Engagement

Greenwich Theatre is proudly on of the country’s forefront theatres for emerging artists. Our Artist Development Programme provides young theatre companies with a network as a Supproted Artist. We help them realise their creative ambitions and potential with a range of support in anything from marketing to technical production to touring mentorship.

Supported companies can graduate into Greenwich Theatre Associate Artists, working with us as partners on the creation of new work at the theatre. Our associate artists are guarenteed slots in our programming as well as continued support and mentorship.

Alongside Artist Development, Greenwich Theatre also provides Educational Outreach for the local community.

Through a range of artist development activities, professional support and industry mentoring, Greenwich Theatre has become a creative hub for a range of new, young or emerging companies. Three of those companies have now been made formal Associate Artists of Greenwich Theatre.

LIVE CANON

Live Canon are an ensemble performing poetry in the English Language (and occasionally bursting into song). They are a group of professional actors and theatre-makers, led by artistic director, Helen Eastman, who founded the ensemble in 2008.

Helen felt that there were many opportunities to hear contemporary poetry live, and have an aural experience of it, but very few opportunities to hear the’ back catalogue’, as it were. Live Canon aims to rectify that and perform poetry from across generations and across the world.

Live Canon performances aren’t readings. Live Canon actors learn all the poetry and perform it from memory. Their performances make poetry accessible and visceral. Performances are often interspersed with live music, featuring newly commissioned a cappella settings of many classic poems, ultimately creating a thoroughly enjoyable, unpretentious way to celebrate the richness of poetry written in the English language over the last five hundred years. Live Canon shows are a mixture of old classics you may know and love, and less well-known gems we hope may surprise you.

The company perform at venues, festivals and special events, from Oxford Playhouse to Exeter Northcott, Richmond Park to the V&A and make bespoke shows for events, galleries and museums. Recently the company has also started recording, collaborating with the V&A on their first app for iPhone, and they are about to embark on creating an MP3 poetry walk of Oxford. They are a number of audio CDs in the pipeline.

Live Canon run a biennial poetry competition, with a £1000 first prize, and perform and publish all the shortlisted poetry.

FILAMENT THEATRE

Filament is a music theatre company fusing devised physical work with polyphonic music. The company makes original music theatre for both traditional and non-traditional spaces, in a bid to confound expectations of what musical theatre can be.

The company is led by its two founders Sabina Netherclift (director) and Osnat Schmool (composer), who first worked as creative collaborators on a project called Re:Love, produced by the Bridewell Theatre Company. Osnat wrote the show having been inspired by Sam Shepherd’s Savage Love and the show followed four couples at different stages of their relationships.

Our first collaboration with Osnat and Sabina was built around Drive Ride Walk, an astonishing piece of a cappella music theatre. In March 2009 a 30 minute festival version of the show was seen by over 1500 people over two weeks in a tour which saw it play in venues as diverse as Chrisp Street Ideas Store, St Pancras Station, The Geffrye Museum and St Thomas Hospital, and in this borough at the Eltham Centre, Heritage Centre in Woolwich and at Charlton Assembly Rooms.

In 2010 with the support of our Artist Development Programme, Sabina and Osnat formed Filament and in 2011 we co-produced the full 90 minute version of Drive Ride Walk which toured to Greenwich Theatre, Stratford Circus, Chelsea Theatre and Jacksons Lane alongside festival performances at the O2, Spitalfields Market, Channel 4, Whittington Hospital and more.

“The future of new British musical theatre writing depends on work like this… a virtuosic new show… Osnat Schmool’s thrilling a cappella score, combined with Sabina Netherclift’s dynamic direction, makes for one of the most exciting and funny evenings of musical theatre I’ve had the pleasure to witness” WHATSONSTAGE.COM

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