Liquid Theatre was set up in 2002 by Mark Bell and Matt Peover, and the Colliery Row project is produced in association with Alex Waldmann's company SEArED.
We've come a long way towards making this project happen, but we need your help to cover the last ground! We need to raise at least £1050 on this site... more if possible.
We will be working in Sunderland in July for three weeks with six actors and a director to research and devise this play. We must raise the remaining £2500 project funds which will cover the running costs of the work. Although we've been fortunate enough to have received Arts Council funding for research and development, we need your help to raise the additional money necessary to make the project happen. Once we have made the show in July we will be in a position to book a tour in 2012 in the North East and across the country.
WHAT IS THE COLLIERY ROW PROJECT?
Our new project is to research and devise a play with a team of actors from the North East, in the North East. Inspired by a picture of Mark's father in his youth, COLLIERY ROW will be set in the 1950s and will be steeped in the rich history and traditions of the Sunderland area.
We will be working for the month of July in Sunderland to research and devise the play working closely with Northern Stage, Arts Centre Washington and Living History North East. We will research directly within the local communities and talk to and record those who remember the fifties. We will tell the story of five young people and the choices they make in life, ambition and love within the coal-mining and ship-building communities. We will work through improvisation to create characters based on our research and use these to form our narrative. There will be two showings of the work on the 29th and 30th July at Arts Centre Washington. At this stage the main part of the play will have been created. We will use this to book a tour so that the piece will be seen by audiences across the country in 2012.
The show will be narrated by a character looking back on his youth in Sunderland twenty-five years down the line from his home in a New Town in the South. It will take the poor theatre form of a 'peasant's tragedy', a tale told by a chorus of every-day lives. We will tell the story using folk and fifties dance hall songs and an energetic storytelling style coupled with deeply-researched portraits of the characters and society of the times. Playful, entertaining, accessible, moving, we will make a universal story anchored in the specifics of a rich culture.
Your money can help us to create this and to create a show even more successful than our previous ones, ENDGAME, COWBOY MOUTH, CRAVE and FEEDING TIME. This project is an important step in the identity of Liquid Theatre, building relationships in the North East where we want to work as well as London where our past projects have been based.
Any amount you can offer would be such a help. It will allow us to hire transport, to carry out research, accommodate actors in the North East, and pay for travel for those coming from London. Without these basic things the money we already have for creative fees is meaningless.
Thank you for looking, and thank you for your ongoing support,
Matt, Mark and Alex
