I feel pretty sure that most, if not all, of our readers will be well aware of contemporary circus purveyors Ockham’s Razor, who have won oodles of acclaim since the company was founded back in 2004 for their physical, visual, circus/theatre shows. 

Founders and artistic directors Charlotte Mooney and Alex Harvey bring their latest show ‘Collaborator’ to The Place shortly, as part of Mime London 2026, and it’s one of the last times you’ll be able to see them perform together. 

I wanted to find out more about the show and its creation, and about its creators, so spoke to Charlotte and Alex ahead of their London run. 

Caro: For those who have not seen your work before: what kind of performance should they expect? Can you talk to us about the form and format of ‘Collaborator’? 
Charlotte: Of course. We make physical theatre shows using the movement of circus. In the case of ‘Collaborator’, there are two performers onstage: myself and Alex. 

Our principal circus discipline is doubles trapeze – so there is a metal frame above the stage and we lift, carry, wrap around each other in the air, and the images we create – the trust, delicacy and risk in that movement – tells the story of our working lives together. 

We also move on the floor, tell some stories to the audience and have a series of pendulums which act as a metaphor for our relationship. Essentially it comes under the banner of visual / physical theatre.

Caro: Can you tell us a bit about the themes of the show? 
Alex: We have been making shows together for 24 years and we are also married – ‘Collaborator’ is about what it’s like to live and work with someone for that length of time, the dynamics of building a life together. 

While it is of course very personal to us, it should also have dynamics that anyone who has tried to navigate a relationship – to build something with someone else – would recognise. 

Caro: What made you want to focus on these ideas in a show? 
Charlotte: We wanted to make something that felt authentic and it was interesting to us to see how we could take something so personal but transform it into art – into movement and images. 

Also I think that it’s something that audiences can deeply relate to.

Ultimately it’s a show about how to build trust, how to accept your flaws and freak outs, how to carry on when you’re infused with doubt, how to stop battling against each other but use each other’s energy to carry each other forward.

I think we could all do with a bit of that at the moment.

Caro: Can you tell us a bit about the process you have gone through in making work together? How do you go about creating it? 
Charlotte: We devise all our work in the rehearsal room, which means that we go into the room with some starting points and ideas but really with no idea how the work will turn out. 

It can be a fairly terrifying proposition because you have to trust that once the search has begun something will be found. 

We dream up some starting points for movement explorations, stories, sculptures and then we begin improvising with them and see what chimes with us. 

For ‘Collaborator’, we had open rehearsals on some of the Fridays where about 30 makers would come in and see what we had made so far. We would then discuss what they saw in it – what they might do. 

We did this as a kind of teaching tool, but it was also so useful for us as it gave us the chance to see what appealed to an audience – what they saw in it or were drawn to.

Caro: How did you come to be working together initially? 
Alex: We met at Circomedia – a circus school in Bristol where we both studied in our early 20s. We fell in love and vowed that we would never make work together as that was a sure fire way to break up! 

But we discovered that we were really inspired by all the same work and, once we started training together, that we loved inventing new movement with doubles trapeze.

We made our first piece together and, to our great surprise, it won a prestigious competition in Paris which gave us the opportunity to tour it and some money to make more work. 

After that we were away.

Caro: Why is this the last time you will perform as a duo? 
Charlotte: We have a daughter and initially she was on the road with us, but once she began school, for the past five years or so, we have been directing rather than performing so that we could be at home more and have a more stable life. 

Someone asked if we had retired from performing and we realised that it had happened to us but that we had never made that decision. We thought we would do one last show together, so that if we were stopping we were doing it consciously rather than it being a fait accompli.

Caro: Tell us about how you came to be pursuing careers in the arts. Was it what you always wanted to do? 
Charlotte: Actually, from a really young age I wanted to be a poet. I also used to do a lot of dance as a child but never thought that was a viable career – for some reason it never occurred to me that neither really was a poet! 

I went to university to study literature and discovered that I found the life quite lonely and that I really missed moving my body. That’s when I heard about Circomedia and it really appealed to me: the idea of making visual theatre, working with your body and devising with a group. I guess it’s a kind of poetry.

Alex: Honestly, I never planned that far ahead – I pursued whatever I was interested in at that moment. As a child I wanted to be a rally driver!

But then I got really into art. I did a Fine Art degree, then heard about circus and was interested in it, and that brought me to Circomedia where I fell in love with aerial. I’m still interested in circus, so here I am.

Caro: What have been the highlights of your working lives thus far?
Charlotte: Performing at the Sydney Festival was a huge moment, as was selling out our run of our last show ‘Tess’ at Sadler’s Wells’ Peacock Theatre. 

Alex: Our shows in Edinburgh over the years and winning the award for Best Circus Show there. There was some amazing critical feedback for our shows ‘This Time’ and ‘Tess’ which also made me really proud. 

Caro: What aims and ambitions do you have for the future? 
Charlotte: To keep making work and touring shows across the UK and internationally. One day we will also get a good long run in a West End theatre! 

Alex: Yes – our international touring took a real beating over the past few years due to Brexit: we would like to get back out there and also to keep building the UK touring scene. 

Caro: What’s coming up next for you after this?
Charlotte: We are making a new show ‘Greed’, which is an adaptation of a Greek story from Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’. It’s about a power mad king who tries to devour the world and gets properly taken down by the Goddess Demeter. It should be darkly comic and full of crazy circus invention. A cathartic fairytale for our time.

Charlotte and Alex perform ‘Collaborator’ at The Place from 29-31 Jan, click here for info. You can also see the show at The Lowry in Salford from 5-7 Feb and at The Corn Exchange, Newbury, on 11 Mar. 

LINKS: theplace.org.uk | ockhamsrazor.co.uk | x.com/OckhamsRazorUK