The Guest returns to the road with a powerful exploration of Englishness, belonging and identity.
Anthony Lo-Giudice’s distinctive dance theatre work tours across the North of England from October before travelling to London and Italy in Spring 2027.
North East choreographer and director Anthony Lo-Giudice’s bold dance theatre work Se Gæst | The Guest returns to the road this autumn, opening here at ARC on Sat 3 Oct before touring the UK, with further performances in London and Italy planned for spring 2027.
Blending dance, live music, storytelling and puppetry, The Guest explores what happens when a stranger washes up on the shores of England. As a community already in turmoil is confronted by this unexpected arrival, attitudes towards tolerance, survival, blame, nostalgia and a changing world begin to surface. The production asks what it means to belong to England – who gets to belong and how ideas of national identity are formed.
Created through interviews and conversations with communities across England, The Guest brings together different, often conflicting perspectives on national identity. Rather than offering a single answer to what Englishness means, the production explores its contradictions and complexities through a dreamlike world where the ancient and contemporary collide.
Drawing on Old English language, folklore and mythology, Lo-Giudice creates a world of collapsing cities, disappearing forests, lost creatures, storms and spirits. At its heart is a deeply personal exploration of belonging, shaped by his own experience of arriving in England as a child and finding ways to understand a new home through fantasy, storytelling and mythology.
As Anthony explains: ‘The Guest is my take on an Old English saga through a modern lens, exploring England, belonging, identity, and our relationship to the natural world.’
For Lo-Giudice, these questions are not abstract. His experiences of arriving in England as a child, feeling like an outsider and encountering difficult experiences shaped his relationship with storytelling, mythology and fantasy, which became ways to process his experiences, find belonging and explore his relationship with his new home.
The result is a work that moves between the ancient and contemporary, the familiar and the strange, inviting audiences to consider their own relationship with England and the stories that shape how we understand the place we call home.
Reflecting on the work’s exploration of Englishness, Anthony says: ‘England is a complex beast that shapeshifts between magnificent and atrocious, benevolent, and cruel. Can we be proud of it? The answer to that question will always divide people. Perhaps we should be asking ourselves, how will people look back and remember us?’
This new tour follows the work’s first performance in 2025, where it was praised for its bold and distinctive combination of movement, music, storytelling and visual imagery.
Get your tickets now by clicking here, the show takes place on Sat 3 Oct at 7pm and is Pay What You Decide.