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Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor

Reading and art workshop for children (recommended age 5 – 11) .

First published in 1939, Mervyn Peake’s pirate yarn has recently been re-issued, giving a new generation the chance to read about the exploits of Captain Slaughterboard and his crazy crew - Billy Bottle, Jonas Joints, Timothy Twitch, Peter Poop and Charlie Choke.

Listen to Sebastian Peake read his father’s extraordinary story and take part in an art workshop inspired by the story’s characters, such as the hirsute Yellow Creature - ''as bright as butter'' - and other oddities, like the Saggerdroop and the Squirmarins.  

Mervyn Peake: an illustrated talk

Inspired by his father’s incredible collection of paintings, photographs and letters, Sebastian Peake provides an exclusive insight into one of the most creative minds of the 20th Century.  

"Our heroes and our Gods, under scrutiny, have become dwarves. As if that was something they could ever be. That we could ever allow. That’s why we rail against the day’s passing, struggle to get in another word or action, because tomorrow … tomorrow we may not know where we stand. Not recognise ourselves when we stop to look."

Ad astra per aspera (a rough road leads to the stars)

Inscription at Launch Complex 34 at Kennedy Space Centre where all three crew members of the first Apollo spacecraft died in 1967.

Writer: Jonathan Bonfiglio
Director: Emily Agnew
Sound Designer: Alfie Talman
Cast: Matt Addis, Samantha Hopkins, Bill Hutchens & Ruth James

Out of Chaos re-imagines the tragic chorus and incorporates live music, clowning and physical theatre in a devised piece that draws on the international origins of the actors.

In the beginning, there was chaos. Then the Gods took that chaos and gave it an order. They made the world and some animals and everything went pretty well. But one day Prometheus made a new beast, and he raised it up onto two feet so it could look at the heavens.

And that's when things started to kick off.

Gods and mortals, parents and sons, sisters, lovers and strangers on the Tube come head-to-head in a playful blend of Ancient Greek mythology and modern true stories, exploring the ways in which people fight and rage.

Director: Mike Tweddle  
Devised and written by the company: Juan Ayala, Lorna Beckett, Troels Hagen Findsen, Nick Jesper, Tomoko Komura & Paul O'Mahony

Director: Tal Jakubowiczova
Set Designers: Lauren Smith & Kiera Blakey
Lighting Designer: Pablo Fernandez Baz
Assistant Set Designer: Janet Caddick
Costume Designer: Tomasin Cuthbert
Composer: Hutch Demouilpied
Cast: David Ford, Ariana Lebron & Dominic Leeder

Artists involved in the exhibition with their interpretations of the relationship of man to the natural world: 
Francesco Beneamato
Crystal Brook www.artbreak.com/crystalbro
Gemma Cumming www.gemmacumming.com
Holly Freeman, www.hollyfreeman.com
Anna Hillman www.annahillman.com
Edward Llewellyn
Team www.theteamwebsite.co.co.uk

A dynamic drama with strong, contemporary issues regarding faith, family and taboo, explored using wonderfully rich characters involved in a complex human story.

Queen Phaedra lies sick with incestuous love for her stepson Hippolytus. Told of her passion by her faithful nurse, Hippolytus rejects her. Pride, shame, lust, revenge, honour and love interweave culminating in a progressively sharp web of lies and unspoken truths that result only in death and tragedy.

Utilising the rhythm, images and language of the text to layer the play with rich movement, music and song, this new version draws out the elements of ritual and ceremony that are inherent in Euripides’s text and structure.

Adapted & directed by Aaron paterson
Designer: Talulah Mason
Lighting Designer: Jason Kirk
Cast: Dimitris Christopoulos, Daniel Curshen, Shakti Edwards, Bodelle de Ronde, James Sutherland, Rachel Webster, Sarit Wilson Chen, Jackson Wright & Roxani Zogana

Three evenings of dance & multimedia works that engage, entertain & inspire

Extracts of 'Fixed Wheel' by Etta Ermini Dance Theatre will be performed at:

Cloud Dance Festival, Sunday 6 July at 8.20pm www.cloud-dance-festival.org.uk 08712 970 777

Big Dance, Monday 7 July 11.24am www.southwark.gov.uk/bigdance

Riccardo Meneghini 'Carry on Tripping', Etta Ermini Dance Theatre 'Fixed Wheel', Evolving Motion, Cathy Seago 'Vanishing Point' & Hagit Yakira 'Leah'

An exhibition of work including oil paintings, cartoons, photographs and other follies, all made in the artist's small London flat, exploring the fight against the tedium and drudgery of modern life...

Ben Hathaway studied at Camberwell College of Art, London College of Fashion and the London Metropolitan University. 

The exhibition includes Ben's collection of The Cat From Mars Pocket Cushions.

Writer: Sara Pascoe
Director: Katie Lewis

Strange Land of Stars
A family celebrates. A stranger arrives at the door. 
Claiming to have a message, will he bring peace and goodwill or is he a dangerous threat waiting for the right moment to blow them apart? And in a nation obsessed with security, are they putting themselves at risk by letting the unknown in?

Strange Land of Stars asks: when do a country’s laws stop protecting its citizens and start persecuting them?

A new play about a land not too different from our own.  

Writer: Emily Hunka
Director: Emma Hewitt 
Cast: Simon Carroll-Jones, Brandy Doubleday, Laura Glover, Alex Watson & Ben Wigzell

The Dada Suicides
Jacques Vaché, a friend of André Breton, acquired notoriety after he killed himself and a friend in Paris in 1919. Waking up on stage, he finds himself the unlikely subject for a play.

The Dada Suicides explores the fragility of the psyche from a place where all physical being is lost and only consciousness remains. With a Dada twist.

Writer: Afsaneh Gray
Director: James Kermack
Cast includes: Sophie Michaels & Robert Orme

Writer: Peter Lindley
Director: Rebecca Tortora
Lighting Designer: Jason Kirk
Cast: Irene Bradshaw, Gerald Davidson, Rachel Halliwell, Jen Holt, Terry Jermyn, Lucy Le Messurier & Holly Strickland

The Americans 

Presented as part of Grey Light Productions' series of contemporary American writing, in conjunction with the New York Metropolitan Playhouse.

One young man sitting alone in his room writes a poem that in a moment of unexplainable magic causes his apartment to explode. In another part of town another young man finds his windows blown in by the blast. Downtown a third steps out onto the street to find himself covered with white plaster. 

With the identity of their hometown and of themselves under scrutiny, all three begin a search for the source of the disaster.

Writer: Matthew Freeman (one of nytheatre.com's People of the Year 2004)
Director: Georgina Guy
Designer: Hilary Statts
Cast: Matthew Bulgo, William Fysh & Jack Farthing

Marks That Behold  
Sylvia Ferreira Dance Company  

Marks that Behold has enticed and embodied the dark and light images of the Catholic religion. The work explores the dancers' and choreographer’s interpretation of those images. The piece does not attempt to make a statement about the religion: that is what the audience is there for…

Director & Choreographer: Sylvia Dos Santos Ferreira
Musician: John Chambers
Dancers: Lorraine Smith, Jacqui Johnston and Wang Chen Chang

Being Small Dance’s latest work is inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. First performed at Abundance International Dance Festival in Sweden in 2007, this new adaptation sees two dancers and a video artist experimenting more abstractly with the notions of dreams and surrealism.

Directors: Bruno Mathez, Lizzie Sells and Maria Svensson
Performers: Lizzie Sells & Maria Svensson
Composer: Benoit Seyrat
Film Designer: Bruno Mathez

Six Litres of Air explores the idea of breath as a rhythmic stimulus for movement and sound. It is a collaboration between a dancer and a musician playing the electric cello.  

Choreographer: Katja Nyqvist
Composer: Jacob Shirley
Performers: Katja Nyqvist & Jacob Shirley

www.myspace.com/meetmeinthe

Director: Ben Samuels
Lighting Designer: Jason Kirk
Cast: Juan Ayala, Sarah Johnson, Sarah Moody, Ben Samuels & Will Pinchin

Parliament is in session. Oedipus is called to account for his country’s crisis. A trial is staged for the public, but is the verdict already decided?

Opposition and media are complicit in the scandal. Is Oedipus complicit too? And how complicit are you?

You are invited to witness and cast your vote...

This work is a first collaboration between Leonie Kubigsteltig ( London) and Simone Younossi (Berlin). Together they are searching for new forms of experimental chorus work, based on its strong tradition in German theatre. They have been kindly supported by the Goethe Institute, who made it possible for Simone to come over to London for this Research & Development.

Adapted by Ted HughesDirector: Leonie Kubigsteltig
Chorus work: Simone Younossi
Lighting Designer: Boris Kahnert 
Cast: Marcel Bruneau, Justin Davey Mitchell, Nick Richards, Caroline Thompson & Cath Whitefield
Producer: Charlotte Windley

supported by GOETHE-INSTITU LONDON