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Welcome
to Red Shift Theatre Company
THE FALL OF MAN
Already celebrated by press and public at the Edinburgh Festival 2009, June/July 2010 saw Red Shiftt touring this unusually intimate, hard-hitting 'micro' theatre piece to Bristol's Tobacco Factory, Taunton's Brewhouse Theatre and Lincoln's Drill Hall Arts Centre where it was again lauded by audiences and industry observers. Plans are now being made to retour THE FALL OF MAN in the UK and abroad in 2011 and booking enquiries are invited. click here for press release and photos The Fall of Man played to full houses throughout the '09 Edinburgh Festival and won praise for the company following its decision to move to a new way of working, sensitive to locations and contexts. This Edinburgh outing confirmed the company's position at the forefront of UK practice and its desire to find collaborators to help make the theatre of the future. "It is not the way that the tale pans out to its eventual and inevitable sordid end that matters, so much as the way the story is told. Working with only a bed, three simple lights and Sarah Llewellyn's insistent soundscape, the production creates an intense intimacy that implicates its audience; you feel slightly soiled watching it. It also boasts two assured and brave performances". - Lyn Gardner, The Guardian The Scotsman: * * * * (featured Hot Show) "they have created another provocative piece - on the surface a small story of a briefly lived-out relationship, but more fundamentally, a tribute to the kind of fleeting passions that make life worth living." Three Weeks: * * * * "A bold, impressively performed production that endows a difficult literary work with graphic contemporary resonance." One4review.com: * * * * "In the intimate space, barely lit by small domestic light bulbs, good performances are drawn from both performers in this strong hard hitting performance" Metro: * * * * "Casting the audience as culpable voyeurs by having us cluster round their bed, this is a branding iron of sex and guilt." EdinburghGuide.com: * * * * "This is a superbly inventive and beautifully adapted piece that grips the audience in a vice and refuses to let them escape." The List: "powerful body language, unnerving music, and the clash of native and non-native idioms and priorities create loaded moments", Fringe Review.co.uk: "sexy and gratuitous, combining a fun romp with the sometimes fraught politics of sexual relationships, and make this piece delightfully watchable despite the sometimes heavy emotional content", Broadway Baby: "with strong language, nudity and sexual situations. The audience surrounds the stage on three sides and is very close, giving a strong sense of immediacy and reality to the performances. It feels like we’re eavesdropping on something very private and intense.", Fest/The Skinny: "Since the early 1980s, Red Shift has gained a reputation for innovative theatre and this latest piece comes as no exception... unfalteringly bold in simulating sex and violence... Performed in the round against an intimate set comprising just a single bed, this is never gratuitous, simply visceral." The show requires an intimate claustrophobic situation, needs only minimal technical support and because of its length (40 mins) can be played twice in an evening. Contact us on 07958 617837 for further details. A collaboration between Jonathan Holloway (founder: Red Shift), Graeme Rose (co-founder: Stan's Cafe) and the Company using original dialogue and excerpts from John Milton's Paradise Lost The Story: Sited in the bed-sitting room of Slovenian child minder Veronica. Visited in the early hours by Peter - father of the children she nannies - we watch their adulterous relationship fall apart in near darkness. An intense theatrical experience played with the audience huddled around their single bed. Unforgiving in its explicit physicality and emotional depth. Skirmishing across issues of the actor-audience relationship. High tragedy in a tiny domestic environment. Huge words. Throwaway remarks. Candid love-making eclipsed by mistrust. Red Shift welcomed Graeme Rose back to the company for this ambitious risk-taking event: Graeme is a theatre-maker committed to developing innovative, collaborative work. A co-founder of companies Glory what Glory, Stan's Cafe and The Resurrectionists, he is also associate artist with Bodies in Flight, and has worked repeatedly with the likes of Insomniac Prods, Talking Birds and Red Shift.
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Red Shift was founded in 1982 by Director Jonathan Holloway (click for biog) and Designer Charlotte Humpston. The company has toured all over the world, played in literally hundreds of UK theatres from modest studios to lyric houses and won numerous awards. Over... 3000 performances given, 250000 tickets sold, 1000 get-ins/get-outs completed, 50000 miles driven, 35000 miles flown. "Red Shift does the shows people want to see" - Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.Click here to enter Website. The Invisible Show
Wherever a crowd gathers numerous dramas will be played out within it. An estranged father and son duo meet for the first time in years. A couple plan the detail of their painful separation. Lovers squirm, sexed up and desperate for privacy. A mother diagnosed with serious illness worries into her phone, concerned for her children. Except for the smallest tell-tales - a raised voice, a sudden violent gesture - the crowd is ignorant of these eddies of emotion. Realising these scenarios is the heart of our show, but of course it is virtually invisible… unless you've bought a ticket, been given the headphones, and then suddenly the private soundscape reveals itself and the dramas become visible.
This project is a collaboration between Red Shift Theatre Company and Central School of Speech and Drama's Centre for Excellence in TheatreTraining.
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In July 2010 The
Invisible Show premiered at the Latitude Festival (Suffolk) followed
by Westival (Somerset). The Guardian, Review of The Latitude Festival:
"The
most curious happenings were saved for Pandora's Playground,
where Red Shift Theatre Company issued punters with headphones
in order to experience a performance embedded in the festival
crowd."
As
a result of the show's warm reception, a tour is now planned
for Summer 2011.
