24 November 2022
Newsdesk
Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) today offers a glimpse into the first few shows of its spring 2023 programme, announcing productions which will include:
London Premiere of Milo Rau’s ‘Hate Radio’ (19-22 April), examining the role of hate speech and media influence during one of the most brutal genocides in recent history, and confronting our response nearly thirty years on.
‘The Talent’, a new collaboration between Action Hero and Deborah Pearson (3 – 20 May), whose surreal sci-fi stage show explores the legacy of the human voice in a non-human future.
An audacious act of collective imagining with the London Premiere of ‘Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel’ (28 February – 14 March), the Fringe First Award-winning new solo play by Tim Crouch where ‘King Lear’ meets stand-up, meets the metaverse.
The return of Little Bulb who will delight and enchant families at half term with their much-loved show ‘Hibernation’ (14-18 February), transporting audiences ages 3-7 to a magical forest full of mirth, live music and marvellous creatures.
BAC will continue to provide many Pay What You Can performances across these productions, with tickets now available to friends and members, and booking open to the public from 12noon on Friday 26 November 2022 via bac.org.uk.
BAC will also be hosting Shubbak Festival, welcoming back London’s biennial festival celebrating contemporary Arab arts and culture after their previous visit with ‘X-Adra’ (2019). Continuing to place support, opportunities and creative development for young people at the fore, BAC is delighted to announce the return of its annual festival, Homegrown. Further details on these exciting partnerships, and more productions in the spring programme, will be released in the coming months.
Pelin Basaran, Head of Programming at Battersea Arts Centre, said:
“This spring, we continue to bring you the most exciting and challenging theatre from the UK and around the world. Through powerful works by Milo Rau, Tim Crouch and Action Hero, we reflect on the dissolving boundaries between reality & fiction. From hate speech to mass media to theatre itself, we see how words conjure worlds and shape our realities. Through our partnership with Shubbak Festival and through new curatorial collaborations with artists, we will expand and enrich the perspectives represented our programme, offering you new ways to see the world and question our role in it.”
Battersea Arts Centre gratefully acknowledges the support of all its donors, funders and partners, including Arts Council England, Bloomberg Philanthropies and Wandsworth Council.
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Upcoming productions at BAC in 2023 include:
Little Bulb
Hibernation
14 - 18 February 2023
Press performance: Tuesday 14 Feb, 2pm
Sensory Adaptive performance: Friday 17 Feb, 2pm
All performances are Relaxed
The “unstoppably charming” (Time Out London) Little Bulb theatre company return to Battersea Arts Centre to delight and enchant young audiences, soft toy companions and families over half term (14-18 February 2023). ‘Hibernation’ will transport audiences ages 3-7 to a magical forest full of mirth, live music and marvellous creatures.
The biggest yawn, the cosiest bed,
The softest blanket, the sleepiest head,
Winter's approaching, prepare for a rest,
With some help from the animals who hibernate best.
As the nights draw in and temperatures drop, staying wrapped up warm in our beds seems like a great idea. But have you ever imagined what it would be like to stay asleep for the whole of winter? Join award-winning Little Bulb (house band in CBeebies’ ‘The Nutcracker’) and a whole host of animal experts, as together we prepare to take a very long nap!
Described by The Daily Telegraph as “one of the brightest and liveliest young theatre companies around”, Little Bulb Theatre have been creating innovative family theatre for over a decade, inlcuding many adventures at Battersea Arts Centre (‘Antarctica’, ‘The Night That Autumn Turned To Winter’, ‘Extravaganza Macabre’).
Created and performed by Little Bulb, supported by Farnham Maltings, Trowbridge Town Hall and Arts Council England.
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A Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh production
Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel
Written and performed by Tim Crouch
London Premiere, 28 February - 18 March 2023
Press performance: Tuesday 28 February, 8pm
All performances are Relaxed
“a master storyteller for our times” - The Scotsman
“An emotive, filthy love letter to the almost-lost art of being in a room, together.” – FT
“An act of imagination in a world undone” - The Stage
★★★★★ The Scotsman ★★★★ The Guardian ★★★★ The Daily Telegraph ★★★★ FT
‘Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel’ by Tim Crouch (‘My Arm’, ‘An Oak Tree’) makes its London Premiere at Battersea Arts Centre after winning a Fringe First award when it opened at the Lyceum Theatre Studio during Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2022.
The play confirms Crouch’s place as the country’s pre-eminent interrogator of form and liveness. It uses ‘King Lear’ as a point of departure to explore the aftermath of the last three years: the loss of life, the wrecking of families, the abuse of power, the digital encroachment of live theatre and the decimation of our industry.
The Fool leaves ‘King Lear’ before the blinding. Before the killing starts. Before the ice-creams in the interval. In this new solo work, Tim Crouch draws on ideas of virtual reality to send him back to the future of the play he left. Back to a world laid waste by division and trauma; a world where the revolution will take place on a screen.
‘Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel’ is a daringly unaccommodated piece of theatre that switches between scathingly funny stand-up and an audacious act of collective imagining. It’s a celebration of live performance and a skewering of the state we’re in now.
‘King Lear’ meets stand-up meets the metaverse.
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A production by IIPM – The International Institute of Political Murder
Hate Radio
Concept, Text & Direction by Milo Rau
London Premiere, 19 – 22 April 2023
Press Performance: Wednesday 19 April, 8pm
All performances are Relaxed and Captioned
Rwanda, 1994. A radio broadcast sparks the most brutal genocide since the end of the Cold War. Rwandan society is swept away by the idea of eradicating a minority in the name of peace and freedom.
In 2004, writer and director Milo Rau (‘Five Easy Pieces’, ‘The Congo Tribunal’) began interrogating the role which the Rwandan national station RTLM (Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines), and its racist propaganda, played in the massacres of the Tutsi people. Using eyewitness accounts, studies and reports from real life events, Rau’s ‘Hate Radio’ is a contemporary reconstruction of these broadcasts.
Marking the Tutsi Genocide Memorial Day (7 April 2023) and approaching thirty years on from the atrocities, BAC will host the London premiere of ‘Hate Radio’. Set in a replica of the original RTLM recording studio, the audience tune in ‘live’ via headsets and watch interviews with survivors (with captions provided in English). The work pushes the limits of how violence can be presented on stage, and examines the consequences of hate speech, how susceptible we are to media manipulation, and our treatment of perpetrators and survivors.
Currently Artistic Director of Belgium’s ground-breaking theatre NTGent, Milo Rau has been identified as one of the "most ambitious" (The Guardian) artists of our times. He founded independent theatre company The International Institute of Political Murder to focus on the multimedia treatment of historical and socio-political conflicts in a new form of political art. For 15 years the company has produced films, video installations, performances and stagings, in his exploration of more documentary style ‘Real Theater’ (a term coined by German academic Alexander Kluge), which have been honoured with innumerable awards worldwide.
‘Hate Radio’ is a production by IIPM Berlin/Zürich with Migros-Kulturprozent Schweiz, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) Berlin, Schlachthaus Theater Bern, Beursschouwburg Brüssel, migros museum für gegenwartskunst Zürich, Kaserne Basel, Südpol Luzern, Verbrecher Verlag Berlin, Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre and Ishyo Arts Centre Kigali.
Supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds (HKF), Migros-Kulturprozent Schweiz, Pro Helvetia - Schweizer Kulturstif-tung, Kulturelles.bl (Basel), Bildungs- und Kulturdepartement des Kantons Luzern, Amt für Kultur St. Gallen, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Stanley Thomas Johnson Stiftung, Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F. V. S., GGG Basel, Goethe-Institut Brüssel, Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, Brussels Airlines, Spacial Solutions, Commission Nationale de Lutte contre le Génocide (CNLG), Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst (DED), Contact FM Kigali, IBUKA Rwanda (Dachorganisation der Opferverbände des Genozids in Ruanda) and the Hochschule der Künste Bern (HKB), Friede Springer Stiftung.
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Action Hero and Deborah Pearson
The Talent
3 - 20 May 2023 (part of UK Tour)
Press Performance: Wednesday 3 May, 8pm
Audio Described performance: Audio Description by Dot Alma on 19 May, 8pm
All performances are Relaxed
“’The Talent’ challenges us to reflect on the sounds and voices we are leaving behind” - Time Out Lisbon
Contemporary performance duo Action Hero (‘Oh Europa’, ‘Watch Me Fall’) and live artist & playwright Deborah Pearson (‘The Future Show’, ‘Inside Bitch’) make their Battersea Arts Centre debuts with ‘The Talent’, a surreal sci-fi visitation which probes into the roles of voice, human presence and capitalism in the 21st Century. ‘The Talent’ asks ‘what will be the legacy of the human voice in a non-human future?
Renowned for their award-winning work which investigates public and digital interaction, installation and sound, ‘The Talent’ marks Action Hero’s first stage production since 2017. In collaboration with Deborah Pearson (Founding Co-Director of UK artist collective Forest Fringe), and Sound Design by Yas Clarke (‘The Making of Pinocchio’), they explore the intimate and the expansive possibilities of live performance. The show visits Battersea Arts Centre (3-20 May 2023) as part of a UK Tour, following its World Premiere at Lisbon’s Teatro Barrio Alto in 2022.
A woman in a sound booth is talking. She is talking to herself. She is talking to you. She is talking to everyone. She is gifted, professional, mercurial; it seems as if she can summon almost any kind of voice and create any kind of world. You would listen to her say anything. Her voice is all around. Her voice is all that’s left. She conjures her own ghost in real time.
Where does the voice live? How will her voice live on, outside her body, if it can take on a life of its own?
Commissioned by Teatro Barrio Alto (PT) Cambridge Junction (UK) & South Street Arts/ University of Reading (UK). With support from PACT Zollverein (DE) and Bristol Old Vic Ferment (UK). Thanks to Queen Mary University, University of Bristol and The Yard. Action Hero are a National Portfolio Organisation of Arts Council England.
