What's On Oct 16-20
With my suitcase unpacked, and a very large spider removed from the bath — actually, it was on my towel and fell into the bath — there’s just time to tell you about some shows and events which take place over the next few days.
Later today (Monday) there’s a free, public symposium at stage@leeds — Contemporary Research in Performance Light: Experience, Creativity, Meaning. Theatrical lighting, though integral to performance, is an under-researched area of academic study. Scott Palmer (Leeds), Kelli Zezulka (Salford) and Katherine Graham (York) have been involved in a six-year collaboration to explore contemporary issues in light for performance. This has resulted in a website, www.thinkinglight.co.uk, an edited volume published by Bloomsbury Methuen, and a special issue 'On Light' currently in preparation for the international Journal of Theatre and Performance Design, published by Routledge.
Unless you live locally, it’s probably too late to get yourself down there (it starts at 4.30pm, sorry) but fortunately there are unline resources on the website.
Shakespeare’s First Folio
It is the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio. If you don’t know that yet, you will. Oh, you will.
The Folio is a collection of Shakespeare’s plays, first published in 1623, seven years after his death as a consequence of the diligent textual detective work of his actor friends John Heminge and Henry Condell. The hair’s-breadth by which we missed losing his work is astounding — it’s the only reliable source for many of them.
American playwright Lauren Gunderson’s The Book Of Will, being staged by Shakespeare North in collaboration with Bolton’s Octagon Theatre and the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch, is an easy-going romp through the events that led to the volume’s production. Oct 19-Nov 11, £3-£6
To coincide with this European-premiere production, the British Library has loaned Shakespeare North their good copy of the First Folio. (The 50 that remain in the UK are in various stages of disrepair.)
Meanwhile, the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon has been marking the occasion with a nationwide playwriting project called 37 Plays. The new plays that have emerged from the selection process are being staged as script-in-hand productions around the country and the Yorkshire contingent is as follows:
Jack in a Box by Joanne Thomson and Growing Pains by Hannah Eggleton at Hull Truck Theatre on Oct 19 and 20, pay what you can £1-£15,
Re: Jane Doe by Patricia Hamilton, Nov 3, The Last Picture by Catherine Dyson, Nov 4, and And I Dreamt I Was Drowning by Amanda Wilkin, Nov 4, all at York Theatre Royal.
Abandoned by Felicity Williamson and Friday At The Masjid by maatin at the Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, Nov 16 & 18, tickets not on sale yet.
If you’ve never been to a script-in-hand performance of a new play, I suggest you give it a go. They’re cheap, a lot of fun and, though standards vary widely in an upward direction from barely rehearsed to scrupulously rehearsed and with some technical support, both actors and directors can find them unexpectedly freeing.
Modern Dance From America
Also gracing Yorkshire with their presence this week is one of America’s most exciting modern dance companies. Ailey II is the graduate company of the influential Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre (influential not least because it was one of the first racially integrated dance companies in the United States). The mixed programme features an excerpt from Francesca Harper’s futuristic Freedom Series, Robert Battle’s The Hunt, William Forsythe’s Enemy in the Figure (excerpt), and Alvin Ailey’s renowned Revelations. Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, Oct 17 & 18, £18-£30 and Hull New Theatre, Oct 20, £15.
Be More Penguin
Finally, with the horrors of Israel and Palestine gobbling up all the available news space, we’re in danger of forgetting the legacy of that other terrible conflict in the region — the Syrian war. Penguin is Hamzeh Al Hussien’s solo show, which takes his audience on a personal tour of the places he knows best — his village in the Syrian mountains, the once temporary but now very permanent-looking Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan and Gateshead. Leeds Playhouse, Oct 20 & 21, £14.
And before I go, just this: I was tearing my hair out at the latest round of stupidity and brutality in the affairs of humanity when a friend shared:
It’s an Israeli women’s organisation that sets aside all that authoritarian iron-this and iron-that to work constructively with the other side. Now there’s a novel idea. And if you have a better one, I’d like to hear it.
That’s all for now. Must dash.
Liz x