Thrilling theatre: Quarantine’s Summer at Regent Trading Estate

Summer, coming to Salford industrial estate this June, has been described by its creators Quarantine as being about ‘being alive’. The latest project from the Salford-based theatre company, this is a large-scale production and the first instalment of a three-year, four-part project covering all the calendar seasons. Quarantine has a history of producing challenging work that eschews the traditional performer-audience dynamic in favour of a more discursive relationship that forces performers into confrontational situations – and Summer promises to be no different. It features a mixed-age cast of non-professional actors – the company’s directors Simon Banham, Richard Gregory and Renny O’Shea preferring the rough edge this creates – who work not to a solid script, but an ever-changing roster of questions, giving the whole performance a looser, more improvised feel. Though their stories are thematically linked, the material itself will come from the experiences of the individual performers, rather than being spun from the dead words of a dispassionate author, which creates theatre that is truly ‘alive’.

Thu 5 – Sat 7 June, 8pm (Previews), then Wed 11 – Sat 14 June, 8pm, The Warehouse, Regent Trading Estate, Oldfield Road, Salford, M5 4DE, £5 (Previews) £9/£6 (Performances), www.contactmcr.com