This week's news from the Coliseum...

As we hurtle towards April (where is 2012 going?) LipService’s hilarious Move Over Moriarty opens at the Grange Arts Centre next week and we are getting ready to open our second production of the season – Bill Naughton’s Alfie – which opens on 11 April.

Towards the end of April Education and Outreach will be producing a performance at Earl Mill Arts Centre in Hathershaw, Oldham. Tunnel Visions is a site specific performance where audiences will travel through a converted mill space in a replica train carriage. This large scale project has taken inspiration from the Lydgate Tunnel which closed in 1963 and will use new technologies and new writing, the performance will transform this old mill space.

Site specific theatre is a really exciting way of working and each production is unique to the space in which the performance takes place. There are theatre companies across the country that only produce site specific theatre For example; Grid Iron Theatre company perform in disused warehouses, parks and town houses. In fact, Star-Cross’d (our open air summer production) is a site specific production, being performed in promenade at Alexandra Park. For Tunnel Visions, audience members will take a seat in a train carriage and travel around the space stopping at various points for different sections of the performance, travelling back in time coming across anything from dinosaurs to suffragettes.

Each performance will last 30 minutes and there will be 11 performances over the course of Friday 27 and Saturday 28 April. Tunnel Visions has been devised and will be performed by the Coliseum’s TheatreLAB and DigiLAB groups which are made up 30 of young people under 25yrs. DigiLAB focuses on the digital and technical aspects of theatre production. Since the groups were formed they have worked on a variety of productions including main house shows and interactive performances which have all embraced digital technology. Imitating the Dog – the design team behind our current tour of The Hound of the Baskervilles – will be working on Tunnel Visions using projections to create the different time periods. This will be a great opportunity for the members of DigiLAB to develop their understanding of technical design even further by working alongside this innovative company. Anyone who saw Hound will know what stunning effects Imitating the Dog can conjure up.

This will be a really exciting piece of theatre and writer Rob Johnston has also recently won the King’s Cross Award for New Writing 2011. The whole company have been working really hard to make the performance a success and I’m really looking forward to boarding a carriage for the first show.

See you out and about.

Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director

This week's news from the Coliseum...

Last week we completed our run of The Hound of the Baskervilles at the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield. I am delighted with the show and was so pleased to see so many of our regular audience members making the journey ‘over the tops’ in the coaches we provided. This week The Hound of the Baskervilles is playing in Bury St. Edmunds for the second leg of its ten week run.

Meanwhile all our staff our gearing up for the return of our new writing festival Wordsmith. Wordsmith12 will run from the 4 – 12 May and during that time we will present a series of performances, masterclasses and rehearsed readings at both University Campus Oldham and Oldham Central Library.

One of the highlights of this year’s Wordsmith will be a performance of True by Emma Rydal, which won the Audience Award for Best Play at last year’s 24:7 Theatre Festival - Manchester’s annual festival of new theatre making which has become a well-respected fixture on Greater Manchester’s theatre calendar. We are delighted to be teaming up with 24:7 on this to give this new play further life and exposure, and I would recommend it to anybody.

We will also be hosting a series of rehearsed readings of some new scripts during Wordsmith. This means that the writer of the piece, along with a director and a team of actors, will spend a day rehearsing the script, then perform to an audience in the evening. Theatre is a collaborative process, and rehearsed readings are a brilliant way for writers to garner invaluable feedback from other people working in the industry and, most importantly, the audience.

For any budding playwrights we are delighted that the brilliant Amanda Whittington, writer of among others Be My Baby, Ladies Day and Satin ‘n’ Steel, will be hosting a masterclass designed to help you hone your skills and develop your writing. After that, Amanda will be In Conversation with me, where I will be interviewing her about how she became a playwright and her subsequent career.

Wordsmith is a really important part of what we at the Coliseum do. It gives important exposure to new pieces of work and gives audiences the opportunity to see plays at various stages of development. New plays are the lifeblood of the theatre and Wordsmith is an excellent way of focusing the Coliseum’s energy on the various aspects of new writing.

There is lots more happening during Wordsmith12. For more information or to book tickets please contact our Box Office on 0161 624 2829. To discover more about new writing at the Coliseum please call Nicola Place on 0161 785 7007.

See you out and about.

Kevin Shaw
Artisitc Director

This week's news from the Coliseum...

We are now fully operational at the Old Library with a host of big rooms – much bigger than we were used to at the Coliseum. The wardrobe department has a fantastic space – much more in keeping with similar workshops at other theatres across the country, unlike the glorified corridor that we had back at Fairbottom Street. The rehearsal room is also much bigger which means we don’t have to imagine the extra stage space. When I was describing the library building to Robin Herford ahead of his arrival to direct Taking Steps, I warned him that it wasn’t in peak condition but when he saw it he said how much better it was than the dingy church halls he’s used in London for West End shows. The space is exactly what we need and it’s with great thanks to Oldham Council that we’re able to use it.

Last week I travelled over to Lancaster with the cast and company of The Hound of the Baskervilles to perform on the production’s set for the first time. Imitating the Dog – the company that are designing the play – had put together the set at Lancaster University and set-up the projections that form an essential part of the production. The overall effect is absolutely stunning – it really is like nothing else I’ve worked on at the Coliseum. The use of projections mean that the action can just zip from one location to another. One minute we might be in Baskerville Hall and the next we’re 221b Baker Street and then Dartmoor.

The cast couldn’t wait to get on the set and start working through bits of the play. This is a real treat, especially considering that we were only in the second week of rehearsals. Usually the cast don’t get to see the set and work through the play on it until the fourth week of rehearsals. This is the first time we’ve been able to work through the play on a set so far ahead of opening night. It’s particularly important for this production because the projections and other design elements are so intricate that the sooner we start working with them the better.

We’re nearly at the end of the final week of rehearsals at the Lawrence Batley Theatre and I’m really looking forward to seeing the harmony of all the multi-media elements with the cast in front of a live audience.

See you out and about.

Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director

Time for a story...

While I’ve been rehearsing The Hound of the Baskervilles it struck me how different an experience it is to read a novel and watch a play of the same story. At the moment I’ve been getting the play on its feet and I will often refer back to the original novel. The way in which readers experience the novel will be totally different from an audiences’ experience of the play although the story is the same. Reading a novel is a solitary experience and you visualise the action in your head however watching a play is a shared experience with the story tellers in the same room, every night is unique – with no two performances alike.

The tradition of storytelling is as old as civilisation itself, theatre has developed from when ancient cultures told stories orally over a camp fire, drawing figures in the sand, acting out sections and playing music. Fast forward to today and people now visit the cinema, read a book or watch TV and it has been argued that there are seven basic plots that every story can be attributed to. These seven plots are universal and apply to novels, films, plays, any form of storytelling and more than likely date back to that camp fire. Each involves a particular journey that the story’s hero must go on.

First up there’s ‘Overcoming the Monster’, the hero must destroy the evil figure that is threatening their way of life. Pantomime fits into this perfectly, especially Jack and the Beanstalk, but James Bond is another example of the hero overcoming an evil figure or indeed The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Next is ‘Rags to Riches’ – another one that can be applied to panto, Cinderella for one, but Pretty Woman is a brilliant example. In this story we meet the hero in poverty or anonymity who goes on a journey which ultimately ends up with riches and notoriety.

In ‘The Quest’ the hero learns of some great fortune or trophy that they are determined to find it. But the journey is never easy and the hero usually recruit a band of companions to help along the way. Examples of this plot include The Lord of the Rings and Watership Down.

Number four is ‘Voyage and Return’ where the hero is transported out of their real world and into a fantasy land from which they must find their way back. Alice in Wonderland and Gulliver’s Travels are perfect examples of this particular plot.

The next one is ‘Comedy’ which sounds fairly obvious but it’s more about the situations that the hero and other characters find themselves in and the comedy that can be mined from that scenario. Taking Steps – our current production at the Grange Arts Centre - is a great example of this.

‘Tragedy’ is as simple as it sounds, the hero does not get what he wants. Romeo and Juliet and Wuthering Heights are some tragic stories that fit this.

The final plot is ‘Rebirth’ which sees a young hero be tempted by evil until they see the error of their ways, the Harry Potter series is a great example of this.

The most popular stories are the most simple that appeal to our basic human emotions; hope, loss, peril and they all fit into these seven categories. People have always told stories and storytelling is an integral part of society. Of course, live theatre is one way of telling a story and you can’t beat that unique shared experience – but I would say that…

See you out and about.

Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director