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Dateline: 3rd May, 2008 News from the North West
MIF wins Manchester Tourism AwardThe inaugural Manchester International Festival last year has won the Manchester Tourism Award for 'Tourism Experience of the year'. The award was presented at a ceremony organised by Marketing Manchester and hosted by former Coronation Street actor Sally Lindsey at Manchester Central. The Festival's biggest theatre production, Monkey: Journey to the West, will receive its London premiere in July at the Royal Opera House.
New Connections youth show festival at the LowryThe Lowry in Salford will once again host the regional heats of the National Theatre's "New Connections" festival of new plays performed by young people. Each year, the National commissions new short plays for young people to perform from leading playwrights, which this year include Mark Ravenhill, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Abi Morgan, Nicholas Wright, Frantic Assembly with Bryony Lavery, and Moira Buffini. Apart from the opportunities given to young people by the festival itself, each year it leaves a legacy of high quality scripts for schools and youth groups to use in class or in performance. This year, eleven groups will perform their choice of play at the Lowry between 6 and 10 May. Ten productions are chosen from the seventeen regional heats to be performed at the National Theatre in July. This week at the Lowry, there will be performances from Chaucer Business & Enterprise College from Sheffield, St Monica's High School from Prestwich, St Aelred's Technology College from Newton-le-Willows, Longley Park Sixth Form College from Sheffield, Peshkar from Oldham, Stockport Garrick Youth Theatre, Woolston Community High School from Warrington, Chorlton High School, The Blue Coat School from Oldham, The Elizabethan High School from Retford, Chellaston School CAST and The Television Workshop from Nottingham.
NW productionsLegendary crooner Frank Sinatra appears on the stage of the Liverpool Empire from 5 to 10 May using modern technology to project his image onto moving screens amongst a company of dancers and live musicians. The Vienna Festival Ballet, currently celebrating its twenty-fifth year, visits Warrington's Pyramid and Parr Hall on 7 May with its production of the ballet Sleeping Beauty to music by Tchaikovsky. The Strange Names Collective will perform The Gratitude of Monsters at the Green Room in Manchester on 9 May, which promises a distorted survey of the world, a lesson in complicity and an awards ceremony for acts of atrocity. Manchester's Queer Up North Festival kicks off with the only UK performance by American performer Sandra Bernhard in the twentieth anniversary performance of her landmark show Without You I'm Nothing at the Opera House on 9 May, joined by her band the Rebellious Jezebels and supported by Tina C. Bernhard will also appear at the Cornerhouse on 10 May to discuss her career with Times journalist Tim Teeman, after-which there will be a special screening of the film of Without You I'm Nothing. Cuban dance company Congas brings Latin American music and dance to the Lowry in Salford in Havana Rakatan from 8 to 10 May, set to music by Turquino and choreographed by Nilda Guerra. Leeds-based Phoenix Dance Company also visits the Lowry this week with a collaboration between choreographer Javier De Frutos and composer Richard Thomas in full-length production Cattle Call, featuring a cast of eleven dancers, on 6 and 7 May. Theatre Company Victoria has collaborated with Forced Entertainment director Tim Etchells to produce That Night Follows Day, a catalogue of the ways children's lives are defined by the adult world with a cast of sixteen children between 8 and 14 years of age, which will be performed at the Contact Theatre in Manchester on 9 and 10 May. Michael Frayn's Spies, adapted from Frayn's novel by Daniel Jameson, will visit the Lowry in Salford from 6 to 10 May in a co-production between Theatre Alibi and Oxford Playhouse. Two boys play at detectives during the Second World War hoping to uncover a German spy, but they find themselves face to face with the one thing they had never suspected. Not With That Hand, one of the plays from last year's 24:7 Theatre Festival, will appear at the Royal Exchange Studio from 8 to 10 May. This tale of two former schoolteachers, isolated from society and banned from working with children following the disappearance of a child ten years earlier, is performed by Annie Fitzmaurice and Erika Poole and directed by Paul Hunter. Manchester duo Lip Service (Sue Ryding and Maggie Fox) will return to the Library Theatre in Manchester with its spy spoof Jane Bond from 8 to 10 May, directed by Mark Chatterton. Liverpool Playhouse presents a new adaptation by popular Liverpool poet Roger McGough of Molière's Tartuffe from 9 to 31 May. Tartuffe, who claims to be a beacon of piety, gets his feet firmly under the table at the home of wealthy merchant Orgon, but as Orgon becomes more enraptured with his new companion the whole city is chattering. Is he a friend, a fraud, a miracle or a hypocrite? At Liverpool's Everyman, Rejects Revenge and Spike Theatre present Hoof!, in which two plays are entirely improvised each night, on 9 and 10 May. The National Theatre of Scotland brings its long-awaited tour of Black Watch by Gregory Burke to the Lowry in Salford -- or in fact to the TV studio The Pie Factory just around the corner -- from 7 to 10 May. The Scottish Black Watch regiment prepares for tours of duty in the controversial war on terror with witty banter, but as they are flung across the world to Iraq, it becomes clear that the rich, 300-year history of their legendary regiment counts for nothing in this brutal conflict and unforgiving climate. Second-year acting students and postgraduate diploma in acting students of LIPA will perform Tom Stoppard's Arcadia at the Unity in Liverpool from 8 to 10 May. Reporter: David Chadderton Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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