As co-directors of Forest Fringe, Andy Field and Deborah Pearson champion theatre that is daring, disorderly, DIY and often deeply weird. An experimental arts organisation that grew out of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2007, Forest Fringe now produce ‘microfestivals’, hosts residencies and commissions new work around the world.

Wherever they go – and their work takes place in unlikely locations, from London buses to Shanghai slaughterhouses – the Forest Fringe approach calls into question the means of art production and the structural obstacles to creative expression. All the while, Forest Fringe maintain a spirit of adventure, risk, exchange and even utopianism.

In Australia for a residency with the Melbourne Fringe, Field and Pearson will discuss with host Emily Sexton the intersection of art and politics. Is art inherently political? When are artists seen as legitimate political commentators and when are they dismissed? And, in this politically heated moment in the UK, what do Field and Pearson want live art to do – and to be?