Unhappy with the prevailing abstraction of the period he experimented with extending purely visual forms to include live performance and music, influenced by Allan Kaprow, Red Grooms and Claes Oldenburg, and working with groups of his students.

At the Bede Gallery, Jarrow, he worked on a large-scale project with his friend Dave Pearson, filmmakers and artists, and including the musician Alan Price, as well as engineers from the local shipbuilding industry.

After 2000 Frith worked closely with Alison Duddle, originally of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre from Minneapolis on the majority of the company's productions.

Bamboo, due to its lightness and strength, was the main structural timber used in the early horse-drawn touring sets, and was also used to make puppets and music instruments.

Watching and being involved in a Horse and Bamboo performance, we as the audience aren't allowed to forget that this is an event that is being hewed from the wood, metal, paper, cloth, paint and bodies of flesh and blood in front of our eyes.

[9] Significant Horse + Bamboo Theatre touring productions include The Woodcarver Story(1982); Dance of White Darkness (1994), about Maya Deren in Haiti; Harvest of Ghosts (1999) created with Sam Ukala, the Nigerian playwright;[10] as well as Company of Angels (2002) about the life of Charlotte Salomon.

[11] The company toured an epic production Veil in 2008 that contrasts the lives of two young women, one an Iraqi, the other brought up in Europe, and is set across two generations.

Duddle has since adapted and directed a number of other productions aimed at young audiences, including Red Riding Hood and The Nightingale.

Some touring continued, notably Theatre Ballads which combines live folk music with puppetry and video, and Suffrajitsu, both directed by Esther Ferry-Kennington.

[13] Horse + Bamboo is based at a building, originally known as The Boo, in Waterfoot, Rossendale which is used as centre and venue for regular arts events and the development of visual and community theatre.

These were transcribed and the stories told were used as a basis for workshops with the second and third generation South Asian heritage community, particularly young people and women.

In addition to creative writing the project has created exhibitions, installations, melas, and mushairas with workshops in mehndi, calligraphy and paper-cut arts.

In 2015 the company helped open a small meeting place and gallery in Haslingden, called 'Apna' (meaning 'ours' or 'mine' in Urdu), that provides various opportunities for women mainly from Pakistani or Bangladeshi heritage.

[14][15] Apna became an independent organisation largely supporting South Asian heritage women, based in Haslingden and managed by Arry Nessa and others.

This closed in 2020 during the Covid epidemic although its influence continues with creative community work locally among South Asian, refugee and asylum seekers.