Ep. 586 - Tom Bailey - Theatremaker & Arctic Expeditioner. Recorded from The Arctic Wilderness
My Time Capsule
Cast Off Productions
4.8 • 842 Ratings
🗓️ 24 May 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tom Bailey is a Bristol-based theatremaker and artist, and creative director of Herald Angel award-winning company MECHANIMAL, whose work — described by New Scientist as "extraordinary… moving and enlightening" — has toured to over 15 countries and explores humanity's relationship to a changing planet. We caught up with Tom from a remote shack in northern Norway, where he is currently midway through *Threshold – A Wild New Border Journey*: a 600km ultra-slow expedition by ski, sled, foot and boat across the Arctic borderlands of Norway, Finland and Sweden. Beginning on 10 March 2026 at Barents Spektakel, the two-month journey travels westwards through the Russia–Finland–Norway border region before concluding at Stamsund International Theatre Festival in the Lofoten Islands in May 2026. Along the way, Tom is meeting local communities, artists and researchers to document the lived realities of life in a fast-changing Arctic — with a new performance piece set to premiere in 2027. Threshold builds on a body of work that has consistently used endurance and landscape as artistic material. In 2024 Tom walked 1,000 kilometres solo as a tribute to lost species, research that fed directly into *Wild Thing!* — his most recent Edinburgh Fringe production, in which he attempts to embody 48,000 endangered species. Supported by Arts Council England, Arts Council Norway and the Danish Arts Foundation, his practice remains one of the most distinctive and committed voices in ecological theatre.
Tom Bailey is our guest in episode 586 of My Time Capsule and he chats to Michael Fenton Stevens about the five things he’d like to put in a time capsule; four he’d like to preserve and one he’d like to bury and never have to think about again .
To find out more about Tom’s theatre visit - https://mechanimal.co.uk .
Follow Tom Bailey’s theatre company on Instagram: @_mechanimal_ .
Visit our website! - https://mytimecapsulepodcast.com .
Follow My Time Capsule on Instagram: @mytimecapsulepodcast & Twitter/X & Facebook: @MyTCpod .
Follow Michael Fenton Stevens on Twitter/X: @fentonstevens & Instagram @mikefentonstevens .
Produced and edited by John Fenton-Stevens for Cast Off Productions .
Music by Pass The Peas Music .
Artwork by matthewboxall.com .
This podcast is proud to be associated with the charity Viva! Providing theatrical opportunities for hundreds of young people .
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to my time capsule. My name's Mike Fenton-Stevens, and my time capsule is the podcast that we've been doing for over six years now, where people tell me the five things from their life they wish they had in a time capsule, |
| 0:24.8 | four things that they really love, and one thing they'd like to bury and forget. |
| 0:29.5 | My guest in this episode is Tom Bailey. |
| 0:33.1 | Bristol-based theatre maker and artist Tom Bailey is in the middle of a journey of more than 600 kilometres across the Arctic borderland regions between Norway, Russia, Finland and Sweden by ski, sled, foot and boat. |
| 0:48.0 | This two-month ultra-slow journey began on the 10th of March this year and is titled Threshold, a wild new border journey, |
| 0:56.5 | which will highlight climate change and the future of Arctic borderlands, rethinking how |
| 1:01.4 | international cultural touring operates in a warming world. Tom will be moving gradually |
| 1:06.7 | through remote forests, frozen lakes and coastal mountains in the Nordic Arctic regions. |
| 1:12.3 | Tom is meeting with local communities, artists and researchers, exploring people's lived |
| 1:17.4 | experiences in these borderlands and documenting how environmental change is fast impacting |
| 1:23.1 | the Arctic region. |
| 1:24.8 | The journey will include talks, workshops and performances at international festivals |
| 1:29.5 | in Norway and Denmark, culminating in a new performance piece which will debut next year. |
| 1:35.8 | But an extraordinary thing. So when I was offered the chance to talk to Tom, I jumped at it. |
| 1:41.2 | I was lucky enough to get to talk to Tom midway through his journey |
| 1:44.1 | as he sat in a small wooden hut somewhere near the Arctic Circle. |
| 1:48.6 | Isn't the internet mad? |
| 1:50.3 | So here is this bold, intrepid, thoughtful man |
| 1:53.5 | and his time capsule choices. |
| 1:56.0 | Sometimes in life it's good to listen to someone with a slower, more studied view of the world. |
| 2:01.8 | So here is Tom Bailey. How are you right? Yeah, yeah, not bad. Thanks, not bad. I've got a little bit of |
| 2:10.5 | a cranky internet connection here, but it is a Wi-Fi connection. So we'll see how it goes, as long as the |
... |
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