Fuel Theatre Presents MUST: The Inside Story, 3/23

Fuel produces fresh work for adventurous people by inspiring artists. The spring programme includes a diverse range of work for audiences aged 5+ happening in venues small and large, rural and urban, throughout the UK and beyond.

SIMPLE GIRL

Melanie Wilson and Fuel Present

Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space

Part coolly seductive femme fatale, part warmly mischievous confidante, let the Simple Girl share her tales. A one woman trans-European adventure takes you from glamorous intrigue to the lonely flight of lost love, and a yearning to be something more, to be someone else.

Performer, writer and sound artist Melanie Wilson presents her charming Simple Girl. She creates a unique character and a delicately eccentric world, weaving together touchingly humorous confessions and perilous tales. Wilson is an entrancing storyteller, using a minutely observed physicality and illustrated with a live soundtrack, performed on stage with a sampler and vintage microphone. Tripping between her bewitching fantasies and the mundane world of our everyday, she shares a uniquely personal relationship with her audience, drawing them in to become her confidantes, playmates, and occasionally her prey.

Melanie's work as a solo artist includes ‘Iris Brunette' at Edinburgh Fringe 2009 and BAC, ‘The Philosopher of Furniture' a BAC commission for ‘Masque of the Red Death' by Punchdrunk, ‘Simple Girl' at Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2007 (Mervyn Stutter's pick of the Fringe), Dublin Fringe Festivals 2007 (nominated for Best Actress and Spirit of the Fringe Award), Shunt Vaults, BAC, Chelsea Theatre, Hackney Empire, Latitude Festival and Galapagos Arts Space, New York and ‘Blackbird' at BAC's Blink Festival 2005.

As a performer Melanie has worked with Chris Goode on ‘...Sisters' at The Gate, with Rotozaza on ‘5am' in London, Bristol, Jersey, Portugal, Texas, and New York, with Clod Ensemble on ‘Red Ladies' in London and Coventry and on ‘The Silver Swan' at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2006, with Boilerhouse on ‘Drenched' on a national tour (nominated for Best Actress in a Visiting Company in MEN Theatre Awards 2006), with Shunt on ‘Tropicana' at the Shunt Vaults London and with Catherine Dyson on ‘Dead Man's Biggest Fan' on This Way Up national tour and BAC, London.

Simple Girl has been developed, written and performed by Melanie Wilson, and co-directed by Emma Benson.  On 4th March it will be performed at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space as part of the Tokyo Performing Arts Market.

Sound&Fury's KURSK

A Young Vic and Fuel co-production

In collaboration with Bryony Lavery

Commissioned by the Junction Cambridge

August 2000. A British hunter-killer submarine is on patrol in the Arctic. The crew drill, sleep, eat, long for word from home, and silently shadow their target. Their lives are at once extraordinary and mundane - until a tragic event occurs that makes them question everything they are doing. As the tension mounts, the pressure they live under starts to take its toll.

Inspired by the Russian submarine disaster of August 2000, acclaimed theatre company Sound&Fury (The Watery Part of the World and Ether Frolics) join Bryony Lavery (Stockholm) to invoke the life of submariners, fathoms below the icy seas on the fraying front line of the Cold War.

Sound&Fury is a collaborative theatre company directed by Mark Espiner, Tom Espiner and Dan Jones. Their artistic interest is in developing the physical and sonic elements of theatre offering the audience new ways of experiencing performance and stories in an immersive environment and by heightening the aural sense. Previous work includes The Watery Part of the World - where the audience were plunged into total darkness where they witnessed the thrill of a 19th century whale hunt - and Ether Frolics, which took the audience on a theatrical anaesthetic trip.

Kursk was first performed at the Young Vic in London in June 2009 and was subsequently selected to be part of the British Council Showcase at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

www.sound&fury.org.uk

Sound&Fury is led by Dan Jones, Mark Espiner and Tom Espiner. Design is by Jon Bausor.
Lighting is by Hansjorg Schmidt. Sound is by Dan Jones. The cast of KURSK features Ian Ashpitel, Keir Charles, Tom Espiner, Lawrence Mitchell and Jonah Russell. 

The Kursk Tour Schedule is as follows: 12 - 20 March at the Bristol Old Vic. Call 0117 987 7877
or visit www.bristololdvic.org.uk for tickets. 26 March - 17 April at the Young Vic in London; call 0207 922 2922 or visit www.youngvic.org for more information. 21 - 24 April at The Junction in Cambridge; call 01223 511 511 or visit www.junction.co.uk for more information. 28 April - 1 May at Northern Stage in Newcastle; call 0191 230 5151 or visit www.northernstages.co.uk for more information. 4- 8 May at the Warwick Arts Centre in Coventry; call 024 7652 4524 or visit www.warwickartscentre.co.uk for more information. 19 - 23 May at Tramway, Glasgow; call 0845 330 3501 or visit www.tramway.org for more information. 

MUST: The Inside Story
Clod Ensemble in collaboration with Peggy Shaw
Produced by Fuel

In collaboration with the celebrated Clod Ensemble, legendary New York performance artist Peggy Shaw takes the audience on a journey across the landscape of her own body.

Renowned for her own gender bending autobiographical work, she recounts her extraordinary experiences of the medical profession from her current perspective as a 65-year-old lesbian grandmother. MUST weaves together the stories of a lifetime - giving birth on the way to Woodstock, her mother's electric shock treatment in 1950s America, the loss of a loved one - with projected microscopic images, and live musicians performing a powerful score for piano, double bass and violin.

By Suzy Willson and Peggy Shaw. Directed by Suzy Willson. Music by Paul Clark. Performed by Peggy Shaw. Live Musicians featured are Calina De La Mare, John-Paul Gandy & Andrew Hall. 
Design by Sarah Blenkinsop. Lighting by Hansjörg Schmidt. For more information visit www.clodensemble.com.

MUST: The Inside Story will be performed on 15 March at Oxfordshire Science Festival, Oxford
(www.oxfordshiresciencefestival.co.uk), 20 March at Newcastle Science Festival, Newcastle
(www.newcastlesciencefest.co.uk), and 23 March at Arts & Health Symposium, Glasgow.

For further information on these and more shows visit www.fueltheatre.com.

Founded in 2004 and led by Louise Blackwell and Kate McGrath, Fuel is a producing organisation working in partnership with some of the most exciting theatre artists in the UK to develop, create and present new work for all ages. 

Fuel's projects are varied in form and content, and happen in all sorts of places: from an exploration of the natural light in Brighton as an installation in a basement, to a retelling of Kafka's Metamorphosis touring 500+ seat theatres from the UK to Iceland, Korea and beyond; from a playful look at history in a disused state building in Bucharest, to an army of women storming Trafalgar Square under helicopter surveillance. In the past Fuel has worked with artists including Marisa Carnesky, NIE, Mark Murphy, National Theatre of Scotland, Gecko and Blind Summit. From 2006 to 2008 Fuel produced the entire programme at the Lyric Hammersmith.

Fuel is currently working with Will Adamsdale, Dave Blake, Clod Ensemble, Inua Ellams, Fevered Sleep, Paul Hodson, Peepolykus, David Rosenberg, Sound&Fury, Melly Still, Richard Thomas, Will Tuckett, Uninvited Guests and Melanie Wilson.

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