Newsletter – A Doll’s House + 2010 retrospective

December 24th, 2010 by admin

 Happy Christmas 

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Theatre Delicatessen

It has been a pretty amazing 2010 for Theatre Delicatessen!

Here’s our final mailing list email of the year to wish you a very Merry Christmas, a very Messy New Year and something to tickle those theatre tastebuds as soon as January arrives.

Most importantly we would like to say thank you so much to all of the Theatre Delicatessen family for supporting us and making this all happen. We only grow by your grace.

 

A Doll's House

Our final production at Picton Place, opens on 5 January - get your first theatrical fix of 2011 with Theatre Delicatessen and book your tickets for our Arts Council funded, all female production of A Doll's House now!

As we settle with family and friends to reflect on the year that has passed, and look forward to the future, here's a little countdown of the last 12 months…

 

JANUARY

Theatre Delicatessen packs up its pop-up shop and says a fond farewell to our first home at 295 Regent Street, moving to 3-4 Picton Place – a five-storey office block behind Selfridges.

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank our benefactors and space sponsors: James Bowdidge and PMG for giving us a huge leg up at the beginning in Regent Street, and Great Portland Estates who have allowed us free tenancy at Picton Place all this year and cemented our reputation as one of the most exciting theatre companies working in London Off-West End Theatre.

 

FEBRUARY

Mercury Fur has its first major London revival at Picton Place and opens to incredible audience and critical acclaim, including 4 stars from the Guardian and 5 stars from RemoteGoat

"Almost unbearable to watch yet so compelling you can't stop watching...There are some standout performances from the young cast, and the play is perfectly matched to this here-today-gone-tomorrow pop-up venue" - Lyn Gardner THE GUARDIAN

 

MARCH

After sell-out final weeks, Mercury Fur comes to a close. Audience response matched that of the critics – thank you to everyone who saw it, shared their experiences and told the rest of the world!

As ever word-of-mouth support is so important to help making our work a success, and viral marketing spreads the word in a way nothing else does. If you're ever stuck for a status update tag #theatredelicatessen, like us on facebook and twitter and be part of the magic!

 

APRIL

Theatre Delicatessen host one of Artists in Development, Tacit Theatre, with a raucous and bawdy production of The Canterbury Tales.

 

MAY

Tacit move on to create a beautifully moving production of Scaramouche Jones starring Theatre Delicatessen veteran Tom Daplyn.

 

JUNE & JULY

Over two months we are immersed in preparations for Theatre Delicatessen's first foray at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, as we take our 2009 hit Pedal Pusher to the Zoo Roxy in a prime time slot in a 200-seat auditorium!

 

AUGUST

Pedal Pusher takes Edinburgh by storm, adapting the promenade original to a face on production which still spoke to cyclists and non-cyclists - and created a few converts in the process!

Pedal Pusher is included in The List's ‘Top 20 Unmissable Shows of the Festival’ and catches the eye of the Norwegian Literary Festival who hope to host the production in 2011.

 

SEPTEMBER

The Fringe Theatre Event of the Year Theatre Souk opens at 3-4 Picton Place, filling every room with an up and coming theatre company, turning the whole building into a circus of events, performances, installations, madness and mayhem.

Theatre Souk is Time Out Critics’ Choice, receives 5 Stars from What's On Stage and Remote Goat and cements our growing reputation among London Fringe Companies:

“Extraordinary odyssey through modern drama… If you get a chance, attend it, and look out for any new work from what are by now certainly one of the most exciting theatre companies in London.” Remote Goat

Amongst the madness, our wonderful American intern Christine Zagrobel joins the team for four months.

 

OCTOBER

Artistic Director Jessica Brewster gives birth to the third Theatre Delicatessen baby - Welcome to the World Maja!

 

NOVEMBER

Theatre Delicatessen flex our philanthropic muscles and support DYS-PLA, a festival of work by dyslexic playwrights. We buy our own weight in feminist theory literature theory as preparations for our final production at Picton Place begin.

 

DECEMBER

Theatre Delicatessen is awarded our first Grant from the Arts Council towards our January production of A Doll's House

This is massive. We are proud to be recognised as a company worth investing in and we're hugely grateful to not just the Arts Council but to Tim Weaver Hughes and Josh Cass whose work this year have made such a difference to the company.

We further developed our relationships with Theatre Souk artists, hosting .dash/Tacit Theatre collaborative production of A Christmas Carol, and bring the marvellous Half:Cut on board to create an environmental installation to work alongside A Doll's House.

 

It has been an incredible year and we'd like to thank Tim Weaver-Hughes, Josh Cass, Paul Loy, Gergo Danka, Sarah-Louise Young, Flavia Fraser-Cannon, Leo Steele, Olivia Brown, Christine Zagrobel, Holly McGlynn, Alex Tucker, Edward Burge, Amber Massie-Blomfield and the team at Mobius, everyone at Zoo Venues, all the artists involved in Theatre Souk, Philip Ridley, Chris Pollick, Ben Wigzell, Alex Guiney, Clare Latham, Richard Ashcroft, Chris Urch, Isaac Jones, Zahra Browne, Suzanne Goldberg, Carl Knighton, Geoff Mills, Sam Smullen,  Julia Krysiak, Christopher Stewart, Libby Brodie, National Theatre Studio, Supporting Wall, Box of Tricks, Theatre 503 and Metta Theatre.

To all our friends, collaborators, supporters, sponsors and the rest of the Theatre Delicatessen family, Happy Christmas and here’s to a fantastic 2011.

With love,

Jessica, Frances and Roland.

 


I love you so much I could burst into flames

December 28th, 2009 by Frances Loy

We await the news that our keys to our new space are awaiting deliverance; after a heart wrenching couple of months in which we turned up to see locks being changed, fought to keep the Christmas Festival going, had an emotional party farewell to 295 Regent Street and carried bar pieces, flats and other huge pieces of wooded contructions up the slippery rickety fire escape stairs in the pouring rain (followed by many beers and heart to hearts), the benevolent Great Portland Estates looked kindly upon us and have offered theatredelicatessen a new home and a new beginning - the DIY/Immersive Experience/Squatter asthetic continues to thrive in London's West End, and we have continued stalwartly with our plans to mount the first major London revival of Philip Ridley's Mercury Fur.

I've spent this evening finally finishing the blurb for the flyers, a process that began when I first read, cover to cover, Plays2 by Phil, and is now, categorically, part of the final touches of our marketing plan about to go into overdrive. It's a task that has been difficult to complete until now simply because the play encapsulates so much inside just your own head that you just don't know where to start as a director let alone markteing PR type....and now of course there is FAR TOO MUCH to consider having had read through and two rehearsals with the cast and Phil himself.

How do you deal with a play that draws directly from Rwandan Genocide Survivors, that makes a simple read through degenerate into discussion of pre-GSCE kids going into the army as squadies to get a house and to learn to kill in an attempt to keep them from shooting random people in Tottenham, or revisiting images from Bazra and Kabul of macheted heads lined up outside the homes of their owners while restaurant patrons go about their daily lives, and yet another kid in South London stands up to bullying and intimidation and gets a bullet through his skull as thanks.

How do you begin to work on a play which forces anecdotes and confessions from a small group of strangers about drugs and sex and less rock more roll and suicide stories and bullying in school and being amazed at an ordinary tube journey turning into an adventure from a Robert Louis Stevenson novel - though clearly riding the Circle Line rather than a boat to a Scottish Island.

The thing is Mercury Fur is more about the 9 of us sharing those ideas and ideals than it is about the inevitable comparisons to modern living...the bond we already share, the fear in reviving such an infamous text, the sheer terror in living up to the expectations of the number of people who claim to adore Phil's work, the instant link that sparked between us all in the auditions. It may be a bit far fetched to say we all commit oursleves completely to doing as much as we can to keep the love between us sacred, but an element of fighting for each other and what we believe in, what and who we love must have already been forged for us to jump into the oblivion which will saturate our lives for the next few months.

What is it about the human condition that puts us in emotional and physical acts of violence to create and preserve peace and love and at least what we perceive to be worthy of our love and reconciliation? How far will we go for the people we love? Is there a finite, inevitablility about destroying the people we love most in order to save and protect them? You'll just have to come and see the show to find out...in the meantime, the Mercury Fur company have American Hot Pizza and Apocalypse Now hired...