As part of a two week Grand Finale the Lyric Hammersmith’s Secret Theatre Company will present their full repertory of shows for the last time including the premiere of a brand new play.
The celebration of this provocative project will include the Company’s final production Show 7: A Stab in the Dark, a classic British farce set in Afghanistan, written by Joel Horwood. There will also be a range of free events, discussions and masterclasses tailored around the performances. The project will culminate in the final weekend with the company performing all seven Secret Theatre shows over 48 hours.
Secret Theatre was conceived to take place while the Lyric was undergoing substantial refurbishment - a secret theatre at the heart of a building site. At its core were three main artistic ambitions: to reinvent the model of a British repertory theatre company, making work collectively over a long period of time; to challenge issues of diversity in theatre by always having five men and five women on stage, ethnic minority actors on stage and a disabled actor on stage; and to explore together means to present classic texts and new writing in different ways.
Over the last two years the Secret Theatre Company have performed their work within the Lyric building site, taken the Edinburgh Fringe by storm winning The Stage Award for Acting Excellence and toured their repertoire at venues across the country.
Sean Holmes (Artistic Director of the Lyric Hammersmith) said: "When we launched Secret Theatre I said: I’ve realised how much I’ve hidden behind the literal demands of the text and avoided the really difficult questions about representations of gender and race and disability.
"Secret Theatre is an attempt to challenge every aspect of how we make work at the Lyric, building new structures that could lead to a new type of theatre. It is only now at the end of an extraordinary two years that I’ve discovered the central purpose of Secret Theatre. To show how the true potential of actors both individually and collectively can be released by the creation of a committed ensemble."
Show 7: A Stab in the Dark runs between 12th and 24th February 2014. The Grand Finale weekend takes place on 28th February and 1st March 2015. Visit www.lyric.co.uk for further information.
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