Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere is a play about revolution. The story of the networked generation, it traces how we got from the optimism of the Arab Spring and the origins of the Occupy Movement to Trump’s election and the present day - through the eyes of Paul Mason. Audiences will participate throughout the promenade performances.
Performed by Mason, Khalid Abdalla, Sirine Saba, and Lara Sawalha, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere will run Tuesday 28 to Thursday 30 March in the Young Vic’s Maria studio.
Tickets for the three performances are free, limited to one per person and will be allocated via ballot. Audiences can register to enter before 12noon on Wednesday 22 March, here: http://bit.ly/2mW0QRn
Design for Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere is by Jeremy Herbert, with video by Ali Hossaini, light by Nicki Brown and sound by Peter Rice. It will be directed for TV by Tim van Someren. The show is produced in partnership with Totally Theatre Productions.
Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere is one of a series of programmes for BBC Arts called Performance Live - a two-year project, produced in partnership with Arts Council England with Battersea Arts Centre as strand producer, that will challenge a spectrum of exciting artists, producers and arts organisations to produce their own television programmes. The first broadcast of the series was Kate Tempest’s Let Them Eat Chaos in October 2016. Further programmes in the series will be announced in due course.
These diverse and original commissions, spanning theatre, dance, comedy, spoken word, live-art and everything in-between, will be rooted in different parts of England and will explore the middle ground between live performance and television, shifting perceptions about what performance can be.
Paul Mason is a writer, journalist and film-maker. He reported for Channel 4 News as Economics Editor before going freelance in 2016. Prior to that he was Economics Editor for BBC Newsnight, covering the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the rise of networked protest movements. His most recent book is Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future. His play about the Paris Commune, Divine Chaos of Starry Things, will run at The White Bear Theatre 25 April – 20 May 2017.
David Lan is a playwright, theatre director and social anthropologist. Artistic director of the Young Vic since 2000, he has produced more than 150 shows and directed, amongst others, A Raisin in the Sun, Doctor Faustus, The Daughter-in-Law, The Skin of Our Teeth, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and Blackta, as well as As You Like It in the West End. He led the campaign to rebuild the theatre which reopened to acclaim in 2006. He is on the board of Belarus Free Theatre and Good Chance Theatre and is co-director of World Stages. Between July 2013 and October 2015 he was Consulting Artistic Director of the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Centre in New York. Lan has received an Honorary Doctorate from London South Bank University and a CBE.
Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere by Paul Mason and directed by David Lan will be performed 28 - 30 March 2017 in the Young Vic’s Maria studio. Tickets are free and will be allocated by ballot. Register before 12noon on Wednesday 22 March
christineachampong@youngvic.org | 0207 922 2842
www.youngvic.org/get-in-touch/press | @youngvictheatre | #kickingofflive
Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere
The Maria, Young Vic, 66 The Cut, London, SE1 8LZ
Tuesday 28 – Thursday 30 March 2017
Performance times:
Tuesday 28 March, 7.15pm
Wednesday 29 March, 7.15pm (limited number of press tickets available)
Thursday 30 March, 2.15pm (limited number of press tickets available)
Box Office: 0207 922 2922 | www.youngvic.org
Tickets: Free
About the Young Vic
The Young Vic produces classics, new plays, forgotten works, musicals and opera, and tours widely in the UK and internationally. It has deep roots in its neighbourhood and extensive co-producing relationships with leading theatres all over the world. The Young Vic’s associate companies are BirdGang Dance, Belarus Free Theatre, Good Chance, Regional Theatre Young Directors Scheme and 1927.
Artistic Director: David Lan
Executive Director: Lucy Woollatt
www.youngvic.org
