Nigh Journal

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

Slung Low’s ‘Beyond the Front Line’

I’m planning on writing a Blog-a-day for all of April so wanted to start with the project I will be working on most this month for the excellent Slung Low Theatre Company. (‘theatre innovators’  The Guardian.)

‘Beyond the Front Line’, as you can probably tell by the title is a war-themed experience which will be based at the Lowry Theatre, Salford (quite possibly one of my favourite buildings ever. You can really see them filming some Doctor Who here)

The show is planned for October 2009 and is shaping up to be an unforgettably epic theatrical experience with performance, movement, lights, sound, video projection and pyrotechnics. While writers Matthew David Scott, Joel Horwood, Chris Thorpe and myself are all still writing and re-writing different sections of the project, the Slung Low team have already created this nifty promotional trailer which I think sets the scene for the project:

Following a great deal of research, this project has made me really want to push myself, making sure I don’t just staple together my usual blend of cheap gags, pastiches and nods to geeky culture and call it a script :D  But also, Slung Low’s director and the rest of the team have given me a great deal of encouragement and freedom to explore the subject in my own way and think we’ve all found unique perspectives that’ll make this so much more than ‘Eastenders with war jargon’. The fact this is a Slung Low show also means that this production will be something special. While it’s no lie that I do co-habit with Slung Low’s chief composer and sound designer and I pinched one Slung Low’s central performers to star as Verity in ‘The End is Nigel’, it’s also true that I am, simply put, a big fan!

Below is a video overview of the last show I saw of theirs; ‘Helium’ which played a sold-out run at the Barbican Theatre at the end of last year (and yes that is the voice of Patrick Stewart). 

I hope you can see why I’m looking forward to working with them so much and look forward to telling you more about this project and others as they develop.