West Yorkshire Playhouse is bringing its temporary studio theatre back for four weeks of new work
The Barber Studio Season features critically-acclaimed small scale shows including award-winning work from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and fresh new theatre developed at West Yorkshire Playhouse.
“The work in our Barber Studio season is inventive, relevant and created by some of the very best artists living and working in the North,” says West Yorkshire Playhouse New Work Producer Gilly Roche said. “Artists in this season are blazing a trail towards 2019, when we'll open our permanent studio theatre, creating a new home for small-scale new work in Leeds.”
The Studio Season includes:
Putting The Band Back Together: Thur 30th – Fri 31st March, 8pm
Part riotous gig and part tender storytelling, Unfolding Theatre in association with Little Mighty’s Putting The Band Back Together sees The Futureheads’ Ross Millard lead a live house band in an emotive performance inviting audiences to dust off their old instruments and take to the stage.
Inspired by theatre-maker and pancreatic cancer sufferer Mark Lloyd’s wish to ‘put his old band back together’, this uplifting show looks at forgotten dreams and lost passions and asks why we stop playing and what makes us start again.
The performances will feature local ex-players picking their instruments back up to play live alongside the house band. Audiences are welcome to join the house band by attending a pre-show workshop from 5.30pm – 7.30pm, and learning the songs through a series of online videos.
Tank: Mon 3rd April, 8pm
Fringe-first award winning Tank, Breach’s multimedia show focuses on a 1960s experiment into teaching dolphins English. In 1965 American scientist Margaret Lovatt lived with a dolphin for ten weeks to try and teach him to speak English, part of a NASA-funded experiment into human-animal communication.
Tank is a reflection on the politics that shape the stories we tell and the histories we know.
Jenna Watt: Faslane - Friday 7th – Saturday 8th April, 8pm
A Contact Flying Solo commission, developed with the support of West Yorkshire Playhouse, Faslane is about Her Majesty's Naval Base Clyde, or Faslane, situated 40 miles outside Glasgow.
Faslane is home to the UK's nuclear missile program Trident. With family having worked in Faslane all her life, and with friends protesting at the gates, Jenna Watt explores what happens when the personal and political collide.
Jenna draw a upon interviews with individuals at the front line of the nuclear debate and Faslane features an immersive sound design by Kim Moore.
A Girl In School Uniform (Walks Into A Bar): Wed 12th – Sat 15th April
A Girl In School Uniform (Walks Into A Bar) is written by Lulu Raczka, developed by the Playhouse, and directed by Yorkshire artist Ali Pidsley.
There are blackouts. Can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face blackouts. And they’re everywhere. No one knows what’s causing them, but that doesn’t stop people going missing in them. It’s the future.
Now Steph and Bell, a schoolgirl and barmaid, have to find a way to come together to search for their missing friends, until the outside world starts infecting the theatre that stands around them.
To book box office 0113 213 7700 or online www.wyp.org.uk
Picture: Anthony Robling
