bt studio hilary term and spring 2011 brochure

What’s On...Burton Taylor Studio at Oxford Playhouse January to April 2011including University of Oxford Hilary Term

The very best professional, student and local shows in town

Welcome to the Studio at Oxford Playhouse……host to the very best of small scale professional touring work and home to the coolest work being created by students in Oxford.

The New Year brings lots of fresh creativity from the University of Oxford students, including the annual New Writing Festival featuring four chosen plays from fledgling student writers. Modern pieces offering exploration and thought-provoking treatment of controversial issues run alongside established works by well-known writers such as Pinter, Albee and Rattigan. Add to this some spirited sketch comedy from the highly acclaimed troupes Little Dark and The Oxford Revue and we’ve got a great Hilary Term programme, which promises to get 2011 off to a cracking start!

Outside of term time be the first to see top-class small-scale entertainment from around the country, with a brand new piece from Will Adamsdale, The Summer House, a new dance installation from choreographer Angela Woodhouse and artist Caroline Broadhead, Between, and a new play from Face Front Inclusive Theatre, Laundry Boy.

We have some of the best shows from Edinburgh Festival this season including Others, a funny and absorbing insight into the shared experiences of women from very different backgrounds, Pedestrian a fast paced and technically stunning piece from Tom Wainwright, the award winning You’re Not Like the Other Girls Chrissy, and the very touching autobiographical Sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister. Oxford Playhouse’s artists in residence Idle Motion bring their beautiful physical play The Vanishing Horizon and we welcome Stan’s Cafe to the studio with their improvised radio/theatre show Tuning Out with Radio Z.

And for families we have the delightful interactive show Egg and Spoon, perfect for those aged 6 months to 3 years, and The Steadfast Tin Soldier a playful retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic for those aged 3 to 8 years.

Charlie Field Robert BristowProgramme Manager, Burton Taylor Studio Manager Oxford Playhouse and Burton Taylor Studio

Hilary Term Week 2 Tuesday 25 to Saturday 29 January

7.30pmFairway Manor by Joe Robertson and Joe MurphyNew writing

This is Fairway Manor. Will it stand, or will it fall?

Mr and Mrs Coward have a problem. Growing beneath their country home is an invasive species of killer weed, threatening foundations with collapse. To subdue the gossip of the town, they decide to host a garden party; invitation only.

Tickets £6 discounts £5

9.30pmThe Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter

In Pinter’s early masterpiece, Ben and Gus wait in a basement for instructions from their boss. They read the paper, bicker and make tea. Then, suddenly, they begin to receive a series of increasingly bizarre orders from the dumb waiter. And everyone knows that orders must be followed. Mustn’t they?


Hilary Term Week 3 Tuesday 1 to Saturday 5 February

7.30pm Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act by Athol Fugard

A white librarian and a black schoolteacher discover their love is easily fractured by Apartheid. Fugard’s Statements shows the painful truth that Apartheid’s most exacting humiliation was the stripping of dignity and selfhood. In sparse resonant language the truth is clear: there can be no intimacy where there is no equality.


9.30pm The Zoo Story by Edward Albee

When Peter’s “sun-drenched Sunday afternoon” in the park is interrupted by Jerry, a man unable to connect with anyone in the “four-storey brown-stone rooming house” in which he lives, the intense encounter which follows ensures that neither of their lives will ever be the same again.


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01865 305305www.oxfordplayhouse.com


Theatre and events made in Oxford

Theatre and events for all the family




7.30pm The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan

Headstrong Hester must make a choice – love or lust; the devotion of a husband or the passion of a lover; the devil or the deep blue sea. On the centenary of Rattigan’s birth, come and experience this emotionally gripping tale.


9.30pm The Right Robert by Bhairav Shankar New Writing

What do women desire? Follow young Aster on her quest for the ideal man, which plunges her into a surreal world, full of one-dimensional suitors. Blind Productions brings you an evening of laughter by examining women’s frivolous choices, men’s egotistic nature and the human tendency to constantly look for something better.



7.30pm Monsters by Niklas Rådström Translated by Gabriella Berggren

Monsters – 1993. A play about the killing of James Bulger. Stripped to the bone, faithful to the facts. Unflinching, Monsters looks beyond the media gaze to distil our individual and collective responsibilities in a seemingly incomprehensible tragedy.


9.30pm Medea by SenecaA new translation by Henry Stead and Helen Slaney

The ancient myth of betrayal, enchantment and murder takes confronting new form in Seneca’s Roman version, here refashioned into a passionate fusion of text, image, music and physical theatre. Global boundaries have been breached, and as Medea’s world collapses, unthinkable excess dissolves into unspeakable pain. Prepare to be engulfed…



7.30pm The Pitchfork Disney by Philip Ridley

Enter into Haley and Presley’s claustrophobic world of childhood fantasy, and watch as their terror of having to face the outside world becomes a reality.


9.30pm A Little Too Dark by Little Dark

A brand new hour of sketches from a group with “a stellar ability to identify new directions in comedy”. **** Oxford Theatre Review

If black comedy floats your boat then Little Dark provide the perfect way to spend an evening. Completely unique...comic perfection. Oxford Theatre Review


Hilary Term Week 7 Tuesday 1 to Saturday 5 March

OUDS New Writing FestivalThe OUDS New Writing Festival showcases the best of student writing in Oxford. From over thirty script submissions, Academy Award-winning playwright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons, Atonement) has selected the top four to be performed at the festival. Student directors and actors will take these brand new plays on their exhilarating first journey from page to stage.

Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 7.30pm To Hold An Apple by Alexandra Zelman-Doring

A fierce impromptu encounter follows an argument over the nature of theatre today; German poet Rainer Maria Rilke and French painter Paul Cézannetake up the actors’ crisis under the guise of theatre.

Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 9.30pm Back to Back by Carla Neuss

What would you do if your lover got a tattoo…of everything she hates about you? Read it? Or weep?

Wednesday and Friday at 7.30pm, Saturday at 2.30pm Faultlines by Ella Evans

Two sisters find themselves standing at the water’s edge as the waves of their past gather before them. A pebble is thrown into the water, the surface breaks: is this memory, regret or a journey towards understanding?

Wednesday and Friday at 9.30pm, Saturday at 4.30pm Lemonworld by Matt Fuller

When Max decides to write a play, his brother Lewis’ head is filled with terrifying questions. Will Max become the toast of the West End? Will Lewis be left at home alone? Do ghosts really smell like cigarette smoke?

Tickets per performance £6 discounts £5

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Hilary Term Week 8 Tuesday 8 to Saturday 12 March

7.30pm The Odd Couple (Female Version)by Neil Simon

For the first time, Neil Simon’s niche comic gem comes to the Burton Taylor Studio. This delightfully volatile mixture of desperate women, Spanish men and a game of Trivial Pursuit will have you crying with laughter. Rarely performed on a British stage, this comedy is not to be missed.


9.30pm The Oxford Revue Talks to Strangers Join the world famous Oxford Revue for an hour of brand new sketch comedy. See the troupe that brought you the likes of Alan Bennett and Michael Palin, as they try to hit the big time. Come see the Revue desperately try to win friends and influence people in a city with low interest rates and no plumbing, aided by General Philip the Pig.

www.oxfordrevue.com


Burton Taylor Studio at Oxford Playhouse: March to April 2011 Monday 14 and Tuesday 15 March at 7.30pmThe Summer HouseFuelDevised by Will Adamsdale, Neil Haigh, Matthew Steer and John WrightDirected by John Wright Three men arrive by car at a remote house in the countryside. Who are they? Where are they? Are those stuffed beavers on the wall?

Then the Vikings arrive.

This play is about men and all their crap, about myths and what they’re for and about the weather and how it blows all the other stuff away anyway.


Saturday 19 March at 5.30, 6.30, 7.30 and 8.30pmBetweenAngela Woodhouse and Caroline Broadhead The dancer approaches and embeds herself within her audience, her arm covered loosely with gold leaf. She claims attention. Meanwhile, in the distance another performer is preoccupied in her private space, absorbed in subtle gestures in preparing for what is to come…

Choreographer Angela Woodhouse and Jerwood award winning artist Caroline Broadhead bring this stunning performance installation to the BT.

Tickets £5 discounts £4 Running time: 30 mins

Monday 21 March at 5 and 7.30pmLaundry BoyFace Front Inclusive Theatre Martin’s time has come – to move on from dependence to independence. His journey is both terrifying and exciting as he falls in love, suffers loss and gains a glimpse of who he could be…

Laundry Boy is a heart warming new play devised and performed by an outstanding team including award winning writers Julie McNamara and Ray Downing, deaf performer David Sands, Becky Allen and popular Learning Disabled actors Peter Faventi and Ellen Goodey.

The production is performed in BSL, spoken in English and has integrated audio description. Touch tours for visually impaired people will start 30 minutes before the show begins.


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11 Tuesday 22 and Wednesday 23 March at 7.30pmFrimston and Rowett Frimston and Rowett have been through a lot together. They’ve fought together, loved together, lost together. Now they’re lightening up a bit and doing an hour of comedy together. Join them at the Burton Taylor Studio for an evening of sketches the like of which no man has seen and lived. Quite frankly hilarious. The Cambridge Student


Friday 25 March at 7.30pmOnce Upon a SomethingTrace Theatre Witty, exciting, and at times surprising, Once Upon a Something is the ultimate exploration of ego, illustrating exactly how far performers are willing to go for their moment on the stage...

Challenging traditional ways of telling a story, Trace Theatre bring together heroes, villains, victims and fairy dust, playful dance, comic timing and even some Hollywood acting!


Saturday 26 March at 11am & 2pmThe Steadfast Tin SoldierBanyan Theatre Company There once was a remarkable tin soldier who fell in love with a beautiful paper dancer and then tumbled out of a window so beginning a perilous journey into the unknown…

This playful retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s poetic story uses light, simple materials and objects that are skilfully transformed through puppetry to create a theatrical experience that will engage young hearts and minds. Banyan return to the BT following their visit of the beautiful Princess and the Pea.

Tickets Children £5 Adults £7 Ages 3 to 8

Saturday 26 March at 8pmThe OxJaMS Sides Contemporary words and music from Italyhosted by The OxJaMS Trio The OxJaMS trio return to the studio with their avant-garde blend of acoustic, improvised Jazz. George Haslam, Richard Leigh Harris and Steve Kershaw invite award-winning Italian duo Erika Dagnino (poet) and Stefano Pastor (violin) to headline the evening.


Monday 28 March at 7.30pmOthersThe Paper Birds Paper, pens and envelopes offer peepholes into strangers’ worlds, where secrets, self portraits and confessions are shared through a series of armchair interrogations. Based on a six-month exchange of letters and emails with a prisoner, a celebrity and an Iranian artist, multi award-winning The Paper Birds offer a visual and political exploration of ‘Other’ women.

Physically ingenious, fresh faced, thoughtful and funny. Total Theatre


Tuesday 29 and Wednesday 30 March at 7pmTuning Out With Radio ZStan’s Cafe In the studios of Radio Z, two presenters are attempting to navigate the perils of the night, intent on bringing their listeners safely to dawn. Where the fictional presenters are relying on their listeners for help, the real actors are relying on you, their audience, to guide them through the show.

Bring a phone or a laptop, write a text, send ideas, submit images and make requests. Come for the start and stay as long as you wish and prepare to be immersed in a rich, beautiful and fictional world.

Tickets £10 discounts £8 Ages 14+

Thursday 31 March to Saturday 2 April at 7.30pmVanishing HorizonIdle Motion Using battered suitcases, maps and paper aeroplanes, the roaring twenties and the pioneers of aviation are remembered. A nostalgic depiction of when flight was exciting blends seamlessly with the modern story of a woman who is on a journey to discover her past. Through the crowded airports of our world to another, resting above the clouds. Oxford Playhouse’s Artists in Residence, Idle Motion, trace aviation of past and present in its sell-out Edinburgh Festival show.

A little jewel of a show. Guardian

Tickets £10 discount £8

Friday 8 at 12 noon & 3pm and Saturday 9 April at 11am, 1 & 4pmEgg and SpoonLyngo Theatre Company Back by popular demand, this interactive experience for the very young will take you from summer to winter and back to spring again. Relax on comfy cushions watching the birds fly in the blue sky or get stuck in with making it snow and blowing the leaves away. Rock and roll around the clock to our lullaby or crawl into the middle and be a star!

Tickets Children: £5 Adults: £7 Ages 6 months to 3 years



How to book tickets for the Burton Taylor Studio

Call the Ticket Office on 01865 305305 or log on to www.oxfordplayhouse.com

Alternatively, tickets are available up to 30 minutes before the performance from Oxford Playhouse’s Ticket Office, Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2LW. From 30 minutes before the performance remaining tickets will be available from the Burton Taylor Studio Ticket Office situated on the first floor. Please note all seating at the Burton Taylor Studio is unreserved.

Where listed, discounts are available for under 18s, over 60s, full time students, ES40s, BECTU and Equity members and patrons with disabilities.

The auditorium is situated on the second floor of the Burton Taylor Studio, accessed via two flights of stairs. We have a stair climber for wheelchair users. If you require this facility please book with the Ticket Office at least 3 days in advance.

If there is anything else you may need to make your visit to the studio easier, or you would like further information, please do not hesitate to contact us.

A Night Less Ordinary – free tickets An allocation of free tickets for under 26 year olds is available for selected performances. Please see Ticket Office for details or visit: www.oxfordplayhouse.com/free

Monday 11 and Tuesday 12 April at 7.30pmYou’re Not Like The Other Girls Chrissyby Caroline Horton

Paris 1945. Christiane waits for a ticket to England that will reunite her with her fiancé. While she waits, this irrepressible mademoiselle recounts the love story between her – an eccentric, acutely-myopic Parisian – and a tongue-tied English teacher from Staffordshire.

A tender, comic portrayal of one woman’s experience of love and war.

Winner of The Stage Award’s Best Solo Performer Edinburgh Fringe 2010.

Simple and heartfelt. Guardian


Wednesday 13 April at 7.30pmuntried…untested untried…untested is the BT Studio’s regular scratch night. You’ll have the chance to see extracts from unfinished pieces, which could include dance, theatre, music, poetry and live art. Afterwards, share your thoughts on what you’ve seen with the performers over a glass of wine. If you are interested in performing in untried…untested, please visit www.oxfordplayhouse.com for details on how to apply.

Tickets £5 discounts £3 (includes a free drink)

Monday 18 and Tuesday 19 April at 7.30pmSometimes I Laugh Like My SisterVital Digression and Obviam Est Since her big sister, BBC journalist Kate Peyton, was murdered in Somalia, Rebecca has had rather a strange time. Following a smash-hit debut at the Edinburgh Festival, she welcomes us to her world in a passionately political, sharply comical and painfully personal account of life after Kate. Crafting a moving and often funny tapestry of private moments from a public tragedy, Rebecca tells her own story of a courageous journalist and a loving sister. A reminder of how almost absurdly precious life is. **** Times


Thursday 28 and Friday 29 April at 7.30pmPedestrian Finely tuned physical storytelling. Breathtaking animation. An epic journey from a never-ending shopping precinct to the gates of heaven and back…pursued by a giant fish.

Charting his painful encounters en route with street fundraisers, the office on their lunch-break, Tesco Metro and the woman of his dreams, Tom Wainwright has created a perversely comic razor-sharp satire about attempting to suppress ‘The Fear’; about apathy and about wanting to change the world. And doing nothing…

Pedestrian is fast moving, funny and goes for the jugular of modern life. **** The Scotsman


The Burton Taylor Studio is managed by Oxford Playhouse on behalf of the University of Oxford

OP’s Burton Taylor Studio programme is sponsored by HMG LAW

Oxford Playhouse gratefully acknowledges the support of its core funders:

Oxford Playhouse thanks…

Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2LW Registered Company No. 2397373 Registered Charity No: 900039 VAT No. 537166534

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Burton Taylor StudioGloucester Street, Oxford OX1 2BN

Ticket Office: 01865 305305www.oxfordplayhouse.com

Date Day Time Production

January25 Tue 7.30pm Fairway Manor 9.30pm The Dumb Waiter 26 Wed 7.30pm Fairway Manor 9.30pm The Dumb Waiter 27 Thu 7.30pm Fairway Manor 9.30pm The Dumb Waiter 28 Fri 7.30pm Fairway Manor 9.30pm The Dumb Waiter 29 Sat 7.30pm Fairway Manor 9.30pm The Dumb Waiter

February1 Tue 7.30pm Statements After an Arrest… 9.30pm The Zoo Story 2 Wed 7.30pm Statements After an Arrest… 9.30pm The Zoo Story 3 Thu 7.30pm Statements After an Arrest… 9.30pm The Zoo Story 4 Fri 7.30pm Statements After an Arrest… 9.30pm The Zoo Story 5 Sat 7.30pm Statements After an Arrest… 9.30pm The Zoo Story 8 Tue 7.30pm The Deep Blue Sea 9.30pm The Right Robert 9 Wed 7.30pm The Deep Blue Sea 9.30pm The Right Robert 10 Thu 7.30pm The Deep Blue Sea 9.30pm The Right Robert 11 Fri 7.30pm The Deep Blue Sea 9.30pm The Right Robert 12 Sat 7.30pm The Deep Blue Sea 9.30pm The Right Robert 15 Tue 7.30pm Monsters 9.30pm Medea 16 Wed 7.30pm Monsters 9.30pm Medea 17 Thu 7.30pm Monsters 9.30pm Medea 18 Fri 7.30pm Monsters 9.30pm Medea 19 Sat 7.30pm Monsters 9.30pm Medea 22 Tue 7.30pm The Pitchfork Disney 9.30pm A Little Too Dark 23 Wed 7.30pm The Pitchfork Disney 9.30pm A Little Too Dark 24 Thu 7.30pm The Pitchfork Disney 9.30pm A Little Too Dark25 Fri 7.30pm The Pitchfork Disney 9.30pm A Little Too Dark26 Sat 7.30pm The Pitchfork Disney 9.30pm A Little Too Dark

Date Day Time Production

March1 Tue 7.30pm To Hold An Apple 9.30pm Back to Back 2 Wed 7.30pm Faultlines 9.30pm Lemonworld 3 Thu 7.30pm To Hold An Apple 9.30pm Back to Back 4 Fri 7.30pm Faultlines 9.30pm Lemonworld 5 Sat 2.30pm Faultlines 4.30pm Lemonworld 7.30pm To Hold An Apple 9.30pm Back to Back 8 Tue 7.30pm The Odd Couple 9.30pm The Oxford Revue 9 Wed 7.30pm The Odd Couple 9.30pm The Oxford Revue 10 Thu 7.30pm The Odd Couple 9.30pm The Oxford Revue 11 Fri 7.30pm The Odd Couple 9.30pm The Oxford Revue 12 Sat 7.30pm The Odd Couple 9.30pm The Oxford Revue 14 Mon 7.30pm The Summer House 15 Tue 7.30pm The Summer House 19 Sat 5.30pm Between 6.30pm Between 7.30pm Between 8.30pm Between 21 Mon 5pm Laundry Boy 7.30pm Laundry Boy 22 Tue 7.30pm Frimston and Rowett 23 Wed 7.30pm Frimston and Rowett 25 Fri 7.30pm Once Upon a Something 26 Sat 11am The Steadfast Tin Soldier 2pm The Steadfast Tin Soldier 26 Sat 8pm Sides 28 Mon 7.30pm Others 29 Tue 7pm Tuning Out With Radio Z 30 Wed 7pm Tuning Out With Radio Z 31 Thu 7.30pm Vanishing Horizon

April1 Fri 7.30pm Vanishing Horizon 2 Sat 7.30pm Vanishing Horizon 8 Fri 12 noon Egg and Spoon 3pm Egg and Spoon9 Sat 11am Egg and Spoon 1pm Egg and Spoon 4pm Egg and Spoon11 Mon 7.30pm You’re Not Like The Other Girls Chrissy 12 Tue 7.30pm You’re Not Like The Other Girls Chrissy 13 Wed 7.30pm untried…untested 18 Mon 7.30pm Sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister 19 Tue 7.30pm Sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister 28 Thu 7.30pm Pedestrian 29 Fri 7.30pm Pedestrian

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bt studio hilary term and spring 2011 brochure

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