Rural Touring Autumn 2016 Highlights
Highlights of the National Rural Touring Forum autumn 2016 season include an acclaimed show from Theatre503 alongside jazz drumming, Bhangra and robot actors.
Rhum and Clay – 64 Squares
Kali Theatre – My Big Fat Cowpat Wedding
Northumberland Theatre Company – How to Make a Killing in Bollywood
Theatre 503 and Bristol Old Vic – And then came the Nightjars
Centric Theatre Company – Giants on the Hill
Pipeline Theatre – Spillikin
This Autumn, village halls and community spaces across the UK will play host to a huge variety of live performances hosted by local Rural Touring Schemes and supported by the National Rural Touring Forum (NRTF). Some shows tackle explicitly rural issues, others are ideal for performing in intimate spaces with the audience close to the action, all offer a great night out to the communities they visit.
Here are a few highlights:
Rhum and Clay’s 64 Squares tours Norfolk (20-27 Oct), a one man show about memory, madness and chess performed by three actors and a drummer. Accompanied by a live jazz percussive score, this energetic and contemporary piece is adapted from Stefan Zweig’s The Royal Game.
Kali Theatre’s My Big Fat Cowpat Wedding tours the UK (28 Sep-13 Nov) including Devon and North Yorkshire, inviting audiences to join Clare and Arjun’s wedding reception, in a fast moving mixed marriage comedy drama, full of misunderstanding and mishaps with plenty of neat twists – and a Bhangra dance for everyone at the end.
Northumberland Theatre Company’s How to Make a Killing in Bollywood (18 Sep- 5 Nov) touring Scotland and border country is a musical comedy about two best friends who head for Bollywood in search of fame and fortune in a play about friendship and ambition, punctuated with a fantastic music and infectious Bollywood dance moves.
Theatre 503 & Bristol Old Vic present And then came the Nightjars, (20 Sept – 22 Oct) touring Somerset, with a distinctly rural theme: the 2001 UK outbreak of foot-and- mouth disease. Bea Roberts’ play is a story of male friendship against the odds, and a tribute to vanishing ways of rural life.
“Intensely funny… a small gem from a writer to watch” Daily Telegraph (And then came the Nightjars)
Also touring from this Autumn throughout the Midlands is Centric Theatre Company’s Giants on the Hill, a new play about the wind farms debate powered by onstage bicycles, and Pipeline Theatre’s Spillikin, which tours Shropshire, Herefordshire, Cornwall and North Yorkshire, featuring a real working robot as a main character in this piece about artificial intelligence, Alzheimer’s disease and love.
Full listings information of the all the autumn 2016 highlights can be downloaded here.
