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The Mysteries The NativityIn November 2007 Iris theatre presented the first part of Tony Harrison’s Modern Mystery Cycle : The Nativity.
With the World Premiere of new music by
Theo Bard and Catherine Kontz.
"biblical beginnings hit the heights" - Remotegoat.co.uk |
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Performance Pictures |
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By Ben Polya |
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Show Shots taken by
Pascal Ancel |
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Cast
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Music
Artistic Team
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Through the two weeks of ten performances over 400 people shaw the show. On Tues 13th Nov we had a gala opening where we were honoured with the presence of the Right Rev. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury; Tony Harrison, writer; Bob Crowley, Director and Designer, National Theatre; Sian Thomas, Actress and many others. The Archbishop returned on an unofficial visit on 24th Nov (our last night) to see the show with his son Pip. |
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Tony Harrison
Tony Harrison is Britain’s leading film and
theatre poet. He has written for the National Theatre in London, the New York Metropolitan Opera and
for the BBC and Channel 4 television. He was born in Leeds, England in 1937 and
was educated at Leeds Grammar School and Leeds University, where he read
Classics and took a diploma in Linguistics. He became the first Northern Arts
Literary Fellow (1967-8), a post that he held again in 1976-7, and he was
resident dramatist at the National Theatre
(1977-8). His work there included adaptations of Molière’s The Misanthrope and
Racine’s Phaedra Britannica. His first collection of poems, The Loiners (1970),
was awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1972, and his acclaimed version
of Aeschylus’s The Oresteia (1981) won him the first European Poetry Translation
Prize in 1983. The The Gaze of the Gorgon (1992) won the Whitbread Poetry Award.
His adaptation of the English Medieval Mystery Plays cycle was first performed
at the National Theatre in 1985. Many of his plays have been staged away from
conventional auditoria: The Trackers of Oxyrhyncus was premièred at the ancient
stadium at Delphi in 1988; Poetry or Bust was first performed at Salts Mill,
Saltaire in Yorkshire in 1993; The Kaisers of Carnuntum premiered at the ancient
Roman amphitheatre at Carnuntum in Austria; and The Labours of Herakles was
performed on the site of the new theatre at Delphi in Greece in 1995. His
translation of Victor Hugo’s The Prince’s Play was performed at the National
Theatre in 1996. His films using verse narrative include V, about vandalism,
broadcast by Channel 4 television in 1987 and winner of a Royal Television
Society Award; Black Daisies for the Bride, winner of the Prix Italia in 1994;
and The Blasphemers’ Banquet, screened by the BBC in 1989, an attack on
censorship inspired by the Salman Rushdie affair. He co-directed A Maybe Day in
Kazakhstan for Channel 4 in 1994 and directed, wrote and narrated The Shadow of
Hiroshima, screened by Channel 4 in 1995 on the 50th anniversary of the dropping
of the first atom bomb. The published text, The Shadow of Hiroshima and Other
Film/Poems (1995), won the Heinemann Award in 1996. He wrote and directed his
first feature film Prometheus in 1998. In 1995 he was commissioned by The
Guardian newspaper to visit Bosnia and write poems about the war.
His most recent
collection of poetry is Under the Clock (2005). His Collected Poems, and
Collected Film Poetry, were published in 2007. Tony Harrison lives in Newcastle
upon Tyne.
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Simon Dale - Remotegoat "In the beginning was
the venue, and what a venue. St Paul's Church in Covent Garden is a
spectacular home for this production of The Nativity. Where better to trace
the path of paradise than in a palatial seventeenth century church. Produced
and directed by Daniel Winder and performed by the company of the Iris Theatre, The Nativity is a
telling of the Old Testament from Genesis through to the birth of Jesus. |
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Dates Performed 13th -24th Nov 2007 |