Almeida Theatre Announces Updates For 2009 Summer Festival, Runs 7/8-8/1

For The Almeida Theatre's 2009 Summer Festival (8 July - 1 August 2009) the Yorkshire based Slung Low, The TEAM (Theater of the Emerging American Moment) from New York, GULP and Tiata Fahodzi have been invited to collaborate with the Almeida at its home base in Islington and the surrounding area. In addition, the Festival will present a concert by Heather Christian, an Installation by Lu Kemp and a concert celebrating African music presented by Tiata Fahodzi. The Almeida Theatre is very grateful to American Airlines - Airline Partner of the Almeida.

SLUNG LOW'S LAST SEEN

Slung Low, the Yorkshire based company led by nine artists collected from diverse creative backgrounds including movement, video and sound, will present Last Seen. Last Seen takes audiences on a multi-media journey from the stage of the Almeida onto the streets of Islington. Performances are 8, 9, 10 and 11 July at 7pm and 9pm and 12 July at 4pm and 6pm. Tickets are £15. Last Seen will be performed by Lolita Chakrabarti, Francis Lee, Barry McCarthy and Richard Warburton. www.slunglow.org

In any one year over 200,000 people go missing. Most are found. Enter a world of those who have fallen through the cracks, a place for the unnoticed and a place where lost souls land.

The creative team is Alan Lane (Artistic Director of Slung Low), Matt Angove, Laura Clark, Ben Eaton, Heather Fenoughty, Lucy Hind and Richard Warburton. The writers are Simon Burt, Lolita Chakrabarti and Matthew David Scott.

Francis Lee's theatre credits include The Sexual Neuroses of our Parents for the Gate Theatre, Mother Courage and Her Children for Shared Experience, A Taste of Honey for Bristol Old Vic and A Midsummer Night's Dream for Northern Broadsides. His screen credits include Me Without You, Topsy-Turvy and The Young Americans.

Lolita Chakrabarti's theatre credits include The Great Game, Afghanistan for the Tricycle Theatre, Free Outgoing for the Royal Court, John Gabriel Borkman for the Donmar Warehouse and The Waiting Room and A Midsummer Night's Dream for the National Theatre. Her screen credits include Extras, Bodies, The Last Detective, Silent Witness and Fortysomething.

Barry McCarthy's theatre credits include Absolutely Frank at the Queen's Theatre Hornchurch, Kean at the Apollo Theatre and The Giant for Hampstead Theatre. He has worked extensively for the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Chichester Festival Theatre and the Stephen Joseph Theatre. His screen credits include Notes on a Scandal, Kinky Boots, Judge John Deed and House of Cards.

Richard is a writer and performer with Slung Low, and has worked on the past shows Small Worlds, Helium, 1139 Miles, They Only Come at Night and Bricks. He co-founded lost dog theatre company based at Theatre in the Mill, Bradford. With them he has created the shows Love in (3) Parts, Happy and Dead End. The Oxford Times has described him as a bulky Paul Bettany.

Slung Low was created by Alan Lane and Matthew David Scott in 2000 after their success with Counter Balance at the National Student Drama Festival where they won the Sunday Times' Judges Award. In 2008 they were awarded the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award to create Helium - a theatre installation contained within 5 boxes, combining live and digital performance, presented at the Barbican Theatre as part of the BITE Festival to huge success.

THE TEAM'S THE AMERICAN CAPITALISM PROJECT
The TEAM, a New York City based theatre company dedicated to dissecting and celebrating the experience of living in America today, will present a work-in-progress version of their latest show, The American Capitalism Project. Using the lens of cowboys, the myths and history of the American Frontier and the busting of Las Vegas, The TEAM will seek to define the character and shape of American capitalism. The American Capitalism Project has four performances during the Summer Festival on 16, 17, 18 and 19 July at 7.30pm. Tickets are £12.50. There will be a live speech to text transcription of The American Capitalism Project on Friday 17 July at 7.30pm. The TEAM is supported by the Eranda Foundation. www.theteamplays.org

The production journeys across the USA in search of an unbiased portrait of American Capitalism told through cowboy ballet, wailing pianos and people with bank accounts. Las Vegas needs saving. A woman working in a casino says she is Joan of Arc, two outlaws are on the run and there's murder in the wind. Where did our pursuit of happiness go wrong?

The TEAM, led by Artistic Director Rachel Chavkin and featuring Jessica Almsy, Frank Boyd, Heather Christian, Jill Frutkin, Elizabeth King, Jacob Margolin and Kristen Sieh, will collaborate with choreographer Will Tuckett to present The American Capitalism Project. The TEAM were first seen at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2004 where they won their first of three Fringe First Awards. In 2006 they played the Traverse Theatre with Particularly in Heartland, winning them their second. This was followed in 2008 with their production of Architecting, which won the Company their third Fringe First Award. The TEAM has recently completed a run at The Public Theater in New York. Later this year they return to the UK to perform Architecting at the Barbican.

GULP'S OR NEAREST OFFER New Theatre Company GULP will present its inaugural production Or Nearest Offer, a new play by Tanya Ronder. Or Nearest Offer has been created in collaboration with fifteen young participants from the Young Friends of the Almeida LAB, who have explored the Theatre's season of plays to find the resonances within their own lives. Directed by Vik Sivalingam and designed by Fabrice Serafino, Or Nearest Offer, will be performed at The Almeida Theatre as part of the Summer Festival on 24 July at 7.30pm and on 25 July at 3pm and 7.30pm. Tickets are £8. www.yfalab.blogspot.com

Everything must go - beds, mobiles, dreams and babies. Going, going, gone. What happens when you are all sold out?

For the Almeida Tanya Ronder wrote a new version of Lorca's Blood Wedding as well as contributing to Chain Play II. Her other work includes Vernon God Little and Peribanez for the Young Vic.

Vik Sivalingam was Assistant Director on the Almeida/Headlong co-production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. His other directing credits include numerous productions for Pulse Festival Ipswich and the New Wolsey Theatre Studio and Swingin' in Mid-Dream! for the Albany Theatre.

TIATA FAHODZI'S THE GOLDEN HOUR
Following last year's sell-out performances at the Almeida's 2008 Summer Festival and the recent critically acclaimed lya-lle at Soho Theatre, Tiata Fahodzi will return to present The Golden Hour, a new play by their award-winning commissioned writer Michael Bhim. Directed by Femi Elufowoju jr, The Golden Hour will be rehearsed over three days and then performed, script in hand. Performances are 29, 30 and 31 July at 7.30pm. Tickets are £12.50. www.tiatafahodzi.com

Adrian is a triage nurse, British, of Zimbabwean descent, working in a London NHS hospital alongside his long-term English girlfriend, Jessica. Suddenly he finds himself drawn into a drama of ethics and loyalty when he encounters an African baby whom he suspects has been brought into the country illegally.

Tiata Fahodzi, led by Artistic Director Femi Elufowoju, jr, is an Islington based theatre company producing new work that explores the richness and heritage of theatre sourced from people living within British African communities. Their previous work includes Iya-Ile by Oladipo Agboluaje (2009) and Joe Guy by Roy Williams (2007) at Soho Theatre and Tiata Delights at the Almeida in 2008. Elufowoju, jr directs The Golden Hour and the Festival Concert, following his direction of new plays by Bola Agbaje, Nii Ayikwei Parkes and Rex Obano at Tiata Delights 08.

Michael Bhim is a young playwright who has worked with The Royal Court Theatre, Soho Theatre, the Tricycle Theatre (as part of the Bloomberg Writers Group), Paines Plough (as part of the Future Perfect Scheme) and is a past winner of the Alfred Fagon Award for the Most Outstanding Achievement by a Writer of Caribbean descent. Bhim's play Pure Gold (Tiata Delights 06) was produced at the Soho Theatre in 2007 to critical acclaim. He is currently under commission to write new plays for The Royal Court, The Hampstead Theatre and the Caribbean Unity Theatre. He also writes for radio and is currently working with the BBC.

The Golden Hour will be interpreted in British Sign Language by Jeni Draper on 31st July at 7.30pm. This will be an integrated interpretation with the signer on stage and in costume.

BEYOND THE SHOWS

Heather Christian
Heather Christian is the daughter of a blues musician and a go-go dancer who has worked as a designer and performer with several Companies in New York including, Heather Christian and the Arbornauts, a group of multi-instrumentalists. Christian, who can also be seen at the Summer Festival in The TEAM's The American Capitalism Project, will perform a solo concert on 17 July at 10pm.

TIATA FAHODZI FESTIVAL CONCERT
A night of vibrant contemporary African music featuring the big-band sound of The Ganda Boys (BBC's Moses Jones) with Craig Pruess, whose musical scores feature in films including Bend it Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice, British-Nigerian rap vocalist BREIS, virtuosic songstress Ayo-Dele Edwards and the return of Sierra Leone's irrepressible teenage harmonica sensation Leon Maddy (aka Crazy Harmonica). Tiata Fahodzi's Concert closes the Festival on 1 August at 8pm.

LOST PROPERTY
Devised and created by Theatre director and community artist Lu Kemp, Lost Property, an installation running throughout the Summer Festival, will invite audiences to create a series of narratives around things they have lost during their lifetimes. Lu Kemp is a director and dramaturg, with a particular interest in public work. For the Gate Theatre she created two participation projects and is currently working on Funny Old Me. Her previous work as a director includes Pinocchio (Northampton Theatre Royal), How to Tell The Truth (Stephen Joseph Theatre), Almost Blue (Oxford Samuel Beckett Award 05 at the Riverside Studios).

Almeida Theatre, Almeida Street, Islington, London, N1 1TA

The Almeida Bar serves drinks, snacks and a festival menu with food priced at £3.90. For opening times during the Festival see www.almeida.co.uk

Tickets are available by phone: 020 7359 4404, in person: 10am - 7.30pm, Monday through Saturday, or online at www.almeida.co.uk. Seating for the Summer Festival is un-reserved.

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