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Spring at the Wickham Theatre

Lucinka Eisler as Frances in If That's All There Is presented by Inspector Sands

Lucinka Eisler as Frances in If That's All There Is presented by Inspector Sands Helen Maybanks

Press release issued: 7 January 2010

The Spring 2010 season of touring theatre, screenings and other events at the Wickham Theatre includes performances of two of Caryl Churchill’s early plays, a showcase of students’ films inspired by Lars Von Trier and a public lecture on Ted Hughes and Shakespeare.

Light Shining in Buckinghamshire and Fen Thursday 21 – Saturday 23 January, 7.30pm

An opportunity to see two of Caryl Churchill’s early, seminal plays that together illustrate her bold theatrical imagination.  Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976) vividly portrays the last desperate burst of revolutionary feeling at the end of the English Civil War, while the richly poetic Fen (1983), is a striking portrait of the lives of the men, children and, most of all, women in a superstitious, religion-soaked Fenland community battered by economic hardship.  Tickets £5, £3 concessions

Screen 4: The Five Obstructions Wednesday 3 February, 6pm

A showcase of third year students' screen production exercises, inspired by  Lars Von Trier’s film The Five Obstructions.  For each exercise, students were given a scene to shoot and a creative ‘obstruction’.  The resulting work comprises a range of imaginative, playful and sometimes startling film-making experiments.  Admission Free

Proto-type Theater - Virtuoso (working title) Wednesday 24 February, 7.30pm

Three performers stage the story of a stagnant American suburbia, circa 1963, where the minutiae of everyday life has become strange.  Playing games to keep boredom at bay, they switch from persona to persona, never content to idly wait for something to happen.  Outside the world seems to be closing in on them as the protective banality of suburbia dissolves leaving them stranded, and exposed.  Free post-show discussion: tickets £8.50, £5 concessions

Studiospace - The Cradle will Rock Thursday 4 – Saturday 6 March, 7.30pm

Our own student theatre company studiospace are tackling Marc Blitzstein’s groundbreaking play The Cradle will Rock – about unions, capitalism and the prostitution of the mind, body and soul.  Written for the Federal Theatre Project in 1937, Blitzstein’s play was brought into the forefront of American politics when it was shut down on its opening night.  However, nineteen blocks uptown Orson Welles managed to turn it into one of the most exciting performances the theatre has ever known.  The play combines text, songs and rhythmic speech.  Tickets £5, £3 concessions

Imitating the dog - Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls Thursday 11 March, 7.30pm

Part musical, part dream play, Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls is a magical realist story of forbidden love, criminality and the possibility of finding redemption in the unlikeliest of places.  The audience watch the action through the bar’s window, as a carnival of unsavoury characters reveal themselves and haunting tales of murder, love and forgiveness unfold.  Free post-show discussion: tickets £8.50. £5 concessions

Inspector Sands - If That’s All There Is Tuesday 16 March, 7.30pm

A couple are teetering on the brink of marriage.  As the happiest day of their lives approaches, the panic begins to rise.  And everybody’s watching.  A hilarious case study of longing, envy, disappointment and violent urges, examining our obsession with seeking fulfilment at any cost.  For anyone who’s ever wanted to stand on a windswept plain, howling for lost love.  Free post-show discussion: tickets £8.50, £5 concessions

Wickham Lecture - Ted Hughes and Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate Tuesday 4 May, 5.30pm

Jonathan Bate is a well-known Shakespeare expert who is now writing a literary life of Ted Hughes.  Throughout his career, Hughes was passionate about Shakespeare, an obsession that culminated in Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being.  The lecture will reassess Hughes as a reader of Shakespeare, while also showing how the Shakespearean example led Hughes to seek his own career as a dramatic writer, first through radio plays and then in his collaborations with Peter Brook and finally the acclaimed translations.  Admission Free

Wickham Theatre, Department of Drama, University of Bristol, Cantocks Close, Woodland Rd, Bristol BS8 1UP; administration 0117 33 15084

Further information

Please contact Wickham Theatre for further information.
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