Real Marigold Hotel, The Drift, Gutted, Trojan Horse, Extraordinary Wall
The Real Marigold Hotel—Live – tour starts 2 October
For the first time BBC hit series The Real Marigold Hotel is to tour.
In The Real Marigold Hotel Live, stars Shelia Ferguson, Bobby George, Paul Nicholas, Rosemary Shrager and Wayne Sleep will tell the stories behind the programmes revealing the bits the producers left out of the final edit.
American singer, songwriter, actress and author Sheila Ferguson was lead singer of The Three Degrees; Bobby George is a retired professional darts player; Paul Nicholas is an actor, singer, producer and director with a career on stage and on television; chef Rosemary Shrager is best known for television's Ladette to Lady and I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!; Wayne Sleep OBE is a celebrated dancer, choreographer, director and actor. Not all artists will perform at every venue.
The Real Marigold Hotel Live is produced by ebp in association with Twofour Broadcast Limited. The tour visits Chipping Norton Theatre, Cheltenham Town Hall, Royal Spa Centre Leamington Spa, New Theatre Royal Lincoln, Princes Hall Aldershot, Winter Gardens & Pavilion Weston Supermare, Palace Theatre Southend, Pavilion Theatre Worthing, Corn Exchange Bedford, Richmond Theatre And Hawth Crawley.
The Drift – tour starts 2 October
The Drift is an autobiographical show written and performed by Hannah Lavery about growing up mixed-race in Scotland looking at Scottishness, belonging and loss.
This poetic spoken-word piece is directed by Eve Nicol and presented by The National Theatre of Scotland. All performances are autism friendly (visual guide available) and wheelchair accessible.
Poetry from The Drift has been collected in Finding Sea Glass: Poems from The Drift published by Stewed Rhubarb Press.
The Drift tours Scotland visiting The Lemon Tree Aberdeen, Druimfin Tobermory, Hart of Hawick, Traverse Theatre Edinburgh and Tron Theatre Glasgow.
Gutted – tour starts 3 October
Irish black comedy Gutted is made up of three comic monologues looking at the lives of women working in a fish factory in the 1980s.
The play has themes of family, trust, love and loss, looking at issues of domestic violence and abortion which remain relevant today.
It is performed by Eleanor Byrne, Niamh Finlay and Sarah Hosford.
The play is written by playwright and screenwriter Sharon Byrne, who grew up in Dublin, directed by Chris White, and produced by Vivienne Foster. It has choreography by Jess Boyd.
Gutted visits The Marlowe Studio Canterbury, Second Space The Waterside Theatre Aylesbury, The Quay Theatre Sudbury, The Mirren Studio Basildon, Irish Cultural Centre London, The Churchill Studio Bromley, The Pumphouse Theatre Watford, The Hawth Studio Crawley, Maud Hoe Street Walthamstow London, Astor Community Theatre Deal, Old Town Hall Theatre Hemel Hempstead, Exchange Studio at The Hazlitt Theatre Maidstone, The Electric Theatre Guildford, The Dugdale Studio Centre Enfield and Omnibus Theatre London.
Trojan Horse – tour starts 3 October
Following its première at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe where it won a Scotsman Fringe First and an Amnesty Freedom of Expression Award, this docu-drama about the controversial government inquiry into alleged extremism in Birmingham schools takes to the road.
This story of a community torn apart by racial division, ‘British values’ and the culture of Prevent examines the media storm which saw the schools come under scrutiny.
It is a piece of verbatim theatre written by Helen Monks and Matt Woodhead and directed Woodhead. The academic consultant is John Holmwood.
Originally commissioned by Leeds Playhouse, Trojan Horse is presented by LUNG in association with Leeds Playhouse.
Trojan Horse visits Leeds Playhouse The Lowry Manchester, Live Theatre Newcastle, Square Chapel Halifax, Unity Theatre Liverpool, Lawrence Batley Theatre Huddersfield, Cast Doncaster, Hull Truck Theatre, The Dukes Lancaster, Norwich Playhouse, Theatre Clwyd, Theatre in the Mill Bradford, Battersea Arts Centre London and Midlands Arts Centre.
Extraordinary Wall of Silence – tour starts 5 October
Six years in the making, Ad Infinitum's Extraordinary Wall of Silence looks at the relatively undocumented history of oppression experienced by Deaf people.
Helen, Alan, and Graham are "impaired and need fixing". As they begin to question the world around them, they are taken back to the 1880 Milan Conference and its resolutions on Deaf education that would see generations of Deaf children put through an abusive regime of speech therapy to make them speak, ‘hear’ and lip read.
Extraordinary Wall of Silence is a bilingual performance in British Sign Language and English performed by three Deaf actors and one hearing actor.
The play is devised by Ad Infinitum with the company David Ellington, Matthew Gurney, Moira Anne McAuslan, Deborah Pugh and with additional devising company Charlotte Dubery and Mia Ward; the BSL Interpreters are Chris Curran, Paul Mancini, Kyra Pollitt and Rachael Veazey and it is directed by George Mann.
Extraordinary Wall of Silence visits Bristol Old Vic, Salisbury Playhouse, Birmingham Hippodrome, Corn Exchange Newbury and HOME Manchester with further dates to be announced.