Leaving - Greenwich Playhouse
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
SPLIT Soul Dance Theatre in association with Blue Bud Stage Company is presenting Sarah O’Hanlon’s Leaving at Greenwich Playhouse – from April 22 to May 11, 2008.
Leaving combines physical theatre and animated scenography to illustrate its poetic text which depicts stories from the lives of four women – a dancer, a chess player, an asylum seeker and a mad woman. Each woman is affected by circumstances outside her control and faced with a decision that will change her future.
A mysterious narrator journeys with the audience through the lives of each woman as, one by one, they are set free through the telling of their stories.
In 2007, O’Hanlon was awarded Best New Writing at the Buxton Festival Fringe for her play Journalist and Hope, which premiered at London’s Institute for Contemporary Arts during The Accidental Festival that same year.
Split Soul Dance Theatre, which was formed in spring 2006 by Julia M Barnett and Sarah Way, commissioned Leaving to be written as a one-woman show for Barnett, who also played the Journalist in Journalist and Hope and for which she received a Best Actor Award nomination at Buxton.
Split Soul’s inaugural performance, Trio from the Dreaming Tree, was nominated for Best Dance at the 2006 Buxton Festival Fringe.
Leaving marks the first collaboration between Split Soul and Blue Bud Stage Company, which was formed in 2005 by Rose Lewenstein who directs the production, and Marianne Permaul. Scenography is by Eva Liparova, original score by Max Perryment and choreography by Sarah Way.
Tickets: £10, £8 concessions.
Times: Tuesday to Saturday at 8pm; Sunday at 4pm.
For more information call the box office on 020 8858 9256 or visit the website.