Idée Fixe is a performing arts company founded in the mid-1990s that merges sound, movement, image and drama through innovative use of technology. The collaborative effort draws together artists from diverse backgrounds to create accessible, audience-friendly performances, often involving community groups. It is co-directed by Leigh Landy and Evelyn Jamieson.
Each work begins with a theme drawn from everyday life: a day in anyone's life, the rooms of a block of flats, the fun and perils of travel. Objects from our daily existence are combined in experimental contexts, with stage designs functioning simultaneously as décor and as sound installations triggered by movement.
The company's guiding principle is working with people, not at or on them: developing devising practices in which all contributors take part in the creative work whilst remaining identifiable within the final piece.
The company and its devising practice are fully introduced in the booklet/video publication, Devising Dance and Music: Idée Fixe Experimental Sound and Movement Theatre (2000, Sunderland University Press). In the booklet a "flexible framework for devising" is proposed for anyone's use.