Gecko Extends The Tour Of THE WEDDING

Ipswich-based physical theatre company Gecko extends the tour of its most ambitious show to date, The Wedding, into spring 2018. The tour includes 8 venues around England: Bristol Old Vic, Watford Palace Theatre, Nottingham Playhouse, Derby Theatre, Cast in Doncaster, Oxford Playhouse, Nuffield in Southampton and Liverpool Playhouse and is one of Gecko's longest consecutive tours since the company began in 2001.

The Wedding is set in a dystopian world that imagines we are all brides, wedded to society and bound by a contract. Inspired by the complexities of human nature, the show brings these contracts and issues of social cohesion within communities into question. What are the terms of this relationship? And can we consider a divorce?

With the support of the Strategic Touring Funding from Arts Council England Gecko is able to bring an experimental, mid-scale theatre show to the main regional stages around the country and therefore help diversify their programmes, at the same time appealing to and nurturing young and more diverse audiences, inspiring them to be both the artists and audiences of the future.

The Strategic Touring Funding also allowed the company to develop an audience engagement programme that encourages social cohesion between local and migrant/refugee communities through participation as well as increasing audience attendance among these groups at each venue on the tour.

This ambitious outreach programme includes, for example, 3-day training course with one associate artists from each venue (27-29 September 2017), a 2.5-3 residency co-delivered with the associate artists and aimed at young people of migrant or refugee background, free half-day workshop for audiences at each venue and a post-show panel discussion.

Through workshops, residencies, free ticket offer and more, Gecko will actively engage 750 participants around England, some of whom might not be able or inclined to engage in such activity otherwise. This will not only strengthen Gecko's reputation as an inclusive company with a strong educational status but also foster the development of more diverse audiences around England.

Amit Lahav, Gecko's Artistic Director said: "For me, The Wedding started as a battle between anger and love. Played out around the complex ideas of belonging, state, exclusion and a longing for community, all set within the excitement and ceremony of marriage!"

"In Spring 2018 we will tour The Wedding to 8 UK venues and there are many reasons why this is particularly exciting tour for us. Most of the venues we'll be visiting are new to the company, or venues who we have only recently begun a relationship with. This is significant because touring mid-scale devised work is notoriously difficult, more so in the last two years, and for us to have so many new relationships shows a real step change in the national excitement around Gecko's work. We have also put together a deep reaching participation project around inclusion, exclusion and community, some of the central ideas in the show, which will see the company working in the towns and cities of the touring venues with local young adults, refugees and asylum seekers. It has become increasingly important for me to find ways to engage communities and certainly to try and reach into the more marginalised areas of society. Enriching the tapestry of the shows content, furthering our understanding of some of the questions raised within the show and bringing some of those human beings into the theatre to celebrate our shared journeys, whilst encouraging more empathy within all of us."

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