Staged over three weekends CONNECTING VOICES in co-production with Opera North, will take place across the various stages within the Playhouse. Bringing together artists and audiences safely, this series of new and classic work will examine the power and expression of the solo voice and engage people in communal creative activity, whilst interrogating the relationship between the audience and the performer.
Orpheus in the Record Store, a newly commissioned piece by Leeds based beatboxer Testament and director Aletta Collins, will fuse spoken word and beatboxing with players from the Orchestra of Opera North in an exciting new collaboration that gives the Greek myth of Orpheus a contemporary Yorkshire twist.
Playing alongside this will be two seminal pieces which both premiered in 1958 and present characters isolated from others and struggling to reconnect through technology. The first is Samuel Beckett’s extraordinary monologue Krapp’s Last Tape with acclaimed actor Niall Buggy performing in the Bramall Rock Void and directed by multiple award-winning director Dominic Hill. This will be counterpointed by Francis Poulenc’s short opera La Voix Humaine performed by Opera North soprano Gillene Butterfield in the Barber Studio.
In the Courtyard Theatre, each of the three weekends will see a different and newly devised piece of work from Leeds-based spoken word artist Khadijah Ibrahiim, and two pieces by freelance director Matthew Eberhardt , who will work with singers, actors, young people and musicians including classically-trained singer Keertan Kaur Rehal, Amy J Payne and actor Robert Pickavance to create contemporary responses to the themes of remembrance, collaboration and the act of storytelling.
Connecting Voices, Leeds Playhouse
2 – 17 October
Box office 0113 213 7700. Book online leedsplayhouse.org.uk
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