CityLife

Greenroom: Spring season 2010

Tanja Raman

The MEN Theatre Award-winning Greenroom, on Whitworth Street ‘doesn’t like to take itself too seriously’.

“We are a theatre, but not in the traditional sense,” they say. “Every inch of the building gets used – bar, corridors, kitchen, lift, toilets, as well as the theatre.

“You will hear stories here that you have never heard before. It’s thought-provoking, challenging, shocking, even ‘difficult’. Often, it’s just plain eccentric!”

Their spring season opens next Friday, February 19, with Class of ‘76 by Third Angel. They’re a company based in Sheffield who have performed in all sorts of places, including car parks and swimming pools.

Class of ‘76 is based on a school class photograph and was first performed in 1999, and performed again on the spot the photograph was taken in 2000. In 2010 Alex Kelly, Third Angel’s co-artistic director, goes in search of the stories of those from the original photo.

Chicago-based but honorary northerners Cupola Bobber researched their latest show, Way Out West, The Sea Whispered Me by, among other things, walking from Morecambe to Blackpool, reading WG Sebald’s The Rings Of Saturn, and watching a lot of Laurel and Hardy movies. We’ll be telling you more about them and this extraordinary show, playing February 26, next week.

The spring season also has a healthy dose of award-winning dance including, as part of a triple bill by the National Dance Network, the winner of 2009’s Robin Howard Foundation Commission and Royal Opera House Associate Artist for 2010, Freddie Opoku-Addaie, with his award-winning work Silence Speaks Volumes.

Musical history

On the same evening (April 23), award-winning choreographer Ben Wright, with his new company bgroup, brings together an impressive range of international dancers and collaborators from the world of dance and beyond for Passing Strange And Wonderful, while Tanja Raman and DBINI Industries present [re]traces.

Levantes Dance Theatre blend dance, video and movement with flamboyant costume and evocative audio. Their Greenroom date on May 7 will be the first time Room Temperature Romance has been seen outside London.

Journalist, author, academic and legendary Hacienda DJ Dave Haslam has a huge and eventful musical history.

For two evenings at Greenroom there will be a unique opportunity to get up close and personal as he plays host to two iconic musicians, discussing their life and work.

His first guest is former Dexy’s Midnight Runners frontman Kevin Rowland (March 11); his second is legendary Fall fellow Mark E Smith (March 20).

For Greenroom’s 25th anniversary, Greenroom associate artists Pigeon Theatre recreated a fully working kitchen on stage, including cooking sweet and savoury pie for the audience during the show.

They return on March 26 with a double bill of solo performances.

“Last summer, I decided to make a solo show. It began badly.

Eccentricity

“I stared for long periods of time at walls not knowing what to do, and then in a moment of terror I wrote to 148 people and asked them to tell me what solo show they would like me to make. This show is their shows!” says Anna Fenemore, of The Twice Removed.

Meanwhile, Gillian Knox says of her show, A Big Concept And A Very Little Detail: “To begin I wanted to fly above the stage with a watering can.

“I wanted flowers to grow quickly out of the ground. I wanted doors, so many doors.

“I wanted ball-bearings, a Liza Minnelli moment, and a giant. I really wanted a giant.

“I wanted so many things. But it’s too late now. We had better get started.”

On June 26, Hazard 2010 is an all-day, free event in Manchester city centre described, rather winningly I think, as “cheeky, thought-provoking and sometimes raunchy sprees of eccentricity.

“Hazard is a biennial festival of intervention and sited performance offering strange occurrences in unexpected places.

“So far, we’ve wrapped Cathedral Gardens in fluttering yellow and black tape, brought shop-dummies to life on Market Street, unleashed dancing traffic cones and attempted to circumnavigate the city by canoe.”

This year also promises an outbreak of flashmobs and pervasive gaming courtesy of Larkin’ About. What’s not to like?

For more details of these events and the many others in Greenroom’s new season, go to Greenroomarts.org.