Endgame

10.10.2007

Endgame

Theatre Workshop presents                                                       

Samuel Beckett’s ENDGAME

“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness” 

  • Scottish Arts Council backs Theatre Workshop to become Scotland’s leading touring company

  • Robert Rae directs the UK’s foremost disabled actors Nabil Shaban & Garry Robson

  • Featuring ‘kinetic’ set especially designed by world famous artist collective Sharmanka

  • Touring Scotland and to Liverpool in November 2007

  • In anticipation of demand, new dates announced in February 2008

 

10th October 2007: Theatre Workshop is taking a production of Samuel Beckett’s classic play Endgame on the road across Scotland this November after the Scottish Arts Council (SAC) backed the Edinburgh-based theatre to become a national touring company. The production reunites the creative team behind 2004’s critically acclaimed Theatre Workshop production of Brecht’s Threepenny Opera and is the first following the SAC-funded transformation.

Theatre Workshop artistic director Robert Rae will direct the UK’s foremost disabled actors Nabil Shaban and Garry Robson in the play which opens on 1st November at Theatre Workshop and then tours Scotland. Renowned arts collective Sharmanka has also created a stunning new kinetic set especially for the production. Noted Scottish actors Dolina MacLennan and Raymond Short complete the formidable line-up of artistic talent.

Opening with five nights at Theatre Workshop in Edinburgh at the beginning of November, Endgame will tour to five other theatres across Scotland that month as well as appearing at disability arts festival DaDa Fest in Liverpool. And in anticipation of popular demand, the tour is now being extended to a further seven Scottish theatres in February 2008. The ambitious move boosts Theatre Workshop’s bid to become Scotland’s leading national touring theatre company. Under its new funding agreement with the Scottish Arts Council, Theatre Workshop will produce a large scale national touring show or a medium-scale production on a year about basis.

Robert Rae says, “It's wonderful that the SAC has recognised the quality of the work at Theatre Workshop and given us the resources to bring that to a wider audience. This is the start of a new future.

The work at Theatre Workshop has led to a growing number of fine professional disabled actors choosing to live in Edinburgh and Nabil and Garry have really been extraordinary pioneering actors who have paved the way for professional disabled actors in theatre, film and TV.

I have been a fan of Sharmanka since I visited their fantastic studio in Glasgow and was as entranced and engaged by their work as my kids. We were filming [Theatre Workshop feature film] Trouble Sleeping recently on the steps of the National Museum and I must have heard a half a dozen kids talking excitedly about the Millennium Clock which is wonderful.

It is always a pleasure for me to team up with Dolinna Maclennan who is such an iconic figure in Scottish theatre.

It’s fifty years since Endgame was first published and Beckett's fear of the end of the world was nuclear and ours is now global warming and his analysis of power and imperialism and the frailty of the human condition are as relevant now as they were then. My ambition was to create as clear a production of Endgame as I can and I think I have all the elements in place to make that possible.”

SHARMANKA was first inspired by Beckett’s play in 1990 while still based in Russia. Founding members sculptor/mechanic Eduard Bersudsky and theatre director Tatyana Jakovskaya created a sculpture entitled The Dreamer in the Kremlin which is now in the collection of the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art. For Endgame, Sharmanka – in close collaboration with the core artistic team at Theatre Workshop - has created an ingenious kinetic set designed especially for this production: a unique and powerful backdrop for Beckett’s starkly apocalyptic vision.

Ends 

PERFORMANCES NOVEMBER 2007       

  • Edinburgh: 7.30pm, 1st – 3rd & 6th & 7th (signed performance 7th)*, Theatre Workshop 0131 226 5425
  • Cumbernauld: 7.45pm, 8th, Cumbernauld Theatre 01236 732 887
  • Peebles: 7.30pm, 10th, Eastgate Theatre 01721 725 777
  • Dunkeld: 8.00pm, 15th, Birnam Arts Centre 01350 727 674
  • Castle Douglas: 7.30pm, 17th, Lochside Theatre 01556 504 506
  • Glasgow: 7.30pm, 21st – 23rd (signed performance 22nd), The Arches 0141 565 1000
  • Liverpool: 8.00pm, 27th, Liverpool Unity Theatre (as part of DaDa Fest) 0151 709 4988
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PERFORMANCES FEBRUARY 2008

  • Dundee: 7.45pm, 2nd, Dundee Rep 01382 223 530
  • Banchory: 7.30pm, 9th, Woodend Barn 01330 825 431
  • Stornoway: 8.00pm, 13th, An Lanntair Arts Centre 01851 703 307
  • Inverness: 7.30pm, 15th & 16th, Eden Court Theatre 01463 234 234
  • St Andrews: 8.00pm, 19th, The Byre Theatre 01334 475 000
  • East Kilbride: 7.30pm, 21st, East Kilbride Arts Centre 01355 261 000
  • Glasgow: 7.30pm, 23rd, Gilmorehill G12 0141 330 5522

 

* Please contact Theatre Workshop for details of other signed performances 

Contact: Hugo Fluendy on 0778 787 7511 / hugo_fluendy@hotmail.com

 

Notes to editors

Theatre Workshop Edinburgh was founded in 1965. In the last eleven years under the artistic direction of Robert Rae, it has established itself as Scotland’s premier small-scale professional producing theatre. In 2000, Theatre Workshop became the first professional producing theatre in Europe to include professional disabled actors in all main house productions. For more information please visit www.theatre-workshop.com

Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre was formed by sculptor/mechanic Eduard Bersudsky and theatre director Tatyana Jakovskaya in St Petersburg in 1988. Sergey Jakovsky joined the team in his early teens and is now sound and lighting designer. Sharmanka has been performing its mechanical ballet in Glasgow since 1995 in addition to regular international touring commitments and major one-off commissions such as The Millennium Clock at the Royal Museum in Edinburgh. Eduard Bersudsky was the recipient of a Creative Scotland Award in 2005. For more information please visit www.sharmanka.com