BBC Arts has joined award-winning theatre company Headlong and BAFTA winning Century Films, as broadcast partner for Unprecedented: Real Time Theatre from a State of Isolation, a series of short, digital plays written and performed in isolation, which will be broadcast across the nation during lockdown as part of Culture in Quarantine.
Written by celebrated playwrights, performed by a cast of over fifty UK actors and curated by Headlong, Century Films and BBC Arts, Unprecedented is a series of short digital plays exploring our rapidly evolving world. The plays will respond to how our understanding and experiences of community, education, work, relationships, family, culture, climate and capitalism are evolving on an unprecedented scale. The series will ask how we got here and what the enduring legacy of this historic episode might be.
Directors working on the series include; Ned Bennett (Equus; An Octoroon; Yen), Deborah Bruce (Pride and Prejudice), Tinuke Craig (Vassa; The Colour Purple), Debbie Hannan (The Panopticon; Pah-La), Jeremy Herrin (This House; People Places and Things), Brian Hill (Bella and The Boys; Falling Apart), Ola Ince (Poet in da Corner; Appropriate: The Convert), Nathaniel Martello-White (Cla’am), Caitlin Mcleod (Returning To Haifa), Blanche McIntyre (Tartuffe; The Writer) and Holly Race Roughan (Hedda Tesman; Broken Dreams).
The series will include new works from a diverse group of celebrated playwrights including; April De Angelis (My Brilliant Friend; The Village), Josh Azouz (The Mikvah Project; Buggy Baby), Deborah Bruce (The Distance; The House They Grew Up In), John Donnelly (The Pass; The Knowledge), James Graham (Ink; QUIZ; Coalition; Brexit: An Uncivil War; Labour of Love), Charlene James (Cuttin’ It; Tweet Tweet), Matilda Ibini (Where do we go next: Little Miss Burden), Jasmine Lee-Jones (seven methods of killing kylie jenner) Duncan Macmillan (People, Places and Things; City of Glass; Rosmersholm; 1984; Lungs), and Anna Maloney (Consent), Nathaniel Martello-White (Torn; BLACKTA), Chloë Moss (This Wide Night; The Gatekeeper), Prasanna Puwanarajah (Nightwatchman; Patrick Melrose; Doctor Foster) and Tim Price (Salt, Root, Row; The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning).
Using digital conferencing technology, and combining live and pre-recorded material, these intimate new plays will give an immediate insight into this extraordinary communal experience. Unprecedented: Real Time Theatre from a State of Isolation will be broadcast on the BBC as part of BBC Arts’ Culture in Quarantine initiative and made available to stream online from May.
