Blue Elephant Theatre - Spring 2016
Season preview
CAMBERWELL’S Blue Elephant Theatre has announced an exciting spring season, with something for all tastes.
Supported by the Wakefield and Tetley Trust and Apple & Pears Foundation, children’s programme Trumpety Trump! returns with The Girl and the Box by East 15-trained Fabletop Theatre on March 6 at 5pm. Tickets: £4 (£2.50 for Southwark Residents).
The Girl and The Box follows the journey of our Hero, after she meets a mysterious stranger who offers to take away all of her bad feelings. Over the years she realises that without sadness, she doesn’t know what it means to be truly happy. Without fear, how can she know how to be brave?
Fabletop Theatre tells the story of Hero’s discovery that it’s the good things as well as the difficult things that make us who we are, and her adventure to become whole again. Along the way she encounters many weird and wonderful creatures, some of whom are more helpful than others…
Fabletop Theatre are a fresh and innovative new company who explore fables through storytelling, physical theatre, live music and puppetry.
The Girl and The Box is suitable for ages 4+.
The Blue Elephant and Cloud Dance Festival are working together to launch an exciting new regular dance scratch night, Blue Cloud Scratch, which has two dates in spring, March 9 and May 31 at 8pm. Tickets: £3 (£2.50 concessions and Southwark residents).
Blue Cloud Scratch aims to encourage and provide emerging dance artists with opportunities to present their works in progress and receive feedback from audiences and peers.
The first Blue Cloud Scratch features new pieces by Konstantina Skalionta, Charlotte Jarvis, MonixArts and Bridget Lappin.
Following his acclaimed run at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe, comedy stand-up Alex Watts brings 25 Stories to the Blue Elephant – March 17 to March 19 at 8pm (8.30pm on March 19). Tickets: £10 (£8 concessions and £7.50 Southwark residents).
Alex Watts worked in bookshops for years. This left him broken, embittered and incurably addicted to books, stories and words. Come and see him tell his own strange and dreadful stories, from the extremely short, to the really unbelievably brief.
Witty, inventive, and with at least one genuine attempt to bring about total world peace, 25 Stories was written just for you.
Written by Megan Jenkins, A Working Title, an analysis of twenty-something life in London, is presented as a work-in-progress performance – April 12 at 8pm. Tickets: £5 (£4 concessions and £3.50 Southwark residents).
It’s about living in The City in a generation of renters, tinder swipers, never-left-the-nesters, budget shoppers, internshipers, over-the-recommended-daily-allowance-drinkers, minimum wage workers, sofa surfers and day dreamers.
It’s about how disappointed your spotty sixteen year old self would be by their future life, dominated by Netflix, no money and sharing a shower with eight strangers.
It’s about people. Six people, and the little snippets that make up a day in their lives. Explored with a jaunty live soundtrack, poetry, dancing and silly voices.
A Working Title is recommended for ages 14+.
Lazarus Theatre Company return to the Blue Elephant with a re-imagined ensemble production of Euripdes’ final work The Bacchae – April 19 to May 7 at 8pm. Tickets: £15 (£12.50 concessions and £10 Southwark residents and previews on April 19 and 20).
A wanderer returns, driving the people of the city into a ferocious and liberating sexual frenzy. His actions excite, his message thrills, but his mission is revenge.
Euripides’ hedonistic and uncompromising final play comes to the stage in an all-new, devised, ensemble production. Through the use of spoken word, movement and music, this electrifying new production examines belief, sexuality and liberation.
The Bacchae marks the ninth Greek play in the Lazarus repertoire after Medea, Elektra, Hecuba, Orestes, Electra, The Women of Troy, Iphigenia in Aulis and Oedipus.
The Bacchae is directed (and adapted) by Gavin Harrington-Odedra, who also directed Richard III at the Blue Elephant in 2014.
New writing piece Strawberry Starburst interrogates teenage life, body image issues and mental health problems in a powerful one-woman show by rising playwright Bram Davidovich – May 11 to May 28 at 8pm. Tickets: £12.50 (£10 concessions and £8.50 Southwark residents and previews on May 11 and 12).
Shez is passionate about strawberry starbursts, her mum’s cooking and her boyfriend’s prickly face.
But when her life seems to slip out of control, she finds herself choosing between the food she loves and the people she cares about, never suspecting that this will become a matter of life and death.
Strawberry Starburst is a heartfelt and poignant new drama about one girl’s battle with her demons…and the lengths she’ll go to fight them.
Penguinpig, a fun-filled show about e-safety for children and their grown ups, will be performed on May 15 at 5pm. Tickets: £4 (£2.50 for Southwark Residents).
Phoebe reads about an exciting creature called a Penguinpig on the Internet. Filled with delight and intrigue, she sneaks out of the house and sets off alone on an adventure to find the adorable Penguinpig. Carefully, she follows the instructions from the website all the way to the zoo – but what will she find inside?
Penguinpig is a stage adaptation of the best-selling picture book by Lincolnshire author and teacher Stuart Spendlow, told using beautiful puppetry and accompanied by an original musical score.