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
- Words:
- Jon Whiteley
- Published on:
- Thu 5 Jun 2014
