Following a bumper year of five shows which saw East Midlands theatre company New Perspectives premiere their Stage Award winning show The Fishermen, a new production based on John Berger’s masterpiece A Fortunate Man, and a first-time collaboration with Midland’s rural touring company Pentabus on Crossings, New Perspectives have announced two rural touring productions for 2019. The Man Without A Past, a new adaptation of Finnish film, and a new production of debbie tucker green’s trade join their 2019 programme, which has already seen the first of this year’s international appearances with A Fortunate Man presented at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival in January, one of only two British companies to take part in the festival.
Artistic Director Jack McNamara will be directing The Man Without A Past, which he is adapting from the cult Finnish film following his previous adaptation of Lars Von Trier’s The Boss of It All. The show will tour rurally from April, before a run at the Brighton Fringe Festival in May, a first-time appearance for New Perspectives at the festival. The Man Without A Past is the story of a man with no memory who is being taken in by a homeless community living in shipping containers in Helsinki, exploring pertinent issues of identity and whether it’s possible to exist in society without one. The cast will include returning New Perspectives actors Jamie De Courcey (A Fortunate Man) and Victoria Brazier (Crossings) joined by David Ahmad and Angela Bain.
Autumn 2019 will also see the first regional tour of trade by debbie tucker green; a raw and poetic tale told by three black women that will tour village halls and venues across England. First performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2005, the play focuses on three women on a Caribbean island – a trendy Londoner, an older tourist and a native – to explore the controversial topic of female sex tourism.
The two shows join the busy year for New Perspectives, who having already staged a revival tour of the hit children’s show The Giant Jam Sandwich. Later in the year, New Perspectives will be taking Sisyphus to Sarajevo (Nov). In Sisyphus, the internationally renowned disabled performance artist Thibault Delferiere uses paint, objects and movement to explode the Greek myth of a man condemned to a repetitive existence. The show won the Mess Award at BE Festival and has been invited to perform at Sarajevo International Festival.
Jack McNamara said, “I am hugely excited by the incredible artists and partners that make up our 2019 season. With voices and stories from all over the globe, our aim is to squeeze as much of the world into our touring van as possible. On one hand we have Kaursimaki; a giant of world cinema whose work has never been adapted for the stage in the UK. It is a great privilege to bring his great story about identity and belonging to audiences in the UK in throes of these big questions. On the other we have debbie tucker green; one of Britain’s most relentlessly innovative writers. It is a joy to think of her astonishing words being heard for the first time in English village halls across the country. At a time of such political insularity it is heartening to be reminded of what a vast and inspiring place the wider world can be.”
