International Flavour for NT Watch This Space Fest

The season kicks off on 23 June 2010, running until 26 September. During this time Theatre Square (at the front of the NT) will play host to free performances including: Floten Tecles (The Floating Keyboard) by Catalonia’s David Moreno, who plays and sings at a vertical grand piano six metres in the air; World Cup-themed fun with leading Asian dance company Srishti’s show Bend It; and The Alternative Village Fete – an urban twist on traditional village fetes.

The International Festival in Square² begins with the virtual internet-show Life Streaming (23 June – 3 July), by Dries Verhoeven from the Netherlands. This is followed by the Markeliñe who return to Watch This Space with their exuberant cabaret Carbón Club (6 – 10 July), telling tales from the mines of the Basque Country. Then comes another international offering, Carmen Funebre (13 – 17 July), from one of Poland’s leading theatre companies, Teatr Biuro Prodrózy, based on the stories of the refugees from the Bosnian conflict.

From Spain, theatre-maker Roger Bernat brings his “most ambitious piece to date” in Domini Públic (20 -25 July), an audio-theatrical experience which turns his audience into pawns in a life-size board game. And then last stop before returning to the UK is the French company Compagnie Carbosse’s Chez Cocotte (27 – 31 July), a theatrical fantasy for a retired railway man and 55 pressure cookers.

The festival ends with British theatre company Metro-boulot-dodo’s FIB (3 – 8 August) in which 14 audience members are placed in 14 boxes ready for an experience of story-telling and “harsh realities”.