Scoop Launches Sixth Year of Free Outdoor Theatre

The Steam Industry returns to The Scoop at More London near Tower Bridge for its sixth year this summer, presenting six weeks of free theatre in SE1. The season, running from 31 July to 7 September 2008, will comprise two new productions, directed by Phil Willmott and running in repertory at the 850-seat open-air amphitheatre (with capacity of up to 1,000 including standing room) by City Hall, with performances taking place on Wednesdays through to Sundays.

The season opens with Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca’s 1933 classic Blood Wedding, in a translation by Ted Hughes, running from 1 August to 7 September 2008 (previews from 31 July). Lorca was inspired to write the play, which became the first instalment in his Andalusian trilogy, after reading a newspaper account of a local woman who abandoned her husband-to-be on their wedding day to escape with her childhood sweetheart.

Blood Wedding is joined in rep, from 15 August to 7 September 200 (previews from 13 August), by a new family musical from New Orleans based on the story of Little Red Riding Hood. In Petite Rouge – A Cajun Red Riding Hood, adapted by Joan Cushing from Mike Artell and Jim Harris’ best-selling children’s book of the same name, transplants the fairy tale to Louisiana, where Petite Rouge and her cowardly cat TeJean dogde the wily alligator Claude through the swamps – and Mardi Gras – to Grandmere’s house. The children’s show employs Canjun music, dance and puppetry.

Both new Scoop productions are directed by Willmott and designed by Libby Watson, with sound by Charlie S Brown, choreography by David Greenall and puppetry by Toby Olie. The 2008 season is once again presented by Suzanna Rosenthal for the Steam Industry Free Theatre Ltd.

Since Scoop’s launch in 2003, over 140,000 people have enjoyed productions including The Grapes of Wrath, The Jungle Book, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Cyclops!, Oedipus, Agamemnon, Androcles and the Lion, The London Nativity, Children of Hercules and Treasure Island. In 2006, the Scoop won the prestigious Peter Brook Empty Space Award for up-and-coming theatre of the year (See News, 7 Nov 2006).

– by Terri Paddock