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Festival VOILA Europe 2017 Cockpit Theatre London

The Cockpit theatre is excited to announce the OPEN CALL for this year's festival. Calling all multilingual troubadours, travelling minstrels, intercultural creatives, linguistic explorers, juggling polyglots, translated artists, cross-nation activists, and European theatre companies!

For its 5th years VOILA! Festival becomes VOILA! Europe and will be bigger and bolder than ever. VOILA! Europe is a non Brexit-fearing festival whose mission is to bust the barriers of language and showcase plays from around Europe & the UK to the multi-national audiences of London. 

From new writing from emerging artists to classics revisited by well-loved companies, VOILA! celebrates diversity in performing arts, multiple languages and fearless creatives. No passport required. Broadening out from being a francophone festival to include more languages spoken on the European continent, and spending from one theatre to other venues in the city, VOILA! will program more work and provide additional platforms for exchange in the arts.

They are looking for shows in multiple languages, or translated/adapted from plays originally in a European language, as well as new writing with cast and creatives from the European continent. They accept all genres of shows (music, theatre, performance art, dance), provided they are less than 60 minutes long. 

VOILA! Europe will take place in London 8-18 November 2017 at the Cockpit, Etcetera Theatre Camden and more venues to be announced. The festival will provide 2 or 3 performance slots in one of the festival venues with production and technical assistance, printed brochures, a professional PR and online marketing in exchange for a 50% box office split and a £70 admin fee.

http://www.thecockpit.org.uk/taxonomy/term/26

 

Jermyn Street Theatre London

During the 1930's the basement of the 16b Jermyn Street was home to the glamorous Monseigneur restaurant and club. The space was converted into a theatre by Howard Jameson and Penny Horner in the early 1990's, and Jermyn Street theatre staged its first production in August 1994. Over the last twenty years the theatre has established itself as one of London's leading Off-West End studio theatre.

Gene David Kurk became artistic director in 2009. With his associated director Anthony Biggs he was instrumental in transforming the theatre's creative output with critically acclaimed revivals of rarely performed plays including Charles Morgan's post-war classic the River Line, the UK premiere of Ibsen's first performed play Saint John's Night starring Oliver winning actress Sarah Crowe, and another Ibsen: his rarely performed late play Little Eyolf with Imogen Stubbs and Doreen Mantle.

Anthony Biggs became artistic director in 2013 and has continued the policy of staging rediscovered classic plays alongside new plays and musicals, with a renewed focus on emerging artists, and writers from outside the UK. Jermyn Street theatre was nominated for the Peter Brook Empty Space Award in 2011 and won the Stage 100 Best Fringe Theatre in 2012.

http://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk

Emphasis on New Writing at The Bridge Theatre London

London Theatre Company was founded by Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr on leaving the National Theatre after 12 years. It will focus on the commissioning and production of new shows, as well as staging the occasion classic.

The Bridge is its home, a new 900-seat adaptable auditorium designed to answer the needs of contemporary audiences and theatre makers that it capable of responding to shows with different formats (end-stage, thrust-stage and promenade). It is the first wholly new theatre of scale to be added to London's commercial theatre sector in 80 years. 

What is immediately striking about the first season announced this month is the emphasis on new writing. Of the first eight productions, all but Julius Caesar are new works. Equally noticeable is that four of the premieres are by women and that there is a nod to gender-fluid casting by having Cassius played by Michelle Fairley.

Balancing Act, Hytner's memoirs out this week, reminds the reader of the astonishing success the National Theatre enjoyed during the period he ran it. Hytner transformed its box-office, he oversaw the staging of hit after hit, productions such as War Horse.. The book reveals that we the audience take for magic is often technical expertise, and that nevertheless it is impossible to guarantee a success. 

However, at a time when the West End is increasingly a Broadway like shop window for musicals and spectacular diversions, the existence of a new independent theatre devoted to plays is to be welcome.