Rabo de Foguete

Musician and carnivalist

Rabo de Foguete is a music and outdoor arts company based in Norwich, UK, delivering a range of work and projects across carnival, music and street theatre. Rabo is a platform for the work of musician and carnivalist, Marcus Patteson, bringing the spirit of carnival to a range of music-driven performances, from stage to parade and static street shows.  Marcus seeks to bring theatre to carnival and carnival to street theatre, using the inverted world of carnival and carnivalesque to reflect and comment upon the human condition.

Originally focussed around a carnival band, Rabo has developed into a vehicle for a range of shows and projects, particularly working in partnership with other artists.  Recent work has been with Paul Goldsmith and Katherine Vince (Twisted Reality Productions), long time collaborator, Dominic Patteson, and Charles Beauchamp, Mandinga Arts.

Music sits at the core of Marcus’ work. Last year he released an album under the band, Bird Service, which offers a platform for self-penned material that combines his love of Brazilian rhythm with his eclectic music roots. Future work is planned that combines the two areas.

​Coming from a tradition of street performance and carnival, the drive to take the music of the Rabo de Foguete carnival band onto the street through developing exciting, high impact shows for outdoor performance, was a natural one.  The band ran from 2009 to 2018 and shows included Malandro (Escalator Outdoor Arts/Grants for the Arts) a show exploring alienation, tomfoolery and general misbehaviour, in partnership with Dende Collective, which premiered at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival in 2011; and Voodoo Hoodoo (2015/2016), a nighttime parading show, developed with Molly Barrett, which can accommodate wider community participation.

Key to this work has been the development of mobile amplification to support a full band set up.  With the support of key collaborators, Marcus has developed a flexible mobile sound system that can go onto a number of float bases, can work in parade or where there is no electricity supply, etc.

The latest show, ‘Ulysses Street Show’, is a daytime, medium scale piece.  Ulysses tells the story of the return of Greek hero, Ulysses, from Troy, as an allegory of a soldier returning from war, fusing music with theatre, movement, performance and comedic interplay with the audience. Going through a number of phases of development the current show has been reworked in partnership with Twisted Reality Productions, as a three-hander, to make it more manageable to tour and bringing more storytelling, comedy and audience interaction to the piece.  It was funded through Arts Council England Grants for the Arts and was part of work to commemorate 100 years since the end of World War I.