NEW SHOWS
RedCape
shows currently in development:
1 Beach Road
Like The Idiot Colony the starting point is true stories, drawing from interviews with residents of coastal towns in the east of England that are beginning to disappear into the sea and ongoing research into the experiences of Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers; the latest trends in geology, astrophysics and environmental science; and myths of humans' eternal partnership with the sea.
The performers are training in aerial work and working with a synchronized swimming choreographer. They are recreating end of pier escape acts as period silent films, injecting the work with a dose of faded seaside nostalgia. Combining RedCape’s successful mix of beautiful visual theatre, physical storytelling, new writing and a sense of humour, 1 Beach Road will juxtapose the intimate history of two people with the great expanse of time that is the history of us all.
STORY SYNOPSIS Jane and Deborah met by chance in a teashop on a rainy afternoon and their lives changed forever. They started a Bed and Breakfast a mile from the sea and wished for an ocean view. As the years passed, Jane’s memory began to fade-imperceptibly at first. Now, in the cruelest twist of geological fate, the eroding coastline mirrors the erosion of Jane’s mind. Deborah and Jane are at the edge of a precipice; they are fighting the ravages of time on every scale. The play will take us both backwards and forwards in time from the early 1980s to the present moment; the day Jane and Deborah meet to the day their home falls into the sea. It will track the gradual encroaching of the shoreline as the sea swallows a row of bungalows, the road, the garage, and eats its way to the back door while the inhabitants refuse to budge. Deborah and Jane are left standing at the edge of a precipice asking how do you go on living when you’ve lost everything your life was built on?
SET DESIGN The set, as designed by Tina Bicat (Critics Circle Drama Award for Design), is comprised of fragments of a clifftop Bed and Breakfast: doors, windows, a staircase. It provides the literal spaces that support the daily rituals of the B&B, as well as portals to various moments in Jane and Deborah’s history: the afternoon in the teashop, the night that Jane wandered to the clothesline and couldn’t remember the way back, the morning they discovered the garage had tumbled off the cliff. The set also has the power to transform via projections and movement from a literal to a fantastical place: black and white footage of the ladies as 1920’s escapologists is projected on top of their daily rituals, a phantom of Jane’s disintegrating memory. A bed transforms into a swimming pool where the ladies perform a synchronized swimming act a la Esther Williams. The sea is ever present as both a literal and mythic force, threatening and inviting; the sound of waves growing ever louder as it encroaches. Sand appears again and again, sand pouring from teapots, creeping in under the doors, as the characters struggle to keep the elements at bay. In the final moments of the play, the great tumble into the sea is both a tragedy and a celebration. The house literally disappears as the performers ‘fall up’ into an aerial synchronized dance of letting go.
From Newbury With Love
1971, In the depths of the Cold War, the daughter of an imprisoned Soviet dissident received a postcard from across the Iron Curtain that changed her family's life.
Harold & Olive Edwards, antiquarian booksellers in Newbury, wrote to the family of Marina Aidova, aged 8, because her birthday was one day before Harold's. They signed the postcard "From Newbury With Love". The families wrote to each other for the next 16 years. The letters were inspired by an Amnesty letter-writing campaign asking people to support the families of Soviet prisoners of conscience. Marina's father had been sent to the gulag for running an illegal printing press. This remarkable correspondence chronicles a fascinating period of social, political history and the intimate, seldom heard details of daily life in two very different worlds. The letters finish when Harold passes away, aged 90. Marina was 24.
In an our age of emails, texts and SMS, From Newbury With Love reminds us of the simple power of putting pen to paper.
From Newbury With Love is a proposed association between RedCape Theatre and Amnesty International. Dates to be confirmed.
Big Berta
Berta is feeling like she doesn't fit. Literally. Being a teenager in the suburbs is taking it's toll: Mum & Dad are 'having difficulties', school is dull, the netball team is full of bullies and last (but definitely not least) Berta is having a radical growth spurt. When she falls in love with the new paper-boy her increasing size and over-active hormones start affecting the weather with cataclysmic results.
A modern-day Romeo & Juliet in a mundane setting. Big Berta is an elegy for all our troubled teenage years.
Using puppetry, stop-motion animation, a dynamic set, two tall actors, tragedy, comedy and a bit of magic, Big Berta is an absurd, sensory rollercoaster.
Directed by Claire Coaché
Puppetry & Design by Yngvild Aspeli
Written by Melanie Wilson & Lisle Turner
Mentored by Gavin Glover
Berta played by Melanie Wilson
Inspired by the novel 'Berta La Larga' by Cuca Canals.
Big Berta is a proposed collaboration between RedCape Theatre, South Street Arts Centre, Reading and the Berkshire Venues Consortium, Institut Internationale de la Marionette in Charleville-Mezieres, France and Figurteateret i Nordland in Stamsund, Norway. Big Berta was a finalist for the 2008 Samuel Beckett Theatre Award.
Suitable for ages 12+
1 Beach Road
Like The Idiot Colony the starting point is true stories, drawing from interviews with residents of coastal towns in the east of England that are beginning to disappear into the sea and ongoing research into the experiences of Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers; the latest trends in geology, astrophysics and environmental science; and myths of humans' eternal partnership with the sea.
The performers are training in aerial work and working with a synchronized swimming choreographer. They are recreating end of pier escape acts as period silent films, injecting the work with a dose of faded seaside nostalgia. Combining RedCape’s successful mix of beautiful visual theatre, physical storytelling, new writing and a sense of humour, 1 Beach Road will juxtapose the intimate history of two people with the great expanse of time that is the history of us all.
STORY SYNOPSIS Jane and Deborah met by chance in a teashop on a rainy afternoon and their lives changed forever. They started a Bed and Breakfast a mile from the sea and wished for an ocean view. As the years passed, Jane’s memory began to fade-imperceptibly at first. Now, in the cruelest twist of geological fate, the eroding coastline mirrors the erosion of Jane’s mind. Deborah and Jane are at the edge of a precipice; they are fighting the ravages of time on every scale. The play will take us both backwards and forwards in time from the early 1980s to the present moment; the day Jane and Deborah meet to the day their home falls into the sea. It will track the gradual encroaching of the shoreline as the sea swallows a row of bungalows, the road, the garage, and eats its way to the back door while the inhabitants refuse to budge. Deborah and Jane are left standing at the edge of a precipice asking how do you go on living when you’ve lost everything your life was built on?
SET DESIGN The set, as designed by Tina Bicat (Critics Circle Drama Award for Design), is comprised of fragments of a clifftop Bed and Breakfast: doors, windows, a staircase. It provides the literal spaces that support the daily rituals of the B&B, as well as portals to various moments in Jane and Deborah’s history: the afternoon in the teashop, the night that Jane wandered to the clothesline and couldn’t remember the way back, the morning they discovered the garage had tumbled off the cliff. The set also has the power to transform via projections and movement from a literal to a fantastical place: black and white footage of the ladies as 1920’s escapologists is projected on top of their daily rituals, a phantom of Jane’s disintegrating memory. A bed transforms into a swimming pool where the ladies perform a synchronized swimming act a la Esther Williams. The sea is ever present as both a literal and mythic force, threatening and inviting; the sound of waves growing ever louder as it encroaches. Sand appears again and again, sand pouring from teapots, creeping in under the doors, as the characters struggle to keep the elements at bay. In the final moments of the play, the great tumble into the sea is both a tragedy and a celebration. The house literally disappears as the performers ‘fall up’ into an aerial synchronized dance of letting go.
From Newbury With Love
1971, In the depths of the Cold War, the daughter of an imprisoned Soviet dissident received a postcard from across the Iron Curtain that changed her family's life.
Harold & Olive Edwards, antiquarian booksellers in Newbury, wrote to the family of Marina Aidova, aged 8, because her birthday was one day before Harold's. They signed the postcard "From Newbury With Love". The families wrote to each other for the next 16 years. The letters were inspired by an Amnesty letter-writing campaign asking people to support the families of Soviet prisoners of conscience. Marina's father had been sent to the gulag for running an illegal printing press. This remarkable correspondence chronicles a fascinating period of social, political history and the intimate, seldom heard details of daily life in two very different worlds. The letters finish when Harold passes away, aged 90. Marina was 24.
In an our age of emails, texts and SMS, From Newbury With Love reminds us of the simple power of putting pen to paper.
From Newbury With Love is a proposed association between RedCape Theatre and Amnesty International. Dates to be confirmed.
Big Berta
Berta is feeling like she doesn't fit. Literally. Being a teenager in the suburbs is taking it's toll: Mum & Dad are 'having difficulties', school is dull, the netball team is full of bullies and last (but definitely not least) Berta is having a radical growth spurt. When she falls in love with the new paper-boy her increasing size and over-active hormones start affecting the weather with cataclysmic results.
A modern-day Romeo & Juliet in a mundane setting. Big Berta is an elegy for all our troubled teenage years.
Using puppetry, stop-motion animation, a dynamic set, two tall actors, tragedy, comedy and a bit of magic, Big Berta is an absurd, sensory rollercoaster.
Directed by Claire Coaché
Puppetry & Design by Yngvild Aspeli
Written by Melanie Wilson & Lisle Turner
Mentored by Gavin Glover
Berta played by Melanie Wilson
Inspired by the novel 'Berta La Larga' by Cuca Canals.
Big Berta is a proposed collaboration between RedCape Theatre, South Street Arts Centre, Reading and the Berkshire Venues Consortium, Institut Internationale de la Marionette in Charleville-Mezieres, France and Figurteateret i Nordland in Stamsund, Norway. Big Berta was a finalist for the 2008 Samuel Beckett Theatre Award.
Suitable for ages 12+