These jam-packed platforms are highlights of any CPT season: the place to see wild and wonderful new projects take their first steps.
Each bill features mix of artists or companies performing fresh-from-the-rehearsal-room work-in-development. They’re doing so because they want to know what works and what doesn’t, and they’d love you to tell them. So please join us for – and share your thoughts on – these exclusive previews of tomorrow’s most exciting theatre, today.
That Thing by fuse collective
An interdisciplinary performance that exposes the unseen reality of living with hidden disability. It combines large-scale projection, contemporary dance, live music, and autobiographical audio recordings to transport its audience to a candid world of living with chronic illness, in what has become an uncensored performance of truthfulness and vulnerability. There is hardship behind grace, and pain behind happiness. Trauma behind laughter, and fight behind a smile. Invisible does not mean untrue; it simply means it can't be seen.
First commissioned by Dancin' Oxford with support from Pegasus Theatre. Created collaboratively as fuse collective.
Dance artist: Lucy Clark
Digital artists: DANI&TING
Musician: Philip Kinshuck
Content and health warnings: Contains themes of chronic illness. It is quite stark and emotional depending on your familiarity of the reality of living with chronic illness. Projection: There is a scene where small circles spin which increasingly gets faster which can induce the sense of motion sickness. The projection has a rainbow background so there is time to prepare yourself for when it is coming. This section lasts for around 3-4 minutes in total. A few transitions between projections are sharp which can give the sense that it flashes. Flashing lights. Suitable for 15+
how to survive the story of drip by Studio 3
An aching depiction of three characters who inhabit the nether world that exists between the digital and the material, drip lives in a world piled with trash and AI generated "religious" art, where our human dreams confront the disembodies and uncanny space of our technologies. A haunting sense of expectancy pervades the piece, manifesting in a strange and monstrous climax.
Composed by: Leo Hardman-Hill, Nina Rebeiz, Yuyi Ye.
Lead roles performed by: Leo Hardman-Hill, Yuyi Ye, Selina Tseng
"Dummies" performed by: Oisin Chen, Kej Kim, Fei Zheng
Crew: Huijing Zhao (Sound Operator), George Rayner Law (Sound Design Consultant), Oisin Chen (Set Design), Leo Hardman-Hill, Yuji Ye, Nina Rebeiz (Sound and Set Design)
Content and health warnings: Flashing Lights, Loud Noises. Suitable for ages 10+
Fight Well Project by Corinne Walker
"August 8th 2021. Her 28th Birthday. Should have been the best night of her year. But it wasn’t. Ella Adebayo was under attack."
Ella becomes caught between 2 worlds when she begins to play The Fight Well Project, a hyper-realistic video game with sky-high stakes.
First developed through Camden People's Theatre Seed Commission scheme, The Fight Well Project is a one woman work in progress extract written and performed by Corinne Walker with dramaturgy by Alix Harris.
Content and health warnings: Explores themes of racism and personal experiences of health struggles. Flashing lights, loud noises. Suitable for 14+
PROBLEM Spelled In Capital Cases by Vicky Wong
Can't get it off your chest? Join us in the most (emotional) hardcore dance cardio workout you will ever see, where no feelings left leashed. Give yourself the opportunity to scream out the darkest thoughts, instead of moving on from them, and sweat out your tears. Welcome to PROBLEM Spelled In Capital Cases, a work-in-progress interactive, melodramtic and comedic psuedo-dance-cardio-session where we dance and shout till there's nothing left to throw up.
Content and health warnings: Contains mild reference to mental health issues, suicide and strong violent languages for theatrical purpose. My show is about a rendition of a conventional dance cardio session under the emo scene genre, so some wordings used might be violent and extreme and seen as insensitive. Loud noises. Suitable for 15+
This performance takes place in CPT's basement space which has step-free access via lift.
“British theatre would be completely stymied without tiny, under-resourced venues such as CPT, which are a critical part of the theatre ecology.”
Lyn Gardner Stagedoor
