, and we cry out with voices that refuse to be tamed.

Our Approach

  • Place-based creation - allowing landscape to be our co-creator and teacher

  • Collective process - weaving individual gifts into something greater than the sum of its parts

  • Embodied exploration - learning through doing, feeling, and being rather than just thinking

  • Paradox as fertile ground - embracing contradiction as a source of creative possibility

  • Community engagement - creating work that serves and includes the places where we live

The Collective

We envision a world where performance art reconnects communities with the living world around them, where the female gaze offers essential perspectives on our relationship with nature, and where creativity becomes a tool for both celebration and transformation. Through our work, we aim to enchant audiences back into wonder while providing space to grapple with the complex realities of being human in this time of ecological and social crisis.


  • An experienced multi disciplinary performer, Alana has been creating work for over 10 years through physical theatre, movement, clown and mask, deeply influenced by myth and archetypes. Her work centres around ritual & storytelling, exploring the dance between the sacred, the profane and humanity's relationship with the natural world. Founder of True Nature, she is a facilitator and nature connection guide working with ritual, embodiment and many practices inspired by her theatre & dance training supporting people to remember their innate belonging, wildness and wholeness.  Her experience spans collaborative ensemble work, large scale spectacles, interactive and immersive environments, touring performances, and more recently experimental forms of performance art. She has been highly influenced by eastern european contemporary theatre practices that have ritual and physical theatre at their core.


  • Sofia is a Theatre Maker, Storyteller and Voiceover based in Ashburton. Since finishing her training at East 15 Acting School she has performed with multiple theatre companies across the UK, most recently in a Rep season at the Marine Theatre in Lyme Regis. She's voiced numerous audiobook titles for various publishers from Penguin to Hachette and recently appeared in BAFTA award winning Baldurs Gate 3. She is currently developing a solo show, Misplaced after finishing the Exeter Northcott's Future Artists program.


  • Ava’s creative practice focuses on improvisation in many creative forms including textiles art, soundscape music making using looper pedal, synth and vocals, DJing, and occasional other creative whims. She has periodically performed her improvised soundscape sets over the last 10 years in venues such as the Wardrobe Theatre in Bristol, Shambala festival and as part of ‘Improv’s Greatest Hits’ a Bristol based regular event showcasing artists in improv. She is part of the core team of the Dark Mountain Project who create two anthologies of creative writing and visual art each year, responding to the multiple collapses of modernity. She is a maker and mender who’s work sits in the paradox of self expression in the face of overwhelming destruction. She is also a coach and supports people with making changes in their lives, often working with people to explore and experiment with creativity.


  • Sara’s work emerges from deep dreaming and active imagination through a practice of meditation and ritual. She facilitates workshops that encourage connection to nature, myth and Buddhist practice, with a focus to untangle the conditioned consciousness and allow more space for our true authentic selves. She is the Rituals Coordinator for Buddhafield Festival. For the past 5 years she has led a team of 10, and 30 volunteers, to create and conduct ceremonies and rituals at the festival to audiences of up to 850 people. These transformational collective rituals and ceremonies are created through a group process in relationship with the land, influenced by pagan and buddhist practices, teachings, and mythology. She has also led online rituals, ceremonies and workshops for the past 4 years.