Pedestrian
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Tom Wainwright Brings Pedestrian to RET Studio

Fresh from success at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, critically-acclaimed writer and performer Tom Wainwright brings his razor-sharp solo show Pedestrian to The Studio at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre this week.

This highly acclaimed production charts one man’s epic journey from a never-ending pedestrianised shopping precinct to the gates of heaven and back... all the while being pursued by a giant fish.

Charting his painful encounters en route with street fundraisers, the office workers on their lunch-break, Tesco Metro, a young Palestinian boy, Barack Obama, Jesus Christ and the woman of his dreams, Wainwright has created a perversely comic razor-sharp satire about attempting to suppress ‘The Fear’; about apathy; about wanting to change the world. And doing nothing...

Tom Wainwright explains: “Pedestrian is for anyone who has found themselves recycling their plastic bags, worrying about Iraq – Afghanistan – whatever, coveting their neighbour’s iPhone and then suddenly wanting to hit themselves repeatedly around their head with their copy of The Guardian. “It’s about a total all-encompassing bewilderment at what on earth is going on and a sneaking suspicion that you may in your own small part be in someway to blame, but safe in the knowledge that you will never know how, or why.”

The pieces was commissioned by Theatre Bristol and Bristol Old Vic. In 2009 they decided to work together in commissioning five new shows capitalising on the exciting energy and vision of artists making live performance in Bristol. Pedestrian is one of the five winning proposals out of 99 applications.

Tom Wainwright is a Bristol based actor, writer and theatre maker responsible for previous Bristol Old Vic hits including Muscle and Jesus Christ, It's Christmas. Pedestrian combines Simon’s animation, film and projection work with Tom’s verbal deluge to create an epic story about everything and nothing. Tom has also worked with Paines Plough in the epic project Come to Where I'm From, where, 61 playwrights from across the UK returned to their home towns to write plays about the places that shaped them. Tom is a member of Residence: an artist-led organisation in Bristol.

Pedestrian runs at the The Royal Exchange Studio from 24 - 26 November.

- by Glenn Meads

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