[Excerpt] The new season includes 4 new plays, the return of Marcus Brigstocke and Crick Crack Club founding member Sally Pomme Clayton joins our line up totaling 14 Associate Artists.
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OMNIBUS THEATRE NEW SUMMRE SEASON ANNOUNCEMENT
MAY TO JULY 2018
- The new season includes 4 new plays, the return of Marcus Brigstockeand Crick Crack Clubfounding member Sally Pomme Clayton joins our line up totaling 14 Associate Artists.
Highlights in chronological order;
- MEMORIES OF FICTION: THE LIVING LIBRARY, a collaboration between Seadog Theatrecompany and Roehampton University,opens our WHISPERS FROM THE WALLS season, a programme of 25 events from 9 May – 24thJune celebrating the art of storytelling, theatre and the power of words.
- THE FATE WE BRING OURSELVES, the Crick Crack Club’s Ben Haggarty brings world class storytelling with this dark, magical and provocative remix of Greek myths. 29 May.
- Associate artist Tessa Bide premieres her new family play PERFECT,a remarkable story about the power of nature in our lives. 20 May.
- LA MANCHE: THE SLEEVE,witty physical theatre written and performed by Sarah Corbett, who returns solo, following last year’s staging of WE ARE BRONTE as part of Publik Transport. This new play is a gloriously absurd tribute to the golden age of bathing. 1–2 June.
- THE YELLOW WALLPAPER, Another Soup return following the critical success of THE SOUL OF WITTGENSTEIN, with a modern dramatisation of the cult American short story classic by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. 5 – 24 June.
- Tickets for the new season are now on sale. Box office: 0207 498 4699 | www.omnibus-clapham.org|Twitter: @Omnibus_Theatre |Instagram: omnibus_Theatre | Facebook @OmnibusTheatre
Commenting on the Summer programme, artistic director Marie McCarthy said;
“Fresh from our OFFIE winning adaptation by Sabrina Mahfouz, we continue the theme of literature reimagined and open our Summer season by playing homage to the heritage of our old library building. Whispers From The Walls celebrates the art of storytelling in all its forms, highlighting the power of words and the emotional impact they make. Seadog Theatre and The University of Roehampton’s collaboration, Memories of Fiction: The Living Library, breaks the barriers between audience and space and brilliantly captures the spirit of our building and explores the emotional impact of reading and how it transports and transforms people’s lives.
We also continue to give voice to women with 19 pieces of work written and created by women, from a range of different perspectives: obsession with motherhood in Nina Davis and Anna Bliss Scully’s The Non Parent Trap, the teenager’s perspective in Katie Arnstein’sBicycles and Fish and Alison Skilbeck’sThe Power Behind The Crone. Sarah Corbett returns with her new solo piece La Manche: The Sleeve who will take us across the English Channel when the golden age of bathing and channel fever gripped the nation.
The Yellow Wallpaper, the cult 19thcentury short story, reimagined and adapted by Ruby Lawrence, runs throughout June and explores mental health, focusing particularly on depression.
Associate artist Tessa Bide premieres a stunning new piece of work, Perfect, bringing to life the story of a boy meeting his disabled sister for the first time.
We’ve also extended our Edinburgh Previews in July and I’m thrilled to welcome back Marcus Brigstocke with his brilliant brand of improv.
And finally, following on from David Glass’appointment last season as an Associate Artist, we are delighted to announce the addition of Sally Pomme Clayton to our 14 strong line-up, a founding member of the Crick Crack Club, and storyteller extraordinaire, she’ll be sharing her storytelling methods in the workshop A Life on the Wind.”
SUMMER HIGHLIGHTS: LISTINGS
Memories of Fiction: The Living Library
Seadog Theatre/University of Roehampton
Wed 9 May, 7.30pm, Thu 10 & Fri 11 May, 2.30pm & 7.30pm, Sat 12 May, 8.30pm, Sun 13 May, 1pm. For ages 11 +, pay what you can.
Omnibus Theatre is being transformed into ‘The Living Library’, with interactive installations and performances bringing to life local readers’ memories of reading.
This live art event comprises a series of dance, storytelling, sound art and participatory artworks spaced throughout the building’s theatre and common areas. Audiences will explore individually as well as sharing group experiences, choosing what they are interested in, just like a library.
This new work in collaboration with The University of Roehampton, is by Seadog Theatre, a small-scale Newcastle-Upon-Tyne-based company, who make visually and spatially inventive and interactive work for specific audiences. Director/writer Laura Bridges is collaborating with artists from London and the North East, including acclaimed set designer Eleanor Slade, sound designer Lucy Harrison and choreographer/performer Patricia Verity Suarez. The artists hope this experience will reinvigorate audiences’ appreciation for reading and for their local library, underlining libraries not merely as containers of books, but as live spaces where diverse people come together to imagine.
The Non Parent Trap
Nina Davis and Anna Bliss Scully
Fri 18 May, 7.30pm, £12, £10. For ages 12+
In a world where tabloid magazines conjure celebrity pregnancies out of post-dinner bloats, the leader of the free world might grab your pussy at any moment, and average parties can feel like episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, every woman’s reproductive status seems to be public property. This funny and poignant one-woman show from writer/performer/broadcaster Nina Davis (What’s Off Stage on Soho Radio) and theatre maker Anna Bliss Scully investigates the lives of the 1 in 4 women who will never have children as they navigate a culture that seems hell-bent on telling them that they should.
Bicycles And Fish
Tangram Theatre
Fri 18 May, 7.30pm. For ages 12+
How I became a woman. A period piece. With songs.
“I have always loved fairytales. My favourite film ever was Beauty and the Beast until we learnt about Stockholm Syndrome in PSHE”.
Bicycles and Fish is Katie’s debut one woman show about the day she stopped being a girl and became a woman. Combining comedy, storytelling and original songs Katie wants to talk about why feminism is discovered so much later than misogyny and how we might change that.
Perfect
Tessa Bide
Sun 20 May, 11am & 2pm, £9 and £7. For Ages 5+
The touching story of a boy meeting his disabled sister for the first time, with stunning puppetry, original live music, animation and physical theatre from the award-winning Tessa Bide. An imaginative retelling of the book by Nicola Davies and Cathy Fisher, opening up the subject of disability for young audiences. Perfect is a remarkable story of anticipation and disappointment, acceptance and love, and the power of nature in all our lives.
The Fate We Bring Ourselves
Crick Crack Club
Tue 29 May, 7.30pm. £12 & £10. For ages 14+
Performance storyteller by Ben Haggarty at his most alarming, as he presents three remixed, extended and explicit Greek myths. Expect sex with Zeus, twice-born gods, formidable goddesses and some nasty clashes between naive mortals and uppity deities. These are stories which you thought you knew – but here, thanks to extensive research and Ben’s 30 years of reading between the lines of world mythology, you will find them conjecturally restored, live and direct, to their terrifying and truly awesome glory. This is world-class storytelling: dark, magical and provocative.
La Manche: The Sleeve
By Sarah Corbett
Fri 1 – Sat 2 Jun, 7.30pm, £12, £10.
“A mere ditch that shall be leaped” (Napoleon)
Twenty-one miles (as the gull flies) to France. So near yet so far.
Flash-back to a golden age of bathing. Channel fever grips the nation.
Our foolhardy romantic emerges from her ‘modesty’ hut to join the Channel swimmers. Dollops of goose fat and a glint of foolhardy eccentricity. Flash-forward, will it go swimmingly or will the tide turn?
Expect one woman, witty physical theatre and inventive use of props all from the depths of her bathing hut. This is a gloriously absurd tribute to The Channel.
The Yellow Wallpaper
By Another Soup
Adapted by Ruby Lawrence
Tue 5 – Sun 24 Jun, 7.30pm, 4pm Sundays. £15 & £12. (No performances 19 – 21 Jun) £15, £12. For ages 12+
Alice has not formed the correct bond with her baby. That’s what her doctor and husband say. Isolated from her child and banished to the country for ‘rest’, Alice falls further down the rabbit hole of her own mind. The wallpaper haunts her. But is she really sick, or are there more sinister forces at play?
Based on the cult short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Another Soup returns to Omnibus Theatre, after huge critical success with The Soul of Wittgenstein, with a haunting cautionary tale for the modern age.
-ENDS-
For more information, interviews or images please contact Diana Whitehead, Omnibus Theatre PR on 07939 149887 or
email diana.whitehead@omnibus-clapham.org
NOTES TO EDITORS:
About Omnibus Theatre– Housed in a former library perched on the edge of Clapham Common, Omnibus Theatre is home to a90-seat studio theatre, a café/bar and two performance and rehearsal spaces. Our work is in part inspired by the legacy of our beautiful red brick 128-year building and includes both classic tales and adaptations reimagined for contemporary audiences, as well as theatre makers and writers telling new stories in unexpected ways. We nurture and support twelve associate artists and have delivered 8,700 creative learning opportunities since 2013.
Since opening in 2013, Omnibus Theatre has produced a raft of productions which have won critical acclaim: Woyzeck (2013), Macbeth (2014), Colour (2015),Hangman Rehanged – a co-production with the NT Live and Edible Cinema(2016), Mule (2016) and Spring Offensive (2017) and Offie award-winning Zeraffa Giraffa (2017).
In November 2016, Omnibus Theatre was awarded the prestigious inaugural Peter Brook/Royal Court Support Award. Despite no guaranteed funding, Omnibus Theatre has made rapid progress and is becoming established and widely recognised as a first-class theatre venue.
Led by Artistic Director Marie McCarthy, our patrons are Sir Michael Gambon, Matthew Warchus, Sir Richard Eyre and Maggi Hambling CBE.
