Vyvyan Stewardson is a multidisciplinary artist, creating spectacles of high-octane tragedy and industrial fantasy. Their work explores the limits of language, ugly emotions and uncomfortable truths, through narratives and avatars of queer outsiders. 

After studying at Queen Mary University of London (MA Theatre & Performance, BA Hons Drama), Stewardson began creating club performance work, fermenting in the underbelly of East London’s drag and alternative cabaret scenes, where they established themselves via their drag ultra-ego, RODENT. Simultaneously a wounded animal and a vengeful revenant, RODENT, as a goblin-in-a-party-frock, is a vehicle for explosive interrogations of otherness and estrangement. As RODENT, they worked with the world’s premier autistic, green drag queen, Oozing Gloop on The Yeast London Cabaret and later produced their own performance event, SISSY SCUM, platforming trans artists, poets and musicians. 

Through their club performance practice, Stewardson began to further develop their relationship with sound and music. Initially creating soundscapes and scores for their own lipsync and spoken word performances (HOMECOMING, 2017), they began a collaborative relationship with composer Alicia Jane Turner. From providing instrumentation and vocals to Turner’s work (Destruction/Disorder/Dirt/Pollution, 2019) they have begun establishing themselves as a sound designer working across live art and theatre productions. With Turner, Stewardson created the cabaret performance Jenny 2020: A Tragedy in Three Acts, an adaptation of Brecht and Weil’s Pirate Jenny, with instrumentation from The Philharmonia Orchestra. This project evolved into the cyber-punk odyssey, JENNY, commissioned for SPILL Festival, 2021 and performed at Power House Festival, Cambridge, 2022.