A Significant Role - Portobello Pop Up
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
BAREFACED Theatre is presenting A Significant Role, a season of three new plays performed in repertoire, at the Portobello Pop Up – from October 4 to October 31, 2012.
The project revolves around three new plays written by Berri George – Mad Women, Whore and All Hidden – and focuses on women who have helped themselves and have strived to succeed in what they were good at.
Mad Women examines the perceived madness of Mary Shelley, whose sensational personal life and loss of her children found release in her novel Frankenstein; Emily Dickinson, the 19th century American whose poems reached far beyond the confines of her reclusive life; the utopian feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, plagued by depression, whose story The Yellow Wallpaper highlighted the horrors of confinement for women termed ‘mad’; and Virginia Woolf, the modernist genius whose own demons would eventually consume her.
Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes (excluding interval).
All Hidden is a new play that charts the stories of two courageous women – Eileen Nearne, an SOE during the Second World War and Sophie Walker, who works as an intelligence officer within MI5 today. The play conjoins the worlds of these female spies.
Alongside this one act play, presented as a double bill, will be the Scratch Beneath Festival, exploring what happens when new artists scratch beneath the surface of their potential to bring new ideas out into the world and present them as a mini show.
It includes First Night by Pete Maxey, Halb – Welt Kultur: The life of the Weimar Girls performed by Stephanie Hampton, Postcards from Medea by Jose Gandia and The Lemons, written and performed by Lowri Jenkins, plus Celyn Ebenezer performs her eerie one-woman show.
Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes (excluding interval).
Whore is a re-imagined version of Barefaced’s previous play Whore. It’s described as a bold and daring insight into four of history’s most interesting prostitutes – Theresa Berkley, a 19th Century Dominatrix; Marie Duplessis, a famous French courtesan; Polly Adler, a New York 1920’s brothel madam with heavy links to the mob; and Valerie Solanas, American prostitute turned Warhol assassin.
Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes.
Following the success of the Portobello Pop Up’s various film festivals and screenings, Barefaced will be be taking over the homemade digital Microplex cinema, nestled under the Westway, for the whole of October. It makes the perfect setting for Barefaced’s first repertory season, as they will be experimenting with both video art and animation throughout all the productions.
Tickets: £10.
To book and for more information (dates and times) visit www.barefacedtheatre.com/.
Portobello Pop Up, 3 Acklam Road, London, W10 5TY (nearest Tube – Ladbroke Grove).