Proteus Theatre will bring their adaptation of Angela Carter’s collection The Bloody Chamber (and Other Stories) to Pavilion Theatre, Worthing this June.
At a moment when women and men across the country confront the double standards of safety, sex, and the fears of what goes bump in the night, Carter’s incendiary caustic take on fairy tales as cautionary tales could not be a more formidable challenge to the status quo.
Using circus as a physical vocabulary, the award-winning Proteus will translate the fever dream style of Angela Carter’s macabre fairy tales to the stage. The Bloody Chamber is a heady, erotic, and surprisingly funny re-phrasing of some of the most famous folk and fairy tales in Western culture. These are the stories our mothers told us. And all the ones they didn’t dare.
Director Mary Swan comments, “Women are always being told what we can and can’t do in order to avoid being assaulted, while on the other hand also promoting sexual fulfilment by catering to the male gaze. We give this advice to young women all the time; why the hell should we have to? Circus inverts the world: defying gravity, contorting the bounds of physical movement and embracing the human connection to do the impossible. It’s perfect for making familiar situations entirely surreal and surreal situations quite familiar; it’s perfect for challenging what’s socially accepted for no good reason. Carter’s fantastical, theatrical, lyrical stories are beautifully transfigured by circus.”
Proteus Theatre are working with leading figures in the circus industry to choreograph the piece including Mimbre’s Silvia Fratelli, Charlotte Mooney from Ockham’s Razor and Tamzen Moulding the Artistic Director of Inverted Theatre. The Bloody Chamber also features an original soundtrack with musical direction, arrangements and sound design by Max Reinhardt (BBC Radio 3 Late Junction) and original composition by Paul Wild who worked with Proteus on Macbeth.
The Bloody Chamber is at Pavilion Theatre, Worthing 11th – 12th June 2021.
