The Space Announces 2017 Season

The Space is delighted to announce the launch of its Spring Season 2017. Featuring new writing, revivals, cross-disciplinary performance and a wealth of emerging and established theatremakers, the upcoming Season will see support of over 200 theatre artists, cementing the venue’s place as an incubator of exciting talent on the Fringe.

February sees the return of Nigel Fairs and Louise Jameson to the Space with Fairs’ latest comedy, Ebeneezer and Me. When the most hated woman in the Twittersphere meets a man who can’t even turn on his phone, are they a match made in heaven or hell? The award-winning team that brought us Driving me Round the Bend and In Conversation with an Acid Bath Murderer capped their New York run of My Gay Best Friend with two performances at the Space in December.

Also making a welcome debut to the venue is Matthew Lyons, alumnus of in-house company Space Productions, with his own show Broken. After a critically-acclaimed run at Edinburgh Fringe 2015, the production makes a welcome return to London. Set in Shepherds Bush and centred on the end of a relationship, Broken fuses Shakespearian verse with modern dialogue and is an expressionistic satire on the highs and lows of falling in, and inevitably out, of love.

BrightLights Productions share the Space’s passion for nurturing young talent. Their first full scale production, a revival of Thirst by Eugene O’Neill will run for two weeks at the Space. Thirst is hopeless. It is despairing. It blurs reality. And it incites madness. Inspired by the work of Andy Warhol, Alexander McQueen and Stanley Kubrick, director Tom Ward brings a unique visual style to a tale of three people trapped on a raft in the middle of the ocean, in a revival of Pulitzer Prize winning American playwright Eugene O’Neill’s play.

The Voiceless is a visual and musical experience that lives somewhere in the space between physical theatre, circus and dance. Following the success of Skin Deep Theatre’s An Experiment without a Voice (Glasgow, June 2016), the company will create a new piece of speechless theatre.

Described as ‘a simple story, beautifully, skilfully told’ and ‘inspiring and moving’, Skin Deep combine elements of acrobalance with an exhilarating musical score to create a world without words.

Heather Fairbairn and Guests present thrilling true-crime drama, Christopher Bryant’s multi-award nominated play The Mutant Man. Harry Crawford (otherwise known as Eugenia Falleni) stands trial for the murder of his wife. The trial is a farce: the case is filled with false witnesses and Harry’s gender dysphoria is blasted across the newspapers. Exploring the beginnings of society’s understanding and treatment of transgenderism, The Mutant Man delivers a stomach-churning historical narrative.

Performance artiste Sobriety Twist collaborates with film, visual art, sound and performance practitioners to deliver a multi-disciplinary adaptation of Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas. The Queen of Carnage is a dominatrix, surrounded yet alone, who falls for a lowly male. The boundaries of morality and love are explored and exposed as the original score, libretto and narrative are given a live art treatment using soundscape, visual art, performance, opera and digital imagery.

The Identity Collective are also bringing a mutli-disciplinary piece to the Space as theatre, dance, film, music and visual art combine to present Why Not Us? As Emily and Liam finish their final year at university, they try to work out where they fit in the world. Both are faced with challenges that fracture their careers and relationship. Overcoming their insecurities means also beginning to accept and understand each other. Examining gender inequality from the perspective of both men and women, Why Not Us? questions how we view relationships, work and politics.