Dir. Deborah Paige, Composer Charlotte Glasson
Director
Deborah Paige and team, including composer
Charlotte Glasson and voice specialist
Kate Terris, will be ‘in residence’ at York Theatre Royal to develop a new play by acclaimed award winning writer
Jenny Erpenbeck (
Visitation,
The End of Days,
Go Went Gone) in April 2017.
Cats Have Nine Lives – in a new translation by
Richenda Gillespie made possible through funding from the Goethe-Institut London – has never been performed in the UK.
In this tough, poetic drama,
Erpenbeck throws open questions about the way our lives are bound up with beginnings and endings – uncovering loneliness, loss of identity, dependency and love through a series of powerfully inter-connecting scenes between two women and their post-death selves.
York Theatre Royal is hosting this innovative residency in collaboration with St Leonard’s Hospice in York as part of an initiative to encourage people to talk more openly about death and dying through interaction with the arts. The input of hospice practitioners will be an invaluable addition to our explorations. Our discoveries and artistic adventures will inform a production at a later date, helping us to bring this extraordinary and important play to a wider audience.
Throughout the residency,
Charlotte Glasson will be working with the York Theatre Royal community choir on a specially commission sung score to accompany the play and
Kate Terris will be offering voice workshops to St Leonard’s staff and volunteers.
There will be a performed sharing including a Q&A session for an invited audience on Saturday 22 April from 4pm - 7pm at York Theatre Royal.
Residency team:
Deborah Paige (Director)
Charlotte Glasson (Composer)
Kate Terris (Voice Specislaist)
Charlotte Espiner (Designer),
Andrina Caroll (Actor)
Naomi Wirthner (Actor)
Damian Cruden (Artistic Director York Theatre Royal/Dramaturgy) Staff and volunteers from St Leonard’s Hospice, YTR Community Choir.
Jenny Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. She is the author of several works of fiction, including The Book of Words (2007) and Visitation (2010), both translated by Susan Bernofsky and published by New Directions. The End of Days won the prestigious Hans Fallada Prize in 2014. Also an opera director, she currently lives in Berlin.
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