Stan’s Cafe bring Of All The People In The World home to Birmingham

Birmingham-based theatre company Stan’s Cafe return to their hometown with their famed performance piece. Of All The People In The World is a free to visit show, which straddles the line between theatre and art.

Of All The People In All The World uses grains of rice to represent individual people and through carefully measured piles, communicates human population statistics in a direct and powerful way. These statistics, including country and city populations, people being born and dying each day and commuters passing through Snow Hill station, tell the daily, changing story of the planet’s inhabitants. Twenty three tonnes of rice – representing 1.5 billion people – will be shipped into Two Snowhill for the event.

Conceived by James Yarker, Stan’s Cafe’s founder and artistic director was inspired to create a meaningful way to bring incomprehensible statistics to life after observing how we often struggle to truly grasp huge numbers. Since debuting in 2003, the show has been seen in over 50 cities world-wide, from Adelaide, Buenos Aires, Bucharest and Barcelona, to Washington, Tokyo, Toronto and Zurich, via Los Angeles, Copenhagen and New York.

The 10^th Anniversary Homecoming performance has been commissioned by property developers Hines and Ballymore to mark the opening of Two Snowhill. Situated in the heart of Birmingham city centre, the 14-storey, 310,000sq ft building is the biggest new UK office development to be built outside of London since the start of the recession. Taking up the entire sixth floor, the 10-day anniversary collaboration allows unique public access to the landmark building before it’s occupied.

“After a decade of touring the world with the show we are excited to be celebrating its anniversary in such a spectacular venue with amazing views over our home city,” said James Yarker. “We hope to welcome people of all ages from all walks of life to this show, which is about us all and the world we share.”

Anthony Leonard, director of Hines, said: “Traditionally, office buildings are off limits to anyone but their owners and tenants. At Two Snowhill we are delighted to be able to work with Stan’s Cafe to welcome the public into the building.”

Richard Probert, commercial sales and letting manager (UK) for Ballymore, said: “Two Snowhill is one of the best specified buildings outside London. We are hugely proud of it and want to celebrate the latest addition to Birmingham’s skyline.”

Of All The People In The World plays at Two Snowhill Birmingham until Sunday April 21.