Unbelievably already in its third year, Word of Warning, Manchester’s peripatetic performance programme launches its Spring season next Tuesday, 18 February at Contact.
Never afraid to tackle the big issues, Spring 2014 starts with a fortnight exploring trivial matters like the absurdity of existence and the process of ageing. It’s not all doom, gloom and bedroom philosophy, however, as it starts with an operatic and lushly visual tangle of relationships, technologies and hand-drawn animations. Inspired by Albert Camus’s powerful and evocative 1942 novel L’Étranger, Proto-type Theater’s The Good, the God and the Guillotine is a sung-through, laptop-orchestra-driven very personal response to a universal question.
Next up on Wednesday 26 February, at the new STUN Studio at Z-arts comes a pair of life-affirming explorations of our notions of ageing via tea, biscuits and immortal jellyfish. Ira Brand’s A Cure for Ageing takes us on a journey from the young and the foolish to the old and the wise, posing honest and sometimes downright indelicate questions around the ageing process; while Nicki Hobday + Sara Cocker’s Age Concerns, introduces us to retired care-home singer, Hilda and takes lessons on how to be simultaneously young, old and entertaining.
Proto-type Theater – The Good, the God and the Guillotine
Tuesday 18 February 2014, 8pm
Contact, Oxford Road, Manchester, M15 6JA
Tickets: £11/6
Box Office Tel: 0161 274 0600
Ira Brand – A Cure for Ageing | Nicki Hobday + Sara Cocker – Age Concerns
Wednesday 26 February 2014, 8pm (Double Bill)
STUN Studio at Z-arts, 335 Stretford Road, Manchester, M15 5ZA
Tickets: £9/5
Box Office Tel: 0161 232 6089