Hull UK City Of Culture 2017 and Slung Low Reveal Further Details Of Year-Long Epic FLOOD By James Phillips

Flood is the story of what happened when the world was destroyed and how the people who lived tried to make it new again.

Flood is an extraordinary year-long epic commissioned for Hull 2017 that will be told online, live in Hull and on BBC television. It is created by the ground-breaking Leeds-based theatre company Slung Low, directed by artistic director Alan Lane and written by award-winning playwright James Phillips.

One day it starts to rain and no-one knows why. And it doesn't stop. Far out on the North Sea a fisherman raises a girl in his net, miraculously alive from the deep sea. Is she one of the migrants now washing up on English shores? Or someone sent for some higher purpose?

Slung Low make adventures for audiences outside conventional theatre spaces, each with a powerful, moving story at its heart.

Flood is their most ambitious and experimental project to date; mixing live performance, special effects, film and digital elements to tell a story across an entire year. The story will be told throughout four compelling parts. People seeing it will be able to experience each section as a stand-alone piece, or follow the entire series with each part enriching and linking to every other.

Alan Lane, artistic director of Slung Low, said: "Working with Hull 2017 has allowed us to imagine a larger, more engaging adventure for audiences than ever before. Flood is theatrically and politically the most ambitious work we've ever made and the chance to tell that story in Hull throughout this most thrilling year for the city is something we're really excited about."

Martin Green, Director Hull 2017, said: "It is wonderful to be working with Slung Low, one of the most brilliant companies in the UK. As we launch our next two seasons Flood embarks us on an extraordinary journey, which over the next months will stimulate, challenge and ask questions of the audience in an epic piece of storytelling."

Part One: From the Sea - a short film in which the story begins, when a girl is raised from the depths of the sea. Funded by The Space, a commissioning and development organisation that supports artists and organisations to make the most of the opportunities that digital technology and online distribution afford, it can be seen at hull2017.co.uk/flood.

Flood: From the Sea will be played at a number of locations across Hull this week in an airstream caravan. Locations of the screenings include the carparks of the ASDA stores on Hessle Road, Mount Pleasant, Beverley Road and Kingswood; St. Stephens and Beverley Road Tesco stores; Northpoint Shopping Centre and Walton Street Market.

Part Two: Abundance - a live play, in which an apocalypse approaches. Flood: Abundance will be performed in Hull at Victoria Dock from 11 to 15 April, with tickets on sale now. The cast will include Sarah Louise Davies as Kathryn, Nadia Emam as Gloriana, Marc Graham as Sam, Lisa Howard as Natasha, Naveed Khan as Jack, Rani Moorthy as Johanna and Oliver Senton as Captain.

Part Three: To the Sea - a play broadcast on BBC television, in which the English become refugees. Flood: To the Sea is part of a series of programmes for BBC Arts called Performance Live, a two-year project produced in partnership with Arts Council England and Battersea Arts Centre that will challenge a spectrum of exciting artists, producers and arts organisations to produce their own television programmes.

Flood: To The Sea is a story set in the aftermath of an apocalyptic event which has seen England engulfed by water. Flood asks a simple question: what if the fleeing masses from our TV screens and Twitter feeds, in their boats and their orange lifejackets, had English accents? Because displacement is like disease: deep down we think it only happens to other people.

Part Four: New World - a live play, in which the world is begun again. To be performed at Victoria Dock in October 2017, with further information to be released.

Flood's epic adventures come to audiences in Hull and beyond with support from The Space, Arts Council England, BBC Arts and Spirit of 2012.

Photo credit: Perry Curties

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