Boo will be good for you

Mar 29 2009 by Gordon Barr, Sunday Sun

LIVE Theatre in Newcastle is hosting two unique productions from Yorkshire-based touring companies this week.

On Tuesday, award-winning theatre company Mind The Gap will be bringing their new show Boo to the main stage. Inspired by Lee Harper’s character Boo Radley, from the classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the production asks what happens if, like Boo, you don’t fit in.

Set in a modern estate, the show is a tale of two children who are fascinated and terrified of the “bogeyman” they can’t see. The end result is a play described by The Stage as “a landmark production” that “should not on any account be missed.”

Mind The Gap is one of the UK’s leading theatre companies working with learning disabled artists. Their latest offering is a creative and morally challenging new show that will take audiences on a journey exploring difference, prejudice and justice.

As Gez Casey, literary manager for Live Theatre, explains: “With a reputation for high quality theatre that inspires, entertains and challenges expectations, we are delighted to welcome Mind The Gap back to Live Theatre.

“Written by Mike Kenny, who appeared in the Independent on Sunday’s list of top 10 playwrights, Boo is an exciting opportunity for theatre goers to enjoy a classic story which has been turned inside out.”

Anyone interested in finding out more about Mind The Gap and the show can join Matt Hargrave, a senior lecturer at Northumbria University — whose research area is theatre and disability — as he interviews the director of Boo, Tim Wheeler, from 6.30pm to 7pm.

Audiences are also invited to stay after the show for the chance to take part in a question and answer session with members of the cast from 9pm to 9.30pm.

On Friday, following a sell-out run at Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2008, the Leeds-based, all female company The Paper Birds, will be making their debut performance at Live Theatre with their production In A Thousand Pieces.

The show, which won a Fringe First Award, tells the story of a girl and her journey to Britain as she searches for a better life than that offered to her in her Eastern European homeland.

The result is a touching and delicate depiction of the violent, isolated and brutal world home to thousands of women forced into the British sex trade.

In the play stories, events, voices and settings are packed up and unpacked from battered and bruised suitcases by battered and bruised women.

To book tickets contact Live Theatre’s box office on 0191- 232 1232 or book online by visiting www.live.org.uk