Alison Jackson, BAFTA and multi-Award winning contemporary artist, and Richard Thomas, Birmingham born Artistic Associate of The REP and Olivier Award winning composer and lyricist, together with acclaimed, New York based, concert pianist Philip Edward Fisher have collaborated to create a special theatrical event to mark the re-opening season of The REP in it’s 50th year on Centenary Square.
Directed by REP Artistic Director, double Olivier Award winner Sean Foley, The Covid-19 Variations: A Piano Drama is a playfully provocative one-off piece of event theatre – an outrageously funny film and concert in one. An inadvertently powerful and always entertaining take on the last 18 months, The Covid-19 Variations stars everyone from Donald Trump to Elton John, from Kanye West to the Royal Family – because everyone has lived through Covid.
Inspired by having had Covid – twice! – Richard Thomas’s ‘piano drama’ is a Gershwinesque 23 minute riff on the experience of being in the grip of the disease du jour. He wrote the piece for Birmingham born and raised Philip Fisher who was extremely ill with Covid in New York in the first days of lockdown. Philip recovered and played the piece in an empty auditorium on Long Island… A recording of his performance found its way to Alison Jackson, and she in turn was inspired to create 19 short films for each of the Covid-19 Variations, drawn from her world of fake news, alternative facts, and celebrity lookalikes, and commemorating life in the time of Covid.
Performed live on a concert grand by Philip Edward Fisher, The Covid-19 Variations: A Piano Drama will mark the opening of the theatre for it’s Autumn Season.
Richard Thomas’s Covid-19 Variations was originally commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum New York. Alison Jackson’s film has been specially created for this event.
Each performance will be followed by an ‘In Conversation’ discussion with Alison Jackson, Richard Thomas and Philip Edward Fisher, talking with Rep Artistic Director Sean Foley and the audience.
