07 February 2019
Newsdesk
Nina Lyndon and Sam Curtis Lindsay, co-Artistic Directors and co-Founders of Hackney Showroom, today announce the launch of their new production company Hackney Showroom Productions as they prepare to leave the company’s current premises at Hackney Downs Studios in East London. Also announced is the launch of the company’s artist development programme Hackney Showroom Arts Lab.
After 4 years, Hackney Showroom leave their current building at the end of February and move to new headquarters in Hackney. With an incubator and rehearsal space for artists set for 2019, long term plans for a permanent performance venue are in development.
Hackney Showroom Productions expands the producing arm of the company in 2019. Their sell-out show Burgerz by Travis Alabanza returns, with a run at Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2019 (venue to be announced) ahead of a UK and European tour.
The company announces their third show, For All The Women Who Thought They Were Mad by Zawe Ashton, directed by Associate Director Jo McInnes, will be produced later this year. Further details to be announced shortly.
HACKNEY SHOWROOM ARTS LAB
Hackney Showroom expands its artist development work with the launch of Hackney Showroom Arts Lab. This initiative will continue the company’s work supporting non- mainstream theatre makers - actors, drag performers, cabaret artists, poets, live artists and actor-musicians - to make new work for the stage.
Hackney Showroom Arts Lab works with artists who sit outside the mainstream, supporting underrepresented artists with meaningful, critical dramaturgical support and thoughtful artistic interventions. The company seek out marginalised voices who are also theatrically innovative and support the whole journey of the artist, from artist development to full production.
Addressing the craft of play-making in the context of experimental performance, this work with artists breaks new boundaries in performance, yet at the same time honours the form of the play, with narrative and storytelling.
Hackney Showroom are providing a dedicated space in East London to support these artists, with further details to be announced shortly.
Nina Lyndon and Sam Curtis Lindsay said today “Faced with short lease terms and unsustainable year on year rent increases, we have made the bold decision to leave our current building in order to pursue plans for a long term, sustainable premises that can provide a permanent home for our work, our artists and our audiences in Hackney. This marks an exciting new chapter for the company, as we move more towards in-house producing and artist development. We’re thrilled to be working with a cohort of non- traditional theatre makers who want to create full-length theatre performance.
Following the success of Burgerz, we’re excited to roll out a striking and original programme of new theatre performance for 2019 and beyond.”
Dawn Walton, Chair of Hackney Showroom, added, “Since launching Hackney Showroom in 2015, the organisation has engaged over 80,000 audience members and hosted 1,900 artists. Hackney Showroom consistently works with artists who sit outside the mainstream - LGBTQIA+ artists, artists of colour, under 25s and disabled artists, looking beyond the single-initiative model: at Hackney Showroom, inclusion is the norm. These new directions will allow the company to focus on our long-term commitments to our audience communities and to our artists.”
HACKNEY SHOWROOM is a cultural organisation which supports exceptional artists to make live performance. Our theatre productions wow audiences and our Arts Lab is an inclusive, inspiring home for theatre makers. Our hallmark is our support of artists who sit outside the mainstream, developing their craft and carving out a space for marginalised voices and those innovating new forms of performance.
Hackney Showroom presents
BURGERZ
BY TRAVIS ALABANZA
Directed by Sam Curtis Lindsay; Set and Costume Design: Soutra Gilmour
Associate Designer: Isabella Van Braeckel; Lighting Design: Lee Curran and Lauren Woodhead
Sound Design: XANA; Movement: Nando Messias
Hurled words. Thrown objects. Dodged Burgers.
After someone threw a burger at them and shouted a transphobic slur, performance artist Travis Alabanza became obsessed with burgers.
How they are made, how they feel, and smell. How they travel through the air. How the mayonnaise feels on your skin.
This show is the climax of their obsession – exploring how trans bodies survive and how, by them reclaiming an act of violence, we can address our own complicity.
Carving out a place for themselves as one of the UK’s prominent trans voices, Alabanza presents a performance that is timely, unsettling and powerful.
Hackney Showroom presents
FOR ALL THE WOMEN WHO THOUGHT THEY WERE MAD
BY ZAWE ASHTON
Directed by Jo McInnes
For All The Women Who Thought They Were Mad tells the story of a career woman, Joy and her descent into psychological freefall. As the play takes us on a surreal journey through Joy’s slippage, we question whether her distorted reality is simply reality seen through the prism of racial bias - one where psychosis is no more surreal than a black woman’s day to day experience of white, male hegemony.
At the intersection of race, gender and mental health, Ashton’s extraordinary, experimental and urgent piece of theatre examines the multitude of forces that collide and conspire against black women living in contemporary Britain today.
