Shout News
January, 2008
Our revenue grant from the Arts Council has been cut (reason given: it was too small – feel the irony!), but we are not dead and buried yet.
Projects in the pipeline:
2008
May
Happy Together
UPDATE 10/05/2008: THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN POSTPONED
Please check back soon for more details
Brighton Festival
May 15 th-17th, 2008
Directed by Luca SilvestriniA collaboration with Protein Dance Company
Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves.
Haruki MurakamiIn Brighton, the space that exists between men and women is very noticeable. There are gay men, there are lesbians. And what are the heterosexual people up to? They’re on hen nights and stag nights, marauding round the city like lost souls, with antennae sticking out of their heads.
In Happy Together, two groups of people, one male and one female, set out from different points in the city. They move through the streets independently, singing love songs. Sometimes the groups come close to each other, but they do not meet. As they move, the groups grow, picking up more and more people. Along the route, situations develop – games, dares, arguments, incidents, accidents, surprises, encounters.
The singing, a mixture of solo and choral, will range from Geri Halliwell’s sublimely daft It’s Raining Men to an Indian ghazal sung by the Sri Lankan singer Manickam Yogeswaran of The Shout, taking in popular songs, folk songs, classical songs, newly composed songs. High art and low art intermingle. There will be no band, only a ghetto blaster providing an occasional backing track. Solo singers may use megaphones.
Eventually the two groups come, simultaneously, to a club. The dance floor is divided down the middle by a curtain, as in orthodox Jewish weddings.
July
Opening Event, Stimmen Festival
Loerrach , Germany
July 2nd 2008A site-specific choral event in and around the wonderful Burghof Theatre.
Listen
Stimmen Festival
Loerrach , Germany
July 18 th-20 th, 2008A site-specific piece at the Fondation Beyeler, designed by Renzo Piano and housing an amazing collection of twentieth century art.
December
Closing Event, Stavanger2008
Stavanger , Norway
December 6 th, 2008Stavanger is the other European Capital of Culture this year. The closing event will be a choral invasion of Stavanger, which will include a performance of our Proms piece We Turned On The Light, as well as a new piece by Orlando Gough for choirs, brass bands, ships’ horns, church bells and a parachutist.
2009
January
Raketensymphonie
Linz , Austria
January 1 st, 2009And moving right on…… Linz is one of the Capitals of Culture in 2009 (the other is Vilnius). The opening event will happen at quarter past midnight on New Year’s Day. It will be a conversation between massed choirs and fireworks. The event will be directed by Tom Ryser.
Shout 10th Anniversary Concert
Kings Place , Kings Cross, London
January 16 th, 2009
A concert at this beautiful new venue, designed by Jeremy Dixon. It will be ten years, almost to the day, that the choir performed its first concert, at the late lamented Spitz in Spitalfields.
The concert is part of a series, curated by David Temple director of the excellent Crouch End Festival Chorus, called The Song of Roland, which features the music of Orlando Gough.
March
Crossing
Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House, London
March 2009
We will transform the theatre for this choral piece, directed by Felix Barratt of Punchdrunk, in which we will be joined by, at the very least, some redoubtable London choirs and a group of ballroom dancers (regulars of the tea dances in the Hamlyn Hall).
We are also planning a large site-specific piece St Miracle of Saint Margaret, to be directed by Roxana Silbert and designed by Geraldine Pilgrim,in collaboration with the homeliveart; and a London residency Shout Out.
Watch this space.