Theatre News

TEAM & Idiot in Final Phase of Barbican’s bite09

The Barbican has announced the full line-up for the September-December phase of its bite09 programme, which will include performances in the Barbican Theatre, Pit and, for the first time, the medieval church of St Giles, situated at the heart of the Barbican complex.

Highlights include appearances by companies Slung Low and The TEAM (both involved in this month’s Almeida Summer Festival) – the latter staging a revival of their 2008 Edinburgh Fringe hit Architecting in the Pit (4-14 November). Also in the Pit and making its first appearance at the Barbican is Told by an Idiot, presenting the London premiere of The Fahrenheit Twins (18 November-5 December) as part of a national tour.

The season kicks off with, as previously announced (See News, 12 Mar 2009), the first appearance in the UK by Polish theatre collective TeatrZAR, residents at the Grotowski Institute, as part of Polska! Year – a festival presenting over 200 Polish cultural projects in Britain. TeatrZAR’s Gospels of Childhood triptych (24 September-2 October) is billed as a “lamentation on birth and death told through song, chanting and movement”. The three parts are performed over the course of one evening – with parts I and III being performed in St Giles’ Church (on Cripplegate), and part II in the Pit.

Gospels of Childhood is followed, from 6 to 10 October, by the return of the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan to the Barbican with the UK premiere of its newest piece, Wind Shadow. Another returnee in the new season is Barbican artistic associate Michael Clark who, as previously announced, will bring his yet to be titled new project, inspired by the 1970s musical trinity of David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, to the venue from 28 October to 7 November as part of an international tour.

Currently at the Barbican, a new video installation by Graeme Miller opens today (9 July), one of several outdoor events being staged by the Barbican this summer. Several installations commissioned as part of its Radical Nature art exhibition can currently be seen in and around the venue until 18 October, and Dancing in the Square is being held in Dalston’s Gillett Square on 11 July, a free daytime event featuring a vibrant range of dance and music groups (See News, 2 Jul 2009).