Slung Low Archives - North West End UK

Chisholm For President! – The Warehouse in Holbeck

18Apr

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Chisholm For President! – The Warehouse in Holbeck

It’s always risky when you see any work in progress which can often just be a series of vignettes that don’t really knit together, even if you can see the potential of the material being tested in front of a live audience. That was most definitely not the case at this taster session for Chisholm For President!, based on the life of the first black woman elected to the US Congress in 1968 and then the first woman of colour to run for President in 1972. Sitting in Slung Low’s cavernous newish home I was wondering why a brand-new musical, that is basically performers acting with script in hand and singing a bunch of original songs, seemed so fully formed. But then the penny dropped that this fledgling production has a very strong creative team behind it. Playwright Zodwa Nyoni has c...

New show Chisholm for President! celebrates the life of a civil rights legend

2Mar

By NewsdeskNo Comments

NEWS

New show Chisholm for President! celebrates the life of a civil rights legend

New soul/funk musical Chisholm for President! tells the inspiring story of the first Black woman to be elected to Congress and to run for the nomination of the President of the United States. Through live music and performance, it recalls the life of Shirley Chisholm who struggled against the political machine and made her trailblazing run for the Democratic US presidential nomination in 1972. Shirley Chisholm was a trailblazer as the first Black woman to be elected to Congress in 1968 and was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, before making history as the first African American to make a serious bid for the Presidency of the United States of America in 1972. She was known for her advocacy on behalf of women and minorities, standing with the Gay co...

Slung Low and Freedom Studios team up to premiere new short plays for radio

9Jun

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

NEWS

Slung Low and Freedom Studios team up to premiere new short plays for radio

Two of Yorkshire’s best known theatre companies are staging an afternoon of new short plays written for radio to be performed in front of a live audience. For the past decade Leeds based Slung Low have been running 15 Minutes Live and this time they will partner with acclaimed Bradford theatre company Freedom Studios. They’ve commissioned six playwrights to write an original short play to be recorded in front of a live audience at The Holbeck venue in Leeds on Saturday 10th July at 2pm. This year’s line-up of writers is Tom Wells, Aina J Khan, Ben Tagoe, Leeds based actor-musician Claire-Marie Seddon, Rani Moorthy and Ray Sesay. 15 Minutes Live includes on-stage sound effects, audience participation and live music woven into the performance. The audience will be guided thr...

Theatre makers Slung Low promise free books to local kids

26Oct

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

Theatre makers Slung Low promise free books to local kids

Theatre company Slung Low have never taken the conventional route and before the pandemic they took a big risk in taking over a struggling South Leeds working men’s club to better engage with their local community. The Holbeck has become a place where Slung Low produce their own work, run a free community college and as the virus struck they staged outdoor events in their car park. But as Leeds battles COVID their artistic director Alan Lane decided his team needed to do more. They have pledged to give every child in the area a free copy of a picture book ‘Emergency Story Penguin’ which they created based on one of their touring shows. Kids at those shows were told that every theatre had an emergency story unit in it, and they needed to join Slung Low on a journey to save stor...

Barrie Rutter performs a charity gig for Slung Low

19Oct

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

Barrie Rutter performs a charity gig for Slung Low

There are very few actors who you recognise just by their surname but Barrie Rutter is one of them. Rutter founded Halifax based Northern Broadsides as a vehicle for actors from across the north to perform Shakespeare classics and new work in their own accents working in non-traditional spaces. Rutter's socially distanced appearance at the Holbeck Working Men's Club on Saturday 7th November is his first performance since recovering from throat cancer as he talks about his life on the boards and performs excerpts from plays in his infamously unapologetic northern dialect. After being given a part in a school play because his teacher said the Hull fishmonger's son had ‘the gob for it' and he discovered a love of performing. He went onto the National Youth Theatre th...

Slung Low launches scheme to give every kid in their area a free book

18Oct

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

Slung Low launches scheme to give every kid in their area a free book

Theatre innovators Slung Low run a members club/performance space in the Leeds area of Holbeck and have launched a scheme to give every local child in Holbeck a free book. The company is renowned for both its theatre work and the work it does with its local community in South Leeds. During the pandemic they have been operating a food bank, co-ordinating a cultural community college, and managing the country’s oldest working men’s club. A part of their community work three of the Slung Low team spent a week at Holbeck’s Ingram Road Primary School reading their new book Emergency Story Penguin to the pupils ending the sessions by giving all 340 of them a copy. Emergency Story Penguin follows Lady Grace Thompson and her crew on an adventure around the secret underground tunnels ...

28Sep

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

Insulted.Belarus(sia) – Slung Low

Protests continued this week in Belarus, after newly elected Alexander Lukashenko was sworn in as President. Playwright Andrei Kureichik, has penned a piece of verbatim theatre in which Slung Low and more than 40 theatre companies from more than 10 countries, have organised readings of the play in order to shine a spotlight and metaphorically join hands with the people of Belarus. Kureichik’s play consists of a series of monologues communicating the feelings and plight of several Belarusian’s who experienced the protests, the alleged rigged election voting system and were the victims of the over-zealous arrests of the protestors. Many theatres in Belarus are controlled by the state, much the same as Russian theatres, so their artists are ultimately controlled by a need to earn money...

Children’s theatre makes a socially distanced return to Leeds

9Aug

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

Children’s theatre makes a socially distanced return to Leeds

Leeds theatre-makers tutti frutti, Wrongsemble, Unlimited Theatre, 154 Collective, Blah Blah Blahs, Alive & Kicking, Interplay, Fidget Theatre and Slung Low joined forces to bring live theatre back to children across the city. Coming together under the Live Little Stories for Leeds they perform socially distanced theatre shows for free to pre-invited families and children at six locations in Leeds. This unique the collective was pulled together by tutti frutti as a pilot and all performances during Live Little Stories for Leeds took place outdoors to small audiences following strict social distancing guidelines. Other adaptations new to theatre makers included the provision of PPE equipment on site, one-way systems into locations and safety measures being incorporated in a fun w...