Actors’ Touring Company Announces CRAVE and ILLUSIONS for Spring Tour

Actors' Touring Company hits the road this spring with a rare revival of Sarah Kane's modern classic Crave and the English language premier of Illusions by Russia's foremost contemporary playwright and screenwriter, Ivan Viripaev.

Demonstrating his commitment to producing actor led ensemble theatre, artistic director Ramin Gray presents the two plays in rep with the same cast of actors. The tour comes straight after the company became the first ever UK theatre organisation to perform in Kurdistan with their acclaimed production of Roland Schimmelpfennig's The Golden Dragon and coincides with their Young Vic co-production of the stage adaptation of Jung Chang's Wild Swans. Crave and Illusions are poetic studies of the human heart, of the ambiguity of relationships and the fragility of the individuals who inhabit them

When Crave was first performed in 1998, Sarah Kane used the pseudonym of Marie Kelvedon. By that time her work had developed a reputation for on-stage violence but Crave was seen as a departure from this. The poetic quality of the work eschews narrative and setting and presents disconnected meditations on love and yearning. Crave is about what life does to people. Four performers embody the competing voices of a mind in torment and ecstasy, embittered, dismayed and often bewildered by an existence over which they have no control. The production is the first major revival in ten years of a contemporary classic, a groundbreaking work that challenges the very notion of what makes a play.

Love & death, loyalty & betrayal, truth & fiction, hope & despair, Illusions is a beguiling comedy that takes the audience through a hall of mirrors. The work playfully unravels the paradoxes of the lives and loves of two couples as they look back at their times together. It tells a tale of roads taken and those passed by, of understandings and misunderstandings and of the dangers of voicing certain thoughts and leaving others unsaid. Ivan Viripaev, has won several major awards for his work including the prestigious Golden Mask and the Presidential Council Prize for Literature in Russia and awards at the Venice, Warsaw and Sochi Film Festivals. Illusions is his first work to be staged in the UK.

The company for Crave and Illusions comprises Derbhle Crotty Laurence Mitchell Cazimir Liske (who also translated Illusions) and Rona Morrison. The productions are designed by Lizzie Clachan with lighting design by Charles Balfour and sound by Alex Caplen.

North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford
29th and 30th March – Crave only

Lincoln Performing Arts Centre
31st March – Crave only

Northern Stage Newcastle
3rd – 6th April – Crave only

Manchester Royal Exchange Studio
19th – 21st April – Crave only

Bristol Old Vic at the Wickham Studio, University of Bristol
24th Illusions only
25th – 28th April Crave & Illusions

Hull Truck
10th- 12th May – Crave & Illusions

The Point, Eastleigh
17th May - Crave & Illusions

Quarterhouse, Folkestone
18th May - Crave & Illusions

Gulbenkian Theatre Canterbury
19th May - Crave & Illusions

York Theatre Royal
21st-23rd May - Crave & Illusions

Traverse Theatre
Edinburgh 25th – 26th May - Crave & Illusions

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