Park Theatre has announced its reopening with a two-act drama commissioned by the venue that starts online and ends live in Park200, reopening the building on 4th August.
The season will include a Bruntwood Prize- and Alfred Fagon Award-shortlisted co-production with Talawa, the premiere of a ghost story based on true events, and a double bill of shows celebrating women’s strength.
Committed to nurturing new voices, Park Theatre will also be offering free masterclasses for underrepresented creatives. Audiences will enjoy a newly refurbished building, which includes better front of house facilities and an open kitchen pizzeria.
The season starts with an in house production of Park Bench (22 June – 14 Aug), a piece of new writing by Tori-Allen Martin commissioned over the pandemic and supported by Arts Council England.
After a year apart, each other’s ‘ride-or-die’ Liv and Theo reconnect online, but they both have questions too big for small screens. Act one is a free ten-minute drama available online, and act two will see the couple meet face to face in Park200, reopening the building on 4th August.
The show is followed by ghost story When Darkness Falls (18 Aug – 4 Sept) by James Milton and Paul Morrissey. Based on a true story, the chilling tale sees a history talk on Guernsey’s paranormal past reveal horrors in the island’s more immediate present.
Postponed from the 2020 Spring Season, Park Theatre have partnered with leading Black British theatre company Talawa to co-produce A Place for We (7 Oct – 6 Nov) by Archie Maddocks.
Shortlisted in 2017 for both the Bruntwood Prize and Alfred Fagon Award, Archie Maddocks’ bittersweet comedy holds a mirror up to the ever-changing face of London’s communities in search of their common beating heart through Trinidadian funeral director Clarence and fifth generation Irish pub owner George.
Also in the season, Oxford School of Drama students will perform new work 39 and Counting (8-11 Sept) by Shireen Mula which aims to dispel many of the myths around violence to women, and women’s strength will be celebrated in the Park90 double bill Say it, Women (12 Oct – 6 Nov).
The double bill is made up of Flushed by Catherine Cranfield, which centres around two sisters grappling with the implications of a recent diagnosis of one’s rare medical condition, and Sold from Kuumba Nia Arts and Unlock the Chains Collective, the extraordinary journey of Mary Prince who was born into slavery in the British Colony of Bermuda and went on to become an auto-biographer and champion of freedom.
