CityLife

Contact season of plenty

THERE are, believes Contact's Artistic Director John McGrath, a couple of clear strands running through their just-announced autumn-winter season.

"One thing we had a lot of success with last year, including Slamdunk, which was a huge hit," he says, "was the whole cross-over between hip-hop and theatre.

"Because hip-hop is a genre that uses music and language and visuals, all the elements we try to use in theatre, in really clever ways that genuinely appeal to young people.

"So we'll be continuing to explore that and we're very excited to have booked an exclusive couple of shows with Danny Hoch, who's one of the world's leading hip-hop artists and activists, as well as the founder of the Hip-Hop Theatre Festival in New York.

"That's going to be on the 12th and 13th November and he'll be doing a show that might be considered a selction of his greatest hits.

"Around that we've got some other really interesting shows, including one called Streetmusic Arabe, which is an evening of hip-hop influenced Arab music (October 23).

"There are some really smart artists working in that sort of area all over the world and, with our work with artists like Benji Reid and Slamdunk, we want to inform that conversation here. So we've also got a company over from Amsterdam called Made in da Shade and they're doing a hip-hop theatre version of the movie Scarface, called Scarfaced ((December 2-4).

"Another strand is some really strong work for the teenage end of the market. A lot of this work will be great drama for adults as well but focusing on issues of younger people.

"One I'm very excited about, and it actually opens the season, is a show called Tagged. We've been working alongside Red Ladder for some time now and this is their new show, written by Louise Wallwein who you might say was one of our home posse of writers.

"It's a great premise - he's got a 7 o'clock curfew and he's got an hour or so to make it home, but all sorts to things happen along the way. It's a classic premise, used in lots of movies, but using technology that didn't exist a couple of years ago (September 17-25).

"Some work that has been developed at Contact is pushing some boundaries too. Again early on in the season, we've got a piece called Skittish, developed by a guy with a name very similar to mine, but he's not me, Jonathan McGrath.

"He developed this piece in our Emerging Artists residency and now it's become full piece. It's about a guy at breaking point and all the things he thinks are out to get him.

"One of the nice things is that it uses Contact in a completely unconventional way, so that the audience goes on a journey through the building and all the moments take place in different parts of the building and not necessarily where they should, such as in the lighting gantry for Space One or in a van parked outside the theatre!

"The audience is in small groups and they're ushered around all these diverse bits of the production, it's all quite exciting (September 30-October 2).

"Another piece that grew up here is Lemn Sissay's Something Dark, which moves from Space 2 to Space 1 (October 29 and 30). An artist with whom we're pleased to have developed an association is Shobna Gulati, also known of course as Sinita on the Street.

"She's worked with us off an on for a couple of years and she's doing a new piece called Crazy Lady - guess what it's about? (November 10-20)."

Other new shows in the Contact season include Asian Theatre School's Silent Cry, a story that begins with a death in police custody and observes a family's quest for justice. Based on documented evidence and interviews, it will be followed on both September 22 and 23 by a discussion with the writer/directors and cast.

Clean Break, the theatre, education and new writing company for "women with personal experience of the criminal justice system", will be bringing their new show, Compact Failure, to the theatre from October 6-9, while Tara Arts present their new show, Mandragora, King Of India, set in an imaginary India populated by kings, soothsayers and clowns, from October 14-16.

Light Ensemble's Offline follows last year's sell-out piece, Bright Sky, and runs at the theatre from October 12-16. Yellow Earth Theatre's 58 is, they sat, "a new play about numbers, immigration and luck" (October 21 and 22), while Unlimited Theatre's Zero Degrees And Drifting (October 26 and 27) apparently involves a toy monkey!

Former DV8 performers Riob Tannion and Liam Steel have collaborated with writer Ben Payne on the dance-theatre piece, Sinner (November 16), based on the events surrounding David Copeland, the "Soho Bomber", while Forced Entertainment mark their 20th birthday with a show called Bloody Mess on November 23 and 24.

You can book for any of the new season shows at Contact, Oxford Road, or get more details from 0161 274 0600.