RashDash's THREE SISTERS To Tour UK

Feminist theatre and music makers RashDash are ripping up Anton Chekhov's revered 1900 play and reimagining it with electric guitars. RashDash - Abbi Greenland, Helen Goalen and Becky Wilkie - take on the roles of the titular siblings Olga, Masha and Irina, to question why the men in this play have all the lines. With a radical take on a classic, join RashDash as they philosophise their heads off in the drawing room and take turn-of-the-century crinolines into 2018.

Abbi, Helen and Becky said, "Three Sisters is one of those shows that most directors want to direct. It is thought of as one of Chekhov's finest plays and it is one of the most regularly performed pieces from the canon. RashDash don't often engage with the writing of dead, white men, but it seems like a rite of passage: because it has so shaped our ideas of what makes 'good theatre' and because it attracts a certain kind of attention and audience. Our playful approach to a version 'after Chekhov' is about the canon, who gets to speak and be heard on our important stages. It neither worships nor attacks the original, it simply asks, what if we were the three sisters? What would we want to say?".

Three Sisters follows RashDash's smash-hit multi-award winning Two Man Show (Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2016 and UK tour). the company was formed by Abbi Greenland and Helen Goalen at The University of Hull in 2009. After making several shows together over the years, Becky Wilkie joined the core team in summer 2017. Their work is a combination of radical feminist ideas explored through an articulate physical style in a form that they continue to reinvent. RashDash have now won three Fringe First Awards and have previously won The Tods Murray Awards for Best Book and Innovation in Musical Theatre and have received nominations for Total Theatre and Off West End Awards.

Previous shows include: The Darkest Corners (a large scale, outdoor, headphone show for Transform Festival 2017), Two Man Show (made with Northern Stage and Soho Theatre, Fringe First Winner 2016, Stage Award for Acting Excellence, shortlisted for an Off West Award), Snow White & Rose Red (a Christmas show for Cambridge Junction, 2015 and Battersea Arts Centre, 2017), We Want You To Watch (by RashDash and Alice Birch, National Theatre and UK Tour, 2015), Oh, I Can't Be Bothered (shortlisted for an Off West End award, Soho Theatre, 2014), The Ugly Sisters (shortlisted for the Total Theatre Award for Experimentation and Innovation, Edinburgh Festival, 2012).

Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre Company transforms the way people see theatre, each other and the world around them. Our historic building, once the world's biggest cotton exchange, was taken over by artists in 1976. Today it is an award-winning cultural charity that produces new theatre in-the-round, in communities, on the road and online. Exchange remains at the heart of everything we make and do. Now our currency is brand new drama and reinvigorated classics, the boldest artists and a company of highly skilled makers - all brought together in a shared imaginative endeavour to trade ideas and experiences with the people of Greater Manchester (and beyond).

The Exchange's unique auditorium is powerfully democratic, a space where audiences and performers meet as equals, entering and exiting through the same doors. It is the inspiration for all we do; inviting everyone to understand the past, engage in today's big questions, collectively imagine a better future and lose themselves in the moment of a great night out.

The Royal Exchange was named Regional Theatre of the Year in 2016 and School of the Year at The Stage Awards 2018. The Spring-Summer Season features work from an incredible array of artists from across Manchester and beyond. It includes new adaptations of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein April De Angelis, and Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard translated by Rory Mullarkey; a new play by Associate Artist Maxine Peake, Queens of the Coal Age, alongside her return to the stage to play Winnie in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. Associate Artists RashDash and new partners Yellow Earth bring their distinctive performance styles to The Studio.

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