The Traverse Theatre, Scotland’s home of new writing, will this August broadcast five new short plays from its season of breakfast theatre live into cinemas across the UK. The Traverse has teamed up with Hibrow Productions to present a major development of this award-winning season. In a first for Scottish Theatre, leading theatre and film directors will collaborate to bring these plays by the UK and Ireland’s top writers to audiences across the UK.
Specially commissioned scripts by Marina Carr (By the Bog of Cats, Marble), David Eldridge (Market Boy, Under The Blue Sky, Festen), Linda McLean (Any Given Day, strangers, babies), Simon Stephens (Punk Rock, Pornography) and Enda Walsh (Hunger, The Walworth Farce) will each have just one day of rehearsal before script-in-hand performances at the Traverse during this year’s breakfast theatre season, Impossible Things Before Breakfast. A one-off, back-to-back performance of all five plays will take place on 23 August. This Traverse Live! event will be filmed by Hibrow directors using High Definition cameras and beamed live to Picturehouse and other participating cinemas, giving audiences outside the Traverse a uniquely visceral connection with the actors and the scripts.
Theatre directors Dominic Hill, Vicky Featherstone, Zinnie Harris and Stewart Laing will be joined in the rehearsal room by film directors Ben Gutteridge, Ian Knox, Lewis Georgeson and Tom Whitworth, who will work together to translate the Traverse studio rehearsal experience into a High Definition cinematic event.
Speaking about Traverse Live!, Traverse Artistic Director Dominic Hill says, “This exciting project celebrates the fact that people are accessing theatre in new ways, and also de-mystifies the process of bringing a script to life. We are capturing the essence of what we do at the Traverse, and are delighted to bring the work of these five exceptional writers to a much wider audience through the live broadcast on 23 August. Traverse Live! will be like a big window behind the scenes, concentrating on the actor and the script. It will give people across the UK the chance to connect with the Traverse studio experience, and discover something brand new at the Festival.”
The 2010 breakfast theatre season, Impossible Things Before Breakfast, kicks off with Simon Stephen’s darkly magical road trip, T5, directed by Dominic Hill. This is followed by Marina Carr’s Quartet, a tale of a man’s relationship with his wife, his mistress and his lover over thirty years, directed by National Theatre of Scotland Artistic Director, Vicky Featherstone, who will also direct Enda Walsh’s My Friend Duplicity. Linda McLean’s This is Water envisages interrogations of eighteen people as they pass through a hut on the side of a hill, and is directed by Stewart Laing. David Eldridge’s strange short play about the fragility of existence, All Is Vanity, is directed by Zinnie Harris, concluding the season at the Traverse Festival.
Impossible Things Before Breakfast
A season of five breakfast plays at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
Dates & Times: Wednesday 18 – Sunday 29 August (9.00am)
Tickets: £12 (includes coffee and a breakfast roll)
Booking: www.traverse.co.uk / 0131 228 1404
Traverse Live!
A one-off performance of all five plays, filmed before a live audience at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
Date & Time: Monday 23 August 7.00pm (3hr)
Tickets: £12
Booking: www.traverse.co.uk / 0131 228 1404
At Picturehouse Cinemas
Date & Time: Monday 23 August 7.00pm (3hr)
Tickets: £10 (£9 Picturehouse members)
Booking and participating venues www.picturehouses.co.uk
