Guildhall School of Music & Drama is throwing five fully staged drama productions, each of which will be broadcast online for free between April and May 2021. Since moving events online last year in response to the pandemic, the School has seen over 60,000 views for its broadcasts from 125 countries around the world.
During the Spring Season, final-year Actors and Production Artists have worked with two multi-award-winning theatre companies, Barrel Organ and Breach, to create two brand-new pieces of contemporary theatre, available to watch on demand from Wednesday 14 until Wednesday 28 April. Working with filmmakers, these brand-new works have been created especially for Guildhall School and for online viewing.
Jackal Run
From Wednesday 14 April, 7.30pm, on demand until Wednesday 28 April
This new piece of theatre has been created by Breach together with Guildhall School final-year Acting students, and directed by Billy Barrett. Jackal Run was devised over an intensive five-week period – with two weeks over zoom in lockdown, two weeks devising in person, and a few days of filming. It was created in collaboration between professional and student creatives and crew.
A group of British women discover their partners are undercover police officers living under false identities. Each of their stories – spanning several decades of deception, manipulation and surveillance – are remarkably similar, and now they are looking for answers. Jackal Run is inspired by real events, and uses a blend of real witness testimony and imagined characters.
All Your Houses
From Wednesday 14 April, 7.30pm, on demand until Wednesday 28 April
This new piece of theatre has been created by Barrel Organ together with Guildhall School final-year Acting students, and co-directed by Ali Pidsley and Ed Madden with text by Rosie Gray and the Company.
All Your Houses was devised over an intensive five-week period – with two weeks over zoom in lockdown, two weeks devising in person, and a few days of filming. It was created in collaboration between professional and student creatives and crew. History happens, crisis happens, we cope, time moves on. But how do we cope? Fourteen people look out of their bedroom windows. Something is coming, so they look to each other for help, only to find that they’re alone.
In Summer 2021 the School presents three drama productions, broadcast live. They are free to watch, but registration is required via Guildhall School’s website.
Love and Information
Thursday 29 April, 7.30pm; Friday 30 April, 2pm & 7.30pm; and Saturday 1 May, 7.30pm
Someone sneezes. Someone can’t get a signal. Someone won’t answer the door. Someone put an elephant on the stairs. Someone’s not ready to talk. Someone is her brother’s mother. Someone hates irrational numbers. Someone told the police. Someone’s never felt like this before.
More than 100 characters try to make sense of it all in Pooja Ghai’s new production of Caryl Churchill’s fast-moving kaleidoscopic drama, exploring communication and our capacity for love in contemporary Britain. Following its premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in 2012, Love and Information was widely heralded as an immediate Churchill classic, garnering a multitude of five-star reviews.
Mr. Burns, a post-electric play
Thursday 20 May, 7.30pm; Monday 24 May, 2pm & 7.30pm; and Tuesday 25 May, 7.30pm
When everything we know has been stripped away, we’re always left with a story… After the collapse of civilisation, a group of survivors recount an episode of The Simpsons. Seven years later, this and other snippets of pop culture have become the live entertainment of a post-apocalyptic society which is sincerely trying to hold onto its past. Seventy-five years later pop songs, sitcom plots and jingles are the myths and legends from which new forms of performance are created.
Award-winning theatre maker Chelsea Walker directs Anne Washburn’s imaginative, music-filled dark comedy, which explores the relevance of culture on a society that has none left.
Gone Too Far!
Saturday 22 May, 2pm & 7.30pm; Wednesday 26 May, 7.30pm; and Thursday 27 May, 7.30pm
Nigeria, England, America, Jamaica; are you proud of where you’re from? When two brothers from different continents go down the street to buy a pint of milk, they lift the lid on a disunited nation: a world where everyone wants to be an individual but no one wants to stand out from the crowd, and where respect is always demanded but rarely freely given.
Winner of the 2019 JMK Young Director award, Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu directs this comic, vibrant and perceptive exploration of identity and culture by Bola Agbaje, described as “an iconic dramatist for an entire generation of young playwrights” by Simon Stephens. Gone Too Far! premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 2007 and won an Olivier Award the following year for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliated Theatre.
