Young talents in Warwick take on mighty epic dramas

Playbox Theatre, which is based at the Dream Factory in Shelley Avenue, are launching The Epic Cycle, a one-year festival which will incorporate theatre, movement, circus, dance, visual installation, film and digital media to bring six epic tales to the stage.

The festival’s advisory director Stewart McGill said: “We cast the net across world literature and world drama. The selection is diverse and challenging, yet the result will be in the telling.”

Playbox begins the cycle with Metropolis - Remixed, inspired by Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent movie, selections of which will be staged at St Nicholas Park in Warwick as part of the town’s Olympic Torch celebrations this Sunday, before it is performed in full at the Dream Factory from September 27.

This will be followed by William Shakespeare’s The Winter Tale, performed by the Shakespeare Young Company from November 29, and in December Playbox’s own re-working of the gothic fairy tale Sleeping Beauty will be revealed.

In April next year, the epic Indian story of Rama and Sita, The Ramayana, will be performed, while Sir Gawain, adapted from the Medieval poems of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady, will come to the stage in June.

Audiences will be able to catch a preview of both The Ramayana and Sir Gawain at All Saints’ church in Leamington this summer - details of which are to be announced in the coming weeks.

The cycle will close with the youngsters performing the world’s earliest tragedy, Euripides’ Bacchai, in July 2013. Playbox’s third Greek drama, the cult of Dionysus haunts the stage in what the company describe as a “thrilling” work.

Added to all this, Playbox is reworking Shakespeare’s The Tempest for under-tens and, from Easter next year, staging Mysteries On The Move, a promenade tour around the Dream Factory based on the 2011/12 production of The Mysteries.

There will also be accompanying talks, workshops, education events and spin-off activities across The Epic Cycle, for which the company are redesigning the Dream Factory’s main space into an environment capable of or the Art Deco world of Metropolis - to the deep forests of Southern India in Ramayana and Ancient Greece in Bacchai, dropping by the courts of Medieval England en route.

And Playbox is also bringing Metropolos - Remixed to Santa Monica Playhouse in the USA this autumn.

The Epic Cycle is produced by Playbox Theatre with Stewart McGill heading the team directing Metropolis, Winter’s Tale, Ramayana and Bacchai.

The company’s new artistic director, Emily Jane Quash, will be staging Sir Gawain in 2013, while Mary King directs Sleeping Beauty.

To find out more and book tickets, call 419555 or go online.