Another chance to see three of the best shows from a summer festival of European theatre and the UK première of “a savage and satirical snapshot of European life” are to be staged at Birmingham REP.
Best of BE Festival, featuring three half-hour pieces, “aims to involve the audience to create a more collaborative atmosphere and sense of community”.
Winner of the first prize and the audience prize at BE Festival 2013, Denmark’s Out of Balanz will again perform Next Door, “intimate storytelling and high-octane physical theatre exploring what it is that really connects us”.
Betti Combo of France will stage Al Cubo—“masterful circus meets mischievous theatre, with buckets of charm”—while Hungary’s Ferenc Feher will reprise Tao Te which fuses freestyle dance with martial arts.
Best of BE Festival will be in The Door at Birmingham REP on Tuesday (15 October).
Meanwhile Europa, the result of a collaboration between four leading European theatres, gets its UK première in the REP’s new Studio.
Steve Waters (UK), Lutz Hubner (Germany), Malgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk (Poland) and Tena Stivicic (Croatia) visited one another’s countries and worked with community groups to generate material.
The result is a “multilingual play that challenges, clashes and connects with European citizens as they struggle to make sense of their ever-changing countries”.
Europa runs in the REP’s Studio from Wednesday until Saturday (16 to 19 October).