Traverse Theatre announces full Spring 2022 season
Traverse Theatre welcomes artists and audiences back to a full Spring Season of performances.
Article Source: Traverse Theatre
Last Updated: 25 January 2022 12:37
• A Play, A Pie and A Pint returns to Traverse 2 with seven new shows
• Programme features Scottish Premieres including Drag Me to Love by Cameron Sharp, Mugabe, My Dad & Me by Tonderai Munyevu, and Human Nurture by Ryan Calais Cameron
• We welcome audience hits including Our Carnal Hearts by Rachel Mars, The Gardener by Ed Robson and The Metamorphosis adapted by Matthew Lenton
• Digital presentations include Scottish Dance Theatre show The Life and Times, and a range of First Stages Festival events
• Hannah Lavery appointed as Peggy Ramsay Foundation/Film 4 Awards Scheme Playwright
• £1 tickets available for all shows for those under 25 and in receipt of low income government benefits
• Breakthrough Writers: In Residence remains open for submissions
Whilst the Traverse has not paused its programming since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 – instead producing and presenting over 150 digital shows and original pieces of content, and 24 socially distanced in-person productions both in our venue and off-site in August and December – we are thrilled to now be able to present a full in-person series of performances over Spring 2022. Featuring the long-awaited and triumphant return of postponed productions, beloved audience favourites and brand new pieces, we today announce what audiences can anticipate and enjoy during February, March and early April.
And with plenty more to come, we’re just getting started!
TRAVERSE THEATRE COMPANY
Our new creative engagement opportunities continue to unfurl over Spring, with Breakthrough Writers: In Residence open for submissions of anonymised, full-length scripts until Mon 14 Mar, and more details will come soon on our new Creating Space Writers’ Group. We will also shortly be announcing full details of our hybrid First Stages Festival 2022, including a range of digital workshops, Q&As, discussions and in-person readings, happening throughout February and March.
We’re delighted that writer, poet and performer Hannah Lavery (The Drift, Eavesdropping), has been appointed as Peggy Ramsay Foundation/Film 4 Awards Scheme Playwright, in partnership with the Traverse Theatre. Hannah will receive a bursary to embark upon a one-year attachment with the Traverse, creating a new full-length play for future production, connecting with a variety of dynamic theatremakers and deepening her experience of a working theatre as it emerges from the pandemic.
We welcome the ever-popular A Play, A Pie and A Pint based at Òran Mór, presented in association with the Traverse Theatre, back to Traverse 2. The extended 7-week run of shows will include Oscar by Brian James O’Sullivan, (2 – 5 Mar); Ten Things to Do Before You Die by Dani Heron (8 – 12 Mar); I'm dissolving my love in a bath of acid by DC Jackson (15 – 19 Mar); Milkshake by Rob Drummond (22 – 26 Mar) [also produced in association with Aberdeen Performing Arts]; Man’s Best Friend by Douglas Maxwell (29 Mar – 2 Apr); Daniel Getting Married by JD Stewart (5 – 9 Apr); My Doric Diary by AyeTunes! (12 – 16 Apr) [also produced in association with Aberdeen Performing Arts]. As ever, the ticket price includes a pie and a drink, as well as fresh new drama.
PARTNER COMPANY PRODUCTIONS
February
We begin the season online, with Scottish Dance Theatre’s The Life and Times (11 – 12 Feb) offering the chance to dive into a cinematic and surreal dance journey from the comfort of your home, and experience dance as you never have before. Conceived by Scottish Dance Theatre’s Artistic Director Joan Clevillé and streamed live in a single continuous shot, The Life and Times is a visual meditation on our relationship with time, set to a sumptuous soundtrack of Baroque music.
They are followed by in-person performances of the fabulous Drag Me to Love (17 – 18 Feb) by Cameron Sharp, an autobiographical, three person show combining drag performance with theatrical storytelling to build the world of Bonnie and The Bonnettes. Set against a backdrop of pop anthems and glitter, we follow Cameron as he throws himself into a pair of 6-inch stilettos – meeting new people and making both friends and foes. But not everything is as it seems and, piece by piece, the glamorous world of drag fades away.
Next up is Crisis: A Rallying Cry (19 – 20 Feb), from Crisis: A Rallying Cry in association with Kick the Door, an ensemble-devised, new theatre piece created by 10 emerging young artists exploring the personal, political, and scientific resonance of mental health within our society.
March
March opens with Acrylic’s tender The Gardener by Ed Robson (1 – 2 Mar), a previous hit of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Following Frank, who has started his own gardening group at his new retirement home, The Gardener is an intimate portrait of all the minor triumphs and major tribulations of amateur gardening and of a life-time spent in love, performed in an intimate setting to a limited audience.
Human Nurture (17-19 Mar) by Ryan Calais Cameron, produced by Theatre Centre and Sheffield Theatres, has been created for audiences aged 14+. Roger and Harryʼs bond is so strong they could be brothers. They share the same food, music, computer games and even dreams, everything other than their race. Roger is black, and Harry is white... but what does that matter, right? When Roger is rehomed, Harry is left behind in the care system, and these “brothers” grow up in opposite ends of Britainʼs social spectrum. Nothingʼs off-limits in this noisy and colourful show, from innocent primary school humiliations to race, privilege, allyship and male vulnerability.
English Touring Theatre, Brixton House and York Theatre Royal, in association with Alison Holder bring the acclaimed Mugabe, My Dad & Me (23 – 26 Mar) by Tonderai Munyevu to Traverse 1. Interspersing storytelling, live music from a Gwenyambira (a female mbira player) and some of Mugabe’s most unapologetic speeches, this high-voltage one-man show is a blistering exploration of familial love, identity and what it means to return ‘home’.
We also see the beginning of A Play, A Pie and A Pint’s takeover of Traverse 2 with their season of new bite-sized dramas:
Oscar by Brian James O’Sullivan (1 – 5 Mar)
Ten Things to Do Before You Die by Dani Heron (8 – 12 Mar)
I'm dissolving my love in a bath of acid by DC Jackson (15 – 19 Mar)
Milkshake by Rob Drummond (22 – 26 Mar)
Man’s Best Friend by Douglas Maxwell (29 Mar – 2 Apr)
Look out for news coming soon on in-person performances of scripts from 2021’s Class Act participants and first look readings of brand new plays by 2022’s First Stages Writers also happening in March.
April
Established and run by playwrights, Amy Hawes, Jennifer Adam and Mhairi Quinn, Tandem Writing Collective (2 Apr) kicks off the month, featuring tasters of topical new scripts by the three writers, performed script in hand by the best local actors.
Rachel Mars continues our energetic April with her Total Theatre Award-winning show, Our Carnal Hearts (7 – 9 Apr), performed in the round in Traverse 1. With a raucous chorus of original music, Our Carnal Hearts is a gleeful, thrilling and murky celebration of envy, competitive spirits and all the times we f*ck each other over.
Sylvia Dow brings her piece Blinded by the Light (8 Apr) for a one-off reading, in Traverse 2. It features two parallel and intersecting stories. One, set in 1982, based on a real incident in Bo’ness, West Lothian, when twelve miners had a sit-in 2000 feet under the River Forth protesting against the mine closure, and the other set 200 years in the future, in the same mine, where the descendants of survivors of extreme climate change have been living their lives.
After a two year wait, with their original Traverse performances disrupted by the beginning of the Covid pandemic, we could not be happier to finally welcome Franz Kafka’s influential, tragicomic novella The Metamorphosis (13 – 16 Apr), brought to life in an international co-production between Vanishing Point, Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione and Tron Theatre. Adapted and directed by Matthew Lenton, it’s the story of an ordinary man who wakes up to find he has been transformed into a giant insect.
For one night only, the boundary-pushing Two Destination Language bring us Fault Lines (19 Apr) – a fashion show on the fracture between feminism and fabric. A catwalk which takes you from Haute Couture to bargain bin, from big beats to near silence, Fault Lines sees five women come together in a celebration of difference and invites you to curate your own journey through a runway show of people like you and people you’ll never know, with a soundtrack you’ve selected.
And in Traverse 2 the Spring season of A Play, A Pie and A Pint concludes with Daniel Getting Married by JD Stewart (5 – 9 Apr) and My Doric Diary by AyeTunes! (12 – 16 Apr).
DIGITAL
Confirmed online presentations this season include The Life and Times from Scottish Dance Theatre (11 – 12 Feb), with more to be announced, including the digital delivery of many First Stages Festival events for anyone around the world to attend, with full information on these coming soon.
COVID SAFETY
The Traverse will continue to observe Covid-19 safety protocols in line with Scottish Government Guidance. Both Traverse 1 and Traverse 2 (with the exception of A Play, A Pie and A Pint performances) will return to general admission seating, with capacity capped to allow space between groups. Productions in the A Play, A Pie and A Pint series will remain with allocated seating, with a one-seat space between groups. Face masks must be worn whilst in the Traverse building, including during performances, unless medically exempt, and hand sanitisation with be required upon entry into the venue.
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