Thursday, March 28

NEWS

Theatre returns to Trafford as Waterside announces re opening date
NEWS

Theatre returns to Trafford as Waterside announces re opening date

Waterside, Trafford’s leading arts venue, is delighted to announce it is re-opening its doors for artists and audiences alike from Monday 17th May 2021 with an exciting summer and autumn programme of live theatre, music, visual arts, comedy, dance and spoken word. Highlights include its annual ten day Summer arts festival, Refract:21 (22nd – 31st July), outdoor productions of The Great Gatsby and Mr Stink, comedy nights with stand up stalwarts including Paul Foot, Mark Watson and Sofie Hagen and one off in conversation events with music legends John Lydon and Francis Rossi. Whilst the venue has faced inordinate challenges over the past year, Waterside has delivered a strong programme of online activity, engaging over 38,000 people with multiple digital performances and participatory ev...
Aakash Odedra’s virtuoso solo show Rising on the main stage at Curve Leicester before touring
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Aakash Odedra’s virtuoso solo show Rising on the main stage at Curve Leicester before touring

Rising is the solo show that launched the extraordinary performer and choreographer Aakash Odedra onto the dance scene. On 24th and 25th May, it will be the first live work back on the main stage at Curve, Leicester where Odedra is an Associate Artist. After that, the show tours to Oxford and Poole. First performed in 2011, Rising notably featured solo works by three of contemporary dance’s biggest stars – Akram Khan, Russell Maliphant and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui – alongside work by Odedra himself. As critic Judith Mackrell said at the time, it was “the dance equivalent of a red-carpet event”. Each of the choreographers used Odedra’s background in the classical techniques of Kathak and Bharatanatyam to explore process, aesthetics and a new way of looking at the solo dancer. The result ...
The Show Goes On for The Dukes
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The Show Goes On for The Dukes

The Dukes are delighted to announce the much-anticipated return of live performance at their venue with an exciting new spring and summer season to welcome audiences back to their building.  On sale now on The Dukes’ website ( www.dukeslancaster.org ), the dynamic line-up features a mixture of family theatre, provocative dramas, guest speakers, dance and even some virtual reality.  Beginning in May, the season marks the first live performances at The Dukes since October last year, with shows resuming with safety measures in place.  The Dukes have embraced digital theatre and creativity during lockdown, with the likes of the upcoming The Importance of Being Earnest, their co-production with Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield which is streaming from April 19th – M...
Rebuilding Beirut’s theatre scene with Whispers International, an online fundraiser production
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Rebuilding Beirut’s theatre scene with Whispers International, an online fundraiser production

In the devastating 2020 explosion, the largest non-nuclear blast in history, all of Beirut’s theatres were destroyed. Whispers International will unite British playwrights with acclaimed Lebanese artists; all the proceeds of this online production will go towards helping the theatres rebuild and to support emerging Lebanese artists to create art once more. Facing a pandemic, a global theatre shutdown and Lebanon's economic crisis which was only worsened by the explosion, the hardship facing Lebanese artists and producers is unprecedented. Many lost their studios, homes, and belongings. Talented artists are being driven out of the creative industry and out of the country in order to simply survive. Agatha Ezzedine, actor and co-producer, comments, Beirut has always been the ultimate ...
Manchester’s Hope Mill Theatre to stream online production of Jonathan Harvey’s Hushabye Mountain
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Manchester’s Hope Mill Theatre to stream online production of Jonathan Harvey’s Hushabye Mountain

Hope Mill Theatre has announced it will work with Stream.Theatre to stream a new online production worldwide of Hushabye Mountain by acclaimed writer Jonathan Harvey. Directed by Nick Bagnall, this online production will star Matt Henry as Lee, Jodie Prenger as Beryl, Layton Williams as Connor, Nathan McMullen as Danny, Amy Dunn as Lana and Harrison Scott-Smith as Ben. Hushabye Mountain will be streamed live on Saturday 5th June, and then available online on 11th, 12th and 13th June 2021 (All 7:30pm) and 18th, 19th and 20th June 2021 (All 7:30pm with a 2:30pm Saturday Matinee). Hope Mill Theatre will be partnering with the following venues to show the production throughout the run: The Turbine Theatre Sheffield Crucible Liverpool Everyman York Theatre Royal Tickets are £...
Soho Theatre reopens with award winning play in June
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Soho Theatre reopens with award winning play in June

Soho Theatre celebrates the relaunch of its theatre programme this summer with an exhilarating new play. Shedding A Skin, written by Amanda Wilkin, the 2020 winner of the acclaimed Verity Bargate Award, sponsored by Character 7, introduces audiences to a fresh and fierce new voice. Shedding A Skin is a Soho Theatre production sponsored by NJA. A story for our times, Shedding A Skin is a play about finding kindness in unexpected places, moments of connection, intergenerational friendship and joy. It will be the first new play staged in front of live audiences at Soho Theatre since the pandemic and brings together the creative talents of Amanda Wilkin and Elayce Ismail, who also directed the sell-out hit GIRLS (Soho Theatre 2016). Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge described this award-wi...
Manchester theatre company wins prestigious Olwen Wymark Award after taking work online in Covid-19 pandemic
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Manchester theatre company wins prestigious Olwen Wymark Award after taking work online in Covid-19 pandemic

A Manchester theatre company which swapped the stage for a screen due to the Covid-19 pandemic has had its work recognised with a prestigious award. Elysium Theatre Company has just released five new online plays, days after being announced as Olwen Wymark Award-winners by the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, for its work in supporting new writing. The company, which also has a base in Durham, began producing The Covid-19 Monologues last year on its new YouTube channel after the pandemic closed all theatres, as a way to bring the Arts to audiences on-screen. Elysium co-founder and Director, Jake Murray, can’t wait for the world to see the next five Covid-19 Monologues, which are online now. The pioneering approach involved commissioning writers to pen monologues on any subject...
Leicester’s Curve theatre is gearing up to reopen with a special socially distanced season from the 20th May
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Leicester’s Curve theatre is gearing up to reopen with a special socially distanced season from the 20th May

After over a year without audiences in its building, Leicester’s Curve theatre is gearing up to reopen with a special socially distanced season from the 20th May. Including two nights of work curated by Curve Resident Creatives and local artists, a new comedy musical, acclaimed dance and a Made at Curve concert inspired by the life and career of Andrew Lloyd Webber, these reopening plans have been made possible by a second grant from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s Culture Recovery Fund. As recently seen in streamed productions of Sunset Boulevard and The Color Purple, by raising the walls between its theatre spaces, Curve will reopen as a 533-seat socially distanced auditorium, with audiences enjoying live performances from all four sides of the stage. To ...
Poet Laureate Simon Armitage and Maxine Peake pen monologues for new season at Leeds Playhouse
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Poet Laureate Simon Armitage and Maxine Peake pen monologues for new season at Leeds Playhouse

Yorkshire’s Poet Laureate Simon Armitage and Maxine Peake have written brand new monologues as part of Leeds Playhouse’s 50th anniversary celebrations. The Playhouse will be welcoming audiences back next month for the first time since November with monologues written by six writers offering their own perspectives on Leeds and the north playing in the Courtyard Theatre as Decades: Stories from the city. Leanna Benjamin, Kamal Kaan, Alice Nutter, Stan Owens, Peake and Armitage have each taken a particular decade from across the Playhouse’s lifespan covering the 1970s to today offering a diverse collection of stories firmly rooted in the North. Leeds Playhouse’s Artistic Director James Brining, Associate Director Amy Leach and RTYDS Resident Assistant Director Sameena Hussain will b...
Royal Opera House announces FREE stream
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Royal Opera House announces FREE stream

The Royal Opera House is delighted to continue its #OurHouseToYourHouse programme, featuring online broadcasts that can be accessed by audiences around the world. Join us them Friday 16th April at 7pm GMT for a FREE stream of a very special Insight from 2016 celebrating The Sleeping Beauty.  Former Director of The Royal Ballet Monica Mason and Christopher Newton join Director Kevin O’Hare in discussion about their restaging of the production that reopened the Royal Opera house in 1946 after World War II and this year celebrates its 75th anniversary. The Insight also offers a glimpse into rehearsals taken by Monica Mason and Samantha Raine with Olivia Cowley, Kristen McNally, Tierney Heap and Anna Rose O’Sullivan. The stream culminates in an additional treat with an excerpt from th...