Tim Crouch, Clean Break & Belarus Free Theatre feature in Almeida Festival

Billed as the “most ambitious and extensive Almeida Festival to date”, the programme features a mixture of “fresh collaborations, award-winning artists and brand new shows.”

Tim Crouch and Andy Smith will open the Festival with a brand new Almeida commission titled what happens to the hope at the end of the evening.

Lucy Morrison, curator of the festival, said: “Tim Crouch and Andy Smith set the tone for the Almeida Festival 2013 by laying bare their friendship and the battle of their beliefs. Like them, each of the companies in the Festival embraces the spontaneity and risk of live performance; grabbing with both hands the rare opportunity to capture something important about being alive right now.”

Crouch, whose recent work includes I, Malvolio and The Author (Royal Court and tour), responded: “The Almeida Festival broadens our definition of theatre – throwing itself open to work that provokes fresh thinking around the form. Our work is born out of a playful sense of opposition to how theatre is made. For that opposition to reach its potential it needs to be placed in the centre of the debate – and what better place than the Almeida?”

The festival also features new
work from Bryony Kimmings, Made In China, Dirty Protest and The Young
Friends of the Almeida with a new play by Roz Wyllie.

Clean Break, who work with women prisoners, will present a new play by Alice Birch alongside Rebecca Prichard’s 
Dream Pill, and Dante or Die will present a site-specific dance theatre piece
in a hotel.

And Belarus Free Theatre will stage a rehearsed reading of its latest
piece, a new play by Nicolai Khalezin written especially for actress Adjoa
Andoh, on 31 July.

For more on the Almeida Festival 2013, visit www.almeida.co.uk