We’ve just announced our opening programme – and from funfairs and surreal theatre to silent films set to new scores, Susie Stubbs finds eclectic times ahead.
It all begins in April. One of the world’s leading choreographers stages a trailblazer that sums up in three acts the entirety of HOME’s artistic programme. Taking place a few weeks ahead of the opening, Hofesh Shechter & Friends features an incoming, internationally respected artist, a world first, and the blurring of lines between high and pop culture. It premieres a new commission (The Bad, a dance piece set to a dubstep soundtrack), and includes a gig from 72% Morrissey, a band who are, according to critics, “making a name for themselves in the UK underground scene.” And it ends with a form of audience participation that is peculiarly Mancunian: a DJ set and dancing in one of HOME’s new theatre spaces.
Hofesh Shechter & Friends promises to be a complex and joyous start to HOME, and an apt introduction to the sort of work we are set to see more of. When the new arts centre opens in May, for example, it does so with another world premiere.
This time, however, it is not dance but theatre, as HOME stages a fresh adaptation of Kasimir and Karoline. “Written in 1932 and set against the backdrop of the world economic crisis, this is a play I have loved for many years,” explains Walter Meierjohann, the organisation’s Artistic Director for Theatre.
The HOME version of the play has, however, been rewritten as The Funfair. The work of double Olivier Award-winning dramatist Simon Stephens, at first glance it tells a simple tale – the story of two lovers who break up one night while at the fair. Yet its whirling backdrop of the fairground adds an element of the surreal to proceedings, while the play itself, written during the dark 1930s, chimes with the present-day politics of fear, economics and distrust.
“It is very dark, very political and a very funny piece,” says Meierjohann. “That’s a rare combination.”
Rare it might be, but The Funfair provides the jumping off point for much else. HOME’s first exhibition, The heart is deceitful above all things, riffs on those same themes of lost love, confusion and uncertainty. It is a group show that, in other words, explores the darker side of all the fun of the fair. Curated by Artistic Director for Visual Arts, Sarah Perks, and Senior Visiting Curator, Omar Kholeif, it features work from artists as diverse as Douglas Coupland, Jeremy Bailey and Declan Clarke (last seen at Cornerhouse as the curator of 2013 exhibition, Anguish and Enthusiasm). A parallel film programme includes work from HOME patrons, Rosa Barba and Phil Collins.
While we’re on the subject of film, HOME’s opening programme does, of course, contain a fair smattering of the cinematic arts. One of the first film events is Lonesome, a 1929 silent movie with parallels to The Funfair (the romance follows two lonely people who meet at a busy, fourth-of-July beach, only to lose each other in the crowd); its new, live score is written by the Dutch Uncles’ Robin Richards and performed by him and musicians from the Royal Northern College of Music.
“There will be several occasions per season when the art forms intersect, with a play or performance the thing that makes everything come together,” says Sarah Perks.
Yet while The Funfair provides the glue that binds the early programme together, HOME won’t work across art forms all of the time. In between, runs a week in, week out schedule of film, art and theatre. HOME’s five cinemas screen, for example, the mix of indie and international film that Cornerhouse regulars have come to expect. Old favourites, such as ¡Viva! return, first in March and then in June and Autumn for two “weekenders” of new Mexican and Spanish cinema. Lonesome is also the first in the Music & Film series, which sees other archive classics set to scores by musicians such as Josephine and Mercury Award nominees, GoGo Penguin.
After The Funfair, the theatre settles down to showcase everything from Kafka’s Monkey to Dead Dog in a Suitcase – the latter brought to Manchester by Cornish company, Kneehigh. We say settle down but we mean nothing of the sort: throughout 2015, HOME works with companies and performers variously described in the national press as “the sexiest in town” and “the brightest and most entertaining”. Kafka’s Monkey is, for example, a Young Vic production and stars Kathryn Hunter – whose performance in it has been rated as staggering, remarkable, exhilarating and extraordinary.
This is what HOME brings to Manchester: acclaimed work by some of the best theatre, art and dance-makers out there – including, in October, the UK premiere of La Mélancolie des Dragons. The work of Philippe Quesne, artistic director of one of France’s most respected theatres, it’s a surreal play that focuses on a group of metallers on the way to a gig. Snowbound and stuck in their car, they decide to create their own amusement park (snow spray, a bubble machine and giant plastic bags all feature). There are other unexpected highlights, too, such as 5 Soldiers, a site-specific dance piece performed at the Rusholme Army Reserve Centre and, of course, HOME’s part in Manchester International Festival.
“I have been briefed to say nothing about our involvement in it,” says Meierjohann of a festival, which, as ever, is shrouded in secrecy (at least until its launch in March). “It was a bit like being briefed by the CIA,” he quips. But with HOME’s programme now set until the end of the year, waiting to find out what’s on the cards for MIF is easy.
There’s more than enough to be reading, thinking and dreaming about for now – and buying tickets for too, of course.