With two new festivals, three extensive runs of brand new shows and a host of new and returning artists. Camden People’s Theatre’s Autumn season promises to deliver some of the best experimental theatre tackling some of the most pertinent and topical issues of the day.
A highlight of the season, No Direction Home (23 Oct – 11 Nov) is a festival asking what it means to be an exile or a descendent of exiles, to whom do we owe refuge and who gets to make a home in Britain. From the de-funding of women’s refuges to the ongoing migrant crisis, the three-week festival will explore issues of displacement, refuge and migration in CPT’s trademark style of performances, workshops and discussions in the true spirit of inclusivity and open conversation. From serious to absurd, from parallel stories of exile in Sussex and Siberia in Double Trouble to life to one man’s journey from Oxford to Istanbul dressed as a hobbit in The Laud of the Rings, CPT artists are presenting ideas and real-life stories to all who want to come in.
At the top of the season, shunt artist Gemma Brockis will be presenting An Execution (By Invitation Only) (11 – 29 Sept). Gemma Brockis – fresh from RSC success with Kingdom Come – will be creating a new version of the hit show from the early days of the Shunt Arches about a prisoner due to be executed for opacity. His crime is that he’s not clear at all, far too complicated, but death is something we can all agree on. Simultaneously, CPT’s basement space will be opened for a season of subterranean delights with Camden Underground. The basement will be taken over by intimate performances, telling stories real and imagined ranging from hospital outbreaks to LGBT+ parenting.
Further highlights include a world premiere performance of Haley McGee’s The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale (20 Nov – 8 Dec) – previously a hit pop-up installation at Euston station – and Elephant and Castle (9 – 20 Oct) by Tom Adams and Lillian Henley. Haley looks at the cash value of sentiment as she sells off gifts from her ex-boyfriends in a yard sale. The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale smashes together personal divulgences, maths, recorded interviews with Haley’s ex-boyfriends, economics and the politics of commerce in a quest to determine what our romantic relationships are actually worth. And from ex-boyfriends to husbands, 1927 associate artist and composer Lillian Henley teams up with her husband Tom Adams to explore the phenomenon of sleep-talking through live music, song and verbatim sleep recordings.
Finally, in its ‘The Shape of Things to Come’ week, CPT will be dishing the actual dirt in their own show about the biggest burial-ground excavation in British history, happening right now yards away from the venue’s front doors.
Brian Logan, artistic director of CPT, said: “We couldn’t be more excited about our autumn 2018 season. It feels like all of our favourite projects are coming to fruition at once. Haley McGee’s solo show about converting sentimental value into cash is really going to capture audiences’ hearts – ironically enough. And it’s a treat to bring indie-theatre superstar Gemma Brockis back to CPT, with a never-quite-finished classic from the heyday of the Shunt Arches. There really is no show quite like Elephant & Castle, meanwhile: once you’ve seen it, it will haunt your dreams. Add to those standouts a brand new festival exploring displacement, migration and refuge from a wide variety of perspectives, plus countless new and brewing projects from the most striking new artists out there, and we can guarantee you some extraordinary new theatre adventures this autumn on the corner of Drummond Street and Hampstead Road.”
