Artistic Director Anda Winters is delighted to announce a new season of UK and International performance and visual art, which includes 5 UK and world premieres, with work by Christopher Hampton, Thomas Lebrun, Bruce McLean, Simon Armitage, Bongsu Park, Alix Sobler and Caroline Wright – and a new name – The Coronet Theatre.
The studio, where events will be presented in tandem with those on the main stage, will retain the name The Print Room in recognition of the company’s first home.
Anda Winters said “This wonderful building started life as The Coronet Theatre in 1898 where Edward VII often visited, Ellen Terry and Sarah Bernhardt performed, and where John Gielgud saw his first Shakespeare play. In 1923 it became the much-loved Coronet Cinema, but was increasingly neglected until we moved here in 2014.
As it is gradually restored, our aim is to use the whole building for multi-disciplinary programming, spanning theatre, dance, film, visual art and installations. The programme for the next 6 months will make the most of our ability to stage integrated work in different art forms simultaneously in The Coronet Theatre and The Print Room, with artists presenting their work in both spaces.
With our combination of grand architecture, and intimate and warm settings, we offer a warm welcome to our audiences, and to outstanding artists from across the globe – and of course to what has been described as the most beautiful theatre bar in London!”
The season opens with the World Premiere of Alix Sobler’s The Glass Piano in The Coronet Theatre, directed by Max Key, which runs 26 April – 25 May. A ‘season within a season’ from 29 May – 22 June features artists working in both spaces, using different art forms to present their work: Caroline Wright’s integrated work The Breath Control Project, (29 May – 1 June), captures the melody and rhythm of breathing, and comprises Notes, an interactive installation in The Coronet Theatre, and Osmosis, a choral performance in The Print Room.
The World Premiere of Bruce McLean’s film The Decorative Potential of Blazing Factories
– A Catastrophe in Cardboard (19 – 22 June), is commissioned by The Coronet Theatre for the Coronet stage. Simultaneously there will be an exhibition of McLean’s working drawings and recent models for the film in The Print Room.
The World Premiere of Dream Ritual by Korean artist Bongsu Park and contemporary dancer Jinyeob Cha (3 – 6 July). Ethereal dance and video performance is inspired by the Korean tradition of buying and selling dreams, whilst alongside the performance a selection of Bongsu Park’s video works will be exhibited in The Print Room.
The UK Premiere of Youth Without God by Oscar-winning dramatist Christopher Hampton is an only too pertinent evocation of life under fascism, directed by Austrian Stephanie Mohr. (19 Sept – 19 Oct). Based on the last novel by Ödön von Horváth, it was written in exile while in flight from the Nazis.
In the UK Premiere of Another Look At Memory, (24 – 26 Oct) celebrated French choreographer Thomas Lebrun travels through ten years of choreography with three of his most faithful dancers. Together they respond to Philip Glass’s powerful choral score. Part of Institut Francais’ festival, France Dance.
Poetry is a hugely successful programming strand in both The Coronet Theatre and The Print Room. Poetry Club (formerly Poetry @) hosts intimate events where you can experience the best living poets reading their own work, and Dead Poets Live celebrates the work of poets who are no longer with us.
On June 4 the contemporary poetry series, Poetry Club, welcomes Simon Armitage, who will read from his latest collection, Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic on the main stage. The 10 September Poetry Club returns to the bar for two rising stars of contemporary poetry, Mona Arshi and Fiona Benson. Both mothers of young girls, their second poetry collections couldn’t be more different.
The Dead Poets Live series also returns on 29 September, with the works of Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne More, who met and became close friends in New York in 1934. The evening examines friendship and the profoundly complex question of poetic influence. Watch out for continued star casting for this series, which supports refugee charity Safe Passage.
