With Manchester Lines opening this week, we thought it was time to introduce you to the creative team behind the production…
Jackie Kay is one of the country’s best-known authors, poets, and writers. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, her 1991 volume of poetry The Adoption Papers, the story of a black girl’s adoption by a white couple in Scotland, was garlanded with awards and adapted for radio. Her debut novel, Trumpet (1998), won the Guardian Fiction Award, and her subsequent work has earned her much critical and commercial acclaim. Jackie, who was awarded the MBE in 2006 for services to literature, lives in Manchester.
Errollyn Wallen is one of the world’s leading composers. Her eleventh opera YES premiered at Royal Opera House in 2011, and Cautionary Tales for Opera North toured in March. She composed the music for recent BBC 1 drama series One Night for which she also sang the theme song. She was awarded an MBE for services to music in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in June 2007.
Wils Wilson specialises in directing productions in non-theatre spaces. Her work has been staged in locations as diverse as a department store in Watford, on public transport in Sheffield, and in the bleak and rugged Mulgrave Woods in North Yorkshire. Home Shetland, performed on the Northlink ferry Hjatland which sails between Lerwick and Aberdeen, was one of the inaugural productions for the National Theatre of Scotland. Her production for Midsommer Actors of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men won a Manchester Evening News Theatre Award.
Designer Amanda Stoodley trained at Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts and graduated with a first class honours degree in theatre and performance design, having previously studied and worked in illustration, graphic and interior design. Designs for theatre and exhibition include: Two (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester); Winterlong (Royal Exchange Studio & Soho Theatre); I Know Where The Dead Are Buried (24:7 Theatre Festival, Manchester); Dark Side of the Building (Unity Theatre, Liverpool); Innovasion – Liverpool Biennial (Hope Street Ltd); Four Corners (Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool); Wish You Were Here (Liverpool Everyman); Making An Exhibition Of Ourselves (At Home) (Royal Exchange Studio).
Co-design and assistant design work includes: Beautiful Thing, Doctor Faustus, 1984, Blithe Spirit, Pub, and Three Sisters (Royal Exchange Theatre); Basket Case (Royal & Derngate Theatre); Lucia Di Lammermoor (Grand Opera Houston); Canary (Liverpool Playhouse); Faith Healer (The Sydney Festival); Top of the World (Spike Theatre – on tour); Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Novello Theatre); Momo (Stadttheater Bern). As well as designing Manchester Lines, Amanda is currently designing Truth About Youth Festival and Black Roses (Royal Exchange Theatre), Fireface – winner of the JMK Award (Young Vic Theatre), and Epstein (Epstein Theatre, Liverpool).
As well as theatre, circus, dance and puppetry, Lighting Designer Anna Barrett has lit art installations, casts of between one and 200, shows in rooms above pubs, as well as on main stages, forests, churches, parks, abandoned warehouses, office blocks and big tops. Anna has previously designed for Goat + Monkey, CommonWealth, Pins and Needles, Idiot Child, Stand + Stare, Invisible Circus, and Tobacco Factory Theatre, amongst others. Images of Anna’s work can be seen online at www.annabarrett.co.uk
Musical Director Dominic Harlan is a pianist, musical-director, performer and composer. He studied piano at London’s Royal Academy of Music, during which time he made his Wigmore Hall recital debut partnering the legendary opera singer Dame Gwyneth Jones. He has since performed throughout the UK, Europe, Japan, India, The Gulf, and North America, broadcast live for BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM, and recorded discs for Warner Sunset, Naxos and Avie. He can be heard playing piano music by Liszt and Ligeti on the motion picture soundtrack Eyes Wide Shut, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Dominic’s recent work as musical director includes Ain’t Misbehavin’- The Fats Waller Musical Show (Oxford Theatre Company), Britten’s Canticles, Ceremony of Carols, Mahler’s Rückert Lieder (all for Streetwise Opera), Modern Major General (Proteus Theatre), Johnny Boy (Glyndebourne Education), and his own arrangement of The Magic Flute (Brighton Festival).
Currently artistic director of Glyndebourne’s Opera Experience workshop programme, Dominic devises and leads workshops for some of the country’s leading arts institutions including Wigmore Hall, Opera North, Garsington Opera, Opera Holland Park, and English National Opera. He also runs workshops for the European organisation RESEO, Netherlands Opera and most recently, Muziekcentrum van de Omroep (MCO), Amsterdam. Dominic recently devised, directed and performed in When Yesterday We Met…, a family show that plays Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall on 22 October 2012 – for more information visit http://www.bridgewater-hall.co.uk/performance/20131.aspx
Movement Director Lesley Hutchison has been associate artist at the Octagon Theatre Bolton working on Drink the Mercury, Blue Remembered Hills, Eight Miles High, The Midnight Hour, Ghosts, The Enemies Within, And Did Those Feet, Oliver Twist, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Comedians, The Hired Man, A Streetcar Named Desire, Love on the Dole,_ David Copperfield_, Romeo and Juliet, The Price, Sweeney Todd, Habeas Corpus, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Alfie, Macbeth, and The Winslow Boy. Lesley was Movement Director with the Royal Shakespeare Company for over 25 productions, including the Olivier Award-winning Pericles. Also at the Young Vic, Royal Exchange Theatre, National Theatre, Bristol Old Vic, Liverpool Playhouse, working with Arthur Miller, Ted Hughes, Pete Townsend, Edward Bond, John Berger, Willy Russell, Jim Cartwright, Trevor Nunn, Nick Hytner, Danny Boyle, Roger Michell, Cicely Berry, and David Thacker. Television and film includes: Faith, Foyle’s War, Waking the Dead, The Mayor of Casterbridge, A Doll’s House, Broken Glass, The Scold’s Bridle, Power,_ Turtle Beach_, and Party Animals. Line Producer/Director: Teletubbies (over 20 BBC Worldwide programmes)
Sound Designer Peter Rice he has previously designed sound for the Library Theatre’s Hard Times for which he won, in conjunction with other members of the creative team, the Manchester Theatre Award for Best Design. Most recently he has designed sound for Saturday Night & Sunday Morning, Beautiful Thing, A View From the Bridge, As You Like It, and The Lady from the Sea at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester; The Wind in the Willows, Radio Times, and Treasure Island at the Watermill Theatre Newbury; Winterlong at the Soho Theatre; Cinderella at the Liverpool Playhouse, The Lady in the Van, Punk Rock (UK national tours), and The Kitchen as associate sound designer at the National Theatre. Previously Peter worked as Senior Sound technician at the National Theatre in the Olivier, and as Deputy Head of Sound at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, where he designed the sound for over 25 productions.
Assistant Director Joshua Azouz studied anthropology at Manchester University before going on to train with Philippe Gaulier in Paris. He directed Sink or Spin, a comedy show on Spin bikes, at Bannatyne’s Health Club for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Other directing credits include Harissa, Tricycle Theatre; Sinbad, Camden Roundhouse; and Europe, Contact Theatre. He was the assistant director on Why I Don’t Hate White People at the Lyric Hammersmith, and is an associate artist for MUJU, a Muslim-Jewish theatre company, resident at the Tricycle Theatre in London. Josh is currently training on the Masters in Fine Arts course in theatre directing at Birkbeck College, London, and was assistant director on the recent Library Theatre Company productions of All The Way Home, The Wind in the Willows, and The Daughter-in-Law.
Manchester Lines runs from 12 Jun – 7 Jul 2012 at Number One First Street. You can book tickets online or from Cornerhouse Box Office on 0161 200 1500.