News from the Midlands

Published: 12 February 2012
Reporter: Steve Orme

Pilot NightsPilot scheme to give West Midlands theatre-makers a flying start

Theatre-makers are to be given an opportunity to showcase untested ideas in front of an audience at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Warwick Arts Centre in Coventry is supporting an initiative called PILOT Nights which aims to generate new theatre in the West Midlands.

The PILOT team is asking all West Midlands theatre artists and companies to submit ideas based on the concept of how Shakespeare's work has infiltrated modern culture.

A PILOT spokesman said, "Responses can be wide-ranging and could explore big thematic ideas or a single stage direction. Ideas can be dark, satirical, visual, humorous or irreverent.

"The performance should avoid using Shakespeare's text in a literal sense and focus instead on using his words, ideas or stories as a starting point for a new theatrical idea."

Five finalists will be selected and each will receive £500 to help them develop their performance idea. They'll also receive help and advice from RSC and PILOT staff and will be invited to perform their work at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford on 12 July.

The Courtyard opened in 2006 as a temporary home for the RSC while the Royal Shakespeare Theatre was being transformed. It closed in January 2011 but will reopen later this year when it'll be used for the World Shakespeare Festival as part of the Cultural Olympiad.

Closing date for application forms, which can be found at http://www.pilotnights.co.uk/downloads/RSC-Pilot-Night-Application-Form-FINAL.pdf, is Monday, 12 March.

Hotel ParadisoGerman comedy company books into Leicester's Curve

As part of Dave's Leicester Comedy Festival, the Curve Theatre will this week present German company Familie Flöz's Hotel Paradiso—the only UK date on a European tour.

Described as "Crossroads meets Sweeney Todd meets Fawlty Towers", the play outlines how bizarre things happen at Hotel Paradiso, a small family business held painstakingly together by the female head of the family.

But when a corpse surfaces, guests and staff alike enter a whirl of nasty events. The hotel's demise seems to be only a matter of time because bodies are always bad for business.

Hotel Paradiso, "an alpine nightmare full of black humour, stormy feelings and a touch of melancholia", is the latest offering from Familie Flöz which is renowned for visual performance, masks, sounds and music.

The play will be performed in the Curve Studio from Thursday until Saturday.

What's on this week

  • the world premiere of David Seidler's play The King's Speech, featuring Charles Edwards, Jonathan Hyde, Emma Fielding, Ian McNeice and Joss Ackland, is at Nottingham's Theatre Royal from tomorrow (Monday) until Saturday;
  • a new play by Berlie Doherty set in the Dark Peak of Derbyshire and inspired by its unique landscape, heritage and mythology, Thin Air will be presented by Derbyshire company Cotton Grass Theatre in the Darwin Suite at Derby's Assembly Rooms on Tuesday and Wednesday, Wirksworth Town Hall on Thursday and Youlgrave Village Hall on Saturday;
  • the Children's Touring Partnership and the National Theatre stage the Bristol Old Vic production of Swallows and Amazons at Coventry's Belgrade from Tuesday until Saturday;
  • Moscow City Ballet are at Northampton's Derngate with Romeo and Juliet on Tuesday and Wednesday and Swan Lake from Thursday until Sunday;
  • puppet innovators Blind Summit Theatre pulls the strings with a new adult puppetry show, The Table, in the studio at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry from Wednesday until Friday;
  • based on John Gray's best-selling book, Men Are From Mars Women Are From Venus should be out of this world when it tours to Buxton Opera House on Thursday;
  • Derby's Guildhall Theatre will host the comedy My Favourite Summer, presented by Reform Theatre in association with Harrogate Theatre, on Thursday;
  • Charles Dickens' great-great-grandson Gerald Dickens plays every character himself in Nicholas Nickleby at Lichfield Garrick on Friday while in the Garrick Studio Michael Lunts portrays the composer Sergei Rachmaninov in A Meeting of Minds;
  • Anne Charleston, Mel Giedroyc and Hayley Tamaddon recount The Vagina Monologues at Leicester's Curve on Friday;
  • The Future Is Unwritten performs Paul Hodson's Way Out West at Derby's Guildhall Theatre on Friday;
  • Opera della Luna returns to Buxton Opera House with a new production of Lehar's classic operetta The Merry Widow on Friday;
  • Rebecca Wheatley puts on Big Pants and Botox in Louise Roche's one-woman show at the Guildhall Theatre, Derby on Saturday;
  • Leicester's Curve hosts An Evening With Pam Ayres on Saturday;
  • Denise Black and Michael Starke continue in the musical comedy Sister Act at Wolverhampton Grand until Saturday;
  • Spymonkey's adaptation of a Greek tragedy Oedipussy continues at the Royal, Northampton until Saturday;
  • Northern Broadsides' presentation of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost continues at the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme until Saturday;
  • Ingrid Bergman's Nora, an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, continues in the B2 auditorium at Coventry's Belgrade Theatre until Saturday;
  • William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew continues at Derby Theatre until Saturday, 25th February; and
  • at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, The Taming of the Shrew continues in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre until 25th February while in the Swan, Helen Edmundson's new play The Heresy of Love continues until Friday, 9th March and David Edgar's new play Written on the Heart, which tells the story of the making of the King James Bible, and Measure for Measure both continue until 10th March.

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