James Yarker is Artistic Director of Stan’s Café theatre company and was recently voted no.39 in the Birmingham Post’s ‘Power 50’!  He graduated with a first class degree in theatre from Lancaster University and headed to Birmingham in the questionable but ultimately justified belief that it would be a good place to start an avant-garde theatre company.  Having co-founded Stan’s Cafe with Graeme Rose in 1991, he has directed all the company’s productions since then.

Stan’s Café declared its idiosyncrasy from the start, with one early performance taking place in Moseley Road Baths.  Gradually the company established a reputation, beginning to tour internationally with 1998’s It’s Your Film.

But it is the amazing worldwide success of the theatre/exhibition hybrid Of All the People in All the World, in which grains of rice are used to represent world population statistics, which has turned Stan’s Café into an international festival favourite. Versions on various different scales have been presented across Europe, in North America and Australia. A full world population version, using 112 tonnes of rice, was staged in the company’s current home, the A E Harris factory in the Jewellery Quarter, last year.

Other recent projects have included a perform-it-yourself James Bond installation at Warwick Arts Centre and a 24-hour Scalextric race to coincide with the full-sized version in Le Mans.

James and Stan’s Café use their playful vision and profound artistic sensibility to work with children informally and in formal education, and to support the continuing professional development of other artists, arts workers and all sorts of organisations.