Jackie Kay
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Library bring Site specific Manchester Lines to the city

Following their site specific adaptation of Hard Times,The Library Theatre Company are bringing a second - Manchester Lines, to a modern office block.

The Library Theatre Company, in association with Ask Property Developments, presents Manchester Lines, which opens in June. The production will take place on the fifth floor of Number One First Street, a modern city centre office block which is part of the development where the Library Theatre Company’s new home, which it will share with Cornerhouse, is due to open in 2014.

In a lost property room in central Manchester, en route to somewhere, eight people explore their own personal journeys. Manchester Lines tells stories, reveals fragments of lifelines. It asks: is there an instant when your life changes forever? How consciously do we choose the path our lives take? Do we choose at all? What happens to all the lives we do not live? Welcome to the Lost Property Office of the Soul.

Directed by site-specific theatre specialist Wils Wilson and written by the award-winning poet, playwright and novelist Jackie Kay (Red Dust Road, Trumpet), with music specially composed by Errollyn Wallen (Opera North, Orchestra of the Swan), Manchester Lines is created in Manchester, for Manchester.

To be performed in front of a strictly limited audience of 100 per performance, Manchester Lines is the second of the Library Theatre Company’s intimate and dynamic ‘one chance to see’ theatre experiences. A specially assembled community choir will also be featured, reinforcing the Library Theatre Company’s aims of widening participation.

The cast featyres John Branwell, Bettrys Jones, Claire Brown, Anne Kidd, Amelia Donkor, and Tachia Newall . Dominic Harlan, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, takes on the role of performance musical director.

Designer Amanda Stoodley is transforming the office to a fully-fledged performance space in which the audience, as was the case with Hard Times, will be integrated with the actors and the hundreds of items of lost property which will form part of the set.

Peter Rice, recipient of a Manchester Theatre Awards prize for his work on Hard Times, is the sound designer and Anna Barrett is the lighting designer, while Joshua Azouz is the production’s assistant director.

Manchester Lines is at the fifth floor of Number One First Street, Manchester from 12 June - 7 July.

- by Glenn Meads

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