A founding artist of Wildworks, Mercedes was instrumental in creating the company’s distinctive approach to immersive, site-specific performance. Working alongside Artistic Director Bill Mitchell and fellow collaborators, she has developed storylines, scripts, and dramaturgy for productions across the UK, Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and South America. Her work combines extensive archival research with conversations, oral histories, and close engagement with local communities, transforming landscapes into living stages where history, memory, and imagination intertwine.
As Wildworks’ Associate Director of Community and Research, Mercedes has pioneered a collaborative creative process that brings together artists and host communities. Her research draws on an eclectic range of sources—including archives, libraries, cemeteries, village halls, local historians, photographs, and everyday conversations—to uncover the stories embedded within a place. This distinctive methodology became central to Wildworks’ internationally acclaimed productions, creating performances that are deeply rooted in local identity while resonating with universal themes. Whether working in Cornish mining landscapes, Mediterranean villages, or historic palaces, she creates narratives that invite audiences to see familiar places through new eyes while forging meaningful emotional connections with history.
Mercedes Kemp
Mercedes Kemp is a writer, educator, and theatre maker whose work has helped shape the landscape of contemporary site-specific theatre.
Born and raised in Andalucía, southern Spain, she has made West Cornwall her home for the past fifty years, developing a body of work that explores the profound relationship between people, place, memory, and landscape.
Before co-founding Wildworks, Mercedes collaborated extensively with Kneehigh Theatre and was a member of the writing and performing collective Scavel an Gow. Her freelance writing has also included commissions for BBC Radio 3, The Guardian, the Eden Project, the Imperial War Museum, and Marina Warner’s Stories in Transit project in Palermo, often exploring themes of exile, belonging, identity, and cultural memory.
Alongside her creative practice, Mercedes had an academic career as Senior Lecturer in Fine Art and Creative Writing at Falmouth University, where she taught for three decades before retiring in 2021. Throughout her career, she inspired generations of artists, writers, and educators through her innovative teaching and commitment to socially engaged practice.
Her writing is distinguished by its poetic sensibility, Mediterranean perspective, and enduring love for Cornwall, her adopted home. Mercedes creates texts that live within immersive performances, giving voice to communities, landscapes, and histories that might otherwise remain unheard.
Mercedes brings to Daur forty years of experience, a lyrical imagination, deep humanity, and an enduring commitment to collaboration.
