This year RADAR Festival has curated three new works that are all at an early stage of development, presented to you in special sneak peek performances.
Each work-in-progress will be followed by a panel with the creative team and an opportunity for you to ask questions and influence the journey towards full production.
DATES AND DETAILS
Free Falling Bird
Written by Amy Jephta
“We are not angry enough”
In the aftermath of war, a group of women begin a new fight. They are not victims. They will be heard.
A vibrant, impassioned new play by one of South Africa’s boldest new playwrights; Free Falling Bird is a shot in the arm for contemporary South Africa. Amy Jephta plays fast and loose with Euripides’ The Trojan Women, remixing this classic with the language of free-form jazz, poetry, tragedy and spectacle. An astonishing anthem of defiance, raising urgent questions about race, female identity and violence.
Free Falling Bird is presented as a work in progress, developed and directed by the Bush Theatre’s Associate Dramaturg Rob Drummer. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
Friday 8 November, 7.30pm £12 (£10 concessions and £10 Bush Connect Members tickets)
Ticket price includes entry to Solfatara by ATRESBANDES
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On Negril Beach
Written by Nathan Bryon
There is an epidemic of fried chicken shops in Shepherds Bush, mainly along the famous Uxbridge Road, all competing with each other with cheaper meal deals and each trying to bring in kids on their way home from school. Negril Beach is different and as the areas top Caribbean food restaurant for the past 25 years, prides itself on quality and a home made style that keeps it at the heart of the community.
Maude Peters, cooking sensation can’t walk ten steps without being stopped in the street and right now, as she faces soaring rents and the threat of closure is reliant more than ever on the community that calls her restaurant home. Nathan Bryon’s new play, looks at community spirit, at a time when London’s streets are changing at a rapid pace and asks what it means to come together at a time of crisis.
Price of ticket includes entry to Chalk Farm by Kieran Hurley and AJ Taudevin
Thursday 14 November, 7.30pm: £12 (£10 concessions and £10 Bush Connect Members tickets)
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The Crows Plucked Your Sinews
Written by Hassan Mahamdallie
The date is May 2011: Suuban sits in the dark in a Woolwich council house watching the US assassination of Osama Bin Laden unfold on TV.
The date is August 1913: The British are at war…in Africa. In the interior of British Somaliland the hunt for the ‘Mad Mullah’ is on. A woman dervish warrior searches the body of a British Tommy. Soon battle will be joined:
Say, the dervish are like the advancing thunderbolts of a storm, rumbling and roaring.
Soon these two worlds will fuse and shake Suuban to her very core.
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews is a one woman show written and directed by Hassan Mahamdallie and starring multi-talented poet, writer and performer Yusra Warsama. Based on real events and featuring the epic lyrical tradition of Somalia, The Crows Plucked Your Sinews is a unique exploration of the violence of Empire and the poetry of resistance.
Tuesday 19 November, 7.30pm: £12 (£10 concessions and £10 Bush Connect Members tickets)
Price of ticket includes entry to Venus/Mars by Patrice Etienne
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Amy Jephta is a 25-year old Cape Town based playwright. She completed her MA in playwriting at the University of Cape Town and has since had her work performed at the Women Playwrights International Conference (Sweden) and as part of the Artscape Spring Season (Cape Town). She is an alumni of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab in New York, has taught voice and acting at the Woodward School for Contemporary Art in Vancouver and at CityVarsity and the University of Cape Town. She is a columnist for the Big Issue South Africa, has presented writing workshops for Magnet Theatre South Africa and UNIMA, and participated in the NovelScript project at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival for two years. In 2013, she was one of the Mail & Guardian’s 200 Top Young South Africans. Amy is currently undertaking a two year playwriting residency with the Royal Court Theatre.
Hassan Mahamdallie has a background in theatre, journalism and activism. His political biography of Victorian artist William Morris, Crossing the River of Fire, was published in 2008. He is presently researching for a forthcoming book on the history of the Anti Nazi League and Rock Against Racism. Hassan is a founding member of Unite Against Fascism.
He is presently Co-Director of the Muslim Institute, a free-thinking Muslim organisation based in London and is a senior editor on the institute’s new quarterly publication Critical Muslim.
Hassan’s latest play The Crows Plucked Your Sinews, based on the life of a Somali nationalist leader and poet, premiered at the Bush Theatre’s Radar 2013 Festival.
Rob Drummer is Associate Dramaturg at the Bush Theatre. He has developed numerous productions, most recently Free Falling Bird (Bush Theatre), Home (National Theatre), Responsible Other (Hampstead Theatre), Eisteddfod (HighTide, Latitude) Endless Poem (London 2012 Festival), and Perish (HighTide Festival 2012). As a director he has made work at Contact, Manchester, York Theatre Royal, Manchester Museum, and Theatre503. He has an M.A. in advanced theatre practice from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and assisted Athol Fugard on his play The Train Driver. Rob was recently funded through Arts Council England and the British Council on their Artists’ International Development Fund and spent time in South Africa working as a director and developing new writing workshops in Cape Town and Johannesburg. He was commissioned as a visual artist for the Wandsworth Arts Festival in 2011 and has curated the annual Collisions Festival at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
