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Sleep Science Performance Returns to London

somˈniloquy   n. the act or habit of speaking during sleep.
Oxford English Dictionary

Somniloquy, a new monologue written by Craig Baxter for the 2013 Hotbed Festival, is being staged again as part of a four week run at London’s Theatre 503. The 25 minute piece, which is performed by Jasmine Hyde, follows a young woman through a night of observation at a sleep laboratory. Baxter wrote the monolougue in collaboration with sleep scientist Prof. Richard Horner as part of Menagerie Theatre Company’s ‘What’s Up Doc?’ scheme which pairs playwrights with thought leaders and academics. The practical issues of portraying someone sleeping on stage are overcome with imaginative set design by Nicky Bunch.

Jasmin Hyde also performs with Mark Oosterveen in Steve Waters’ Why Can’t We Live Together?, a  powerful and moving new play tracking the relationship of a couple over the first decade of the 21st Century. The triple bill is completed with another curiously arresting performance from Oosterveen in Hisham Matar’s How to Begin.

The three plays will be performed together between 15th October and 9th November at Theatre 503 in Battersea, London.

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Stella: Astronomy History on Autumn Tour

Take the Space theatre company have embarked on an autumn tour of their new play Stella. Having already visited venues in Guildford and Grantham during September, Siobhán Nicholas’ play featuring astronomers Caroline and William Herschel will be performed in Canterbury, Portsmouth, Edinburgh and Eastbourne during October and November.

Further details of the tour dates and venues are available on Take the Space’s website.

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Henrietta Lacks Show in Edinburgh

As the Edinburgh Festival Fringe enters its final few days there is still a chance to see HeLa, Adura Onashile’s one woman show about the life and legacy of Henrietta Lacks.

When Lacks attended the Johns Hopkins Memorial Hospital for treatment in 1951, a sample of tissue was taken without her knowledge. The now famous HeLa cell-line has played a role in many medical breakthroughs in the decades since.

The evocative wooden-panelled setting of the Old Anatomy Lecture Theatre in Edinburgh’s Summerhall provides a backdrop for this new piece of physical theatre. Adura Onashile’s powerful and versatile performance captivates for the whole hour as the play examines some of the ethical questions surrounding the treatment of the Lacks family and the scientific significance of the HeLa cell-line.

Meanwhile, at the same venue Jack Klaff stars in a 75 minute show about the life of Isaac Newton, first performed the the Gravity Fields Festival in Grantham in 2012.

HeLa, produced by Iron-Oxide, is on daily at 6.45pm at Summerhall, Edinburgh until 25th August 2013. Newton plays at the same venue at 5pm.

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Bletchley Park Gets the Theatrical Treatment in Edinburgh

Alan Turing and the Bletchley Park story get the theatrical treatment at the Edinburgh Fringe this year in Idle Motion‘s new play That is All You Need to Know. This piece of physical theatre uses brilliantly imaginative stagecraft to tell the stories of some of the people who tried to save the wartime code-breaking site from the brink of destruction. It also tells the tales of some of the people who worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War and who weren’t allowed to talk openly about what they did for decades afterwards.

Music, movement, drama, stunningly simple visual effects and commanding performances combined to make this a captivating experience when StageScite caught That is All You Need to Know at the Greenwich Theatre in June.

That is All You Need to Know is at the Zoo Southside, Edinburgh at 17:05 on 2nd-24th August 2013 (not 11th and 18th).

The production will also be at the Oxford Playhouse on 5th September 2013.

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Humble Boy Radio Play Repeated

The BBC radio version of Charlotte Jones’ Humble Boy’ is available to listen to online until 28 July 2013. The 2001 play touches on ideas in string theory and cosmology. Although the science itself is not the main theme in Humble Boy, the play is nevertheless quirky and a little absurd in a similar fashion to Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Physicists.

The 2007 BBC radio version stars Diana Rigg and Adrian Scarborough and was adapted by Steven Canny.

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Stella: History is written in the stars

The three night run of Stella at the Greenwich Theatre begins on Thursday 11th July. The first night performance will be followed by a Q&A session with the play’s writer Siobhán Nicholas and astronomer Radmila Topalovic.

StageScite caught this new play about Caroline and William Herschel when it premiered at the Old Market Theatre in Brighton in May 2013.  Actors Chris Barnes and Kathryn Pogson joined Nicholas on stage to play the four roles, with Barnes doubling up to play the both the husband of present-day astronomer Jessica and William Herschel in the 18th Century. Nicholas herself took on the role of William’s sister Caroline who was his sometime assistant and an accomplished astronomer in her own right.

When musician Bill is offered a job with an orchestra in Germany, the chance to relocate raises a conflict with his wife Jessica whose own successful career as an astronomer is rooted in England. Jessica is also following her historical  interest in the Herschels, which takes her on a research trip to Bath to study Caroline Herschel’s private diaries. As Jessica’s investigations progress and her relationship with Bill becomes increasing strained, we are presented with interleaved scenes from the lives of the Herschels, whose own individual aspirations and careers are also pulling them in different directions.

Stella received special mention in the judging for the New Writing South Best New Play Award 2013. It runs at the Greenwich Theatre in London on 11th, 12th and 13th July 2013.

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New Writing Festivals are a Hotbed of Science

Cambridge, London, Colchester and Bury will all play host to new writing this month as Managerie Theatre Company’s annual Hotbed Festival expands into new locations.

Specially commissioned one act plays, workshops and works-in-progress will feature at venues including the Cambridge Junction and London’s Soho Theatre.

A new project this year – ‘What’s Up Doc?‘  – pairs playwrights with expert thought leaders to produce new writing for the festival. Of particular note is Somniloquy by Craig Baxter, who has written a 20 minute monologue about sleep and its disorders with expert advice from Professor Richard Horner of the University of Toronto. The monologue will be performed by Jasmine Hyde and explores the function of different sleep cycles in the light of latest ideas on the dynamic nature of sleep.

Other new works at this year’s festival include What Did It Feel Like To Go To The Moon? by poet Lucy Sheerman (written in collaboration with Al Worden, command pilot on the 1971 Apllo 15 lunar mission) and an initial glimpse of A Broken Replicate: Altered Skin which looks at processes in genetics through theatre and dance.

The Hotbed Festival will be visiting three new locations during July after opening at its usual home in Cambridge.

Somniloquy will be performed in Cambridge on 12th and 14th July, in Colchester on 19th and 21st July and in London on the 23rd and 26th July.

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The Effect of Success

Lucy Prebble’s 2012 play set in a clinical trials facility has been shortlisted for another writing prize. The Effect, which has already won a Critics Circle Award is one of five plays nominated for the James Tait Black Prize, coordinated by Edinburgh University. James Tait Black Memorial Prizes for fiction and biography were established in 1919 but this is the first time a prize has been offered for drama. A panel of judges representing Edinburgh University, The National Theatre of Scotland and The Traverse Theatre will decide on the winning play which will be read in Edinburgh on the 5th August 2013.

The Effect was staged at The National Theatre from November 2012 to February 2013 and was a co-production with Headlong. Bille Piper and Jonjo O’Neill starred as a couple who apparently fall in love during a neuropharmacology drug trial.

(Update: The winning play has been announced as The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning by Tim Price.)