The Exeter Daily - New Writing

Shotgunned - UK-Wide Tour Kicks Off in Exeter This Weekend

kangaroocourt — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 17:39:24 +0000

Shotgunned, a brand new play written and directed by Matt Anderson, starts its 37 night UK-wide tour this weekend at Barnfield Theatre in Exeter.

Shotgunned tells the story of Dylan and Roz, a couple who unexpectedly fall out of love. It is a poignant and humorous reflection on the messy and the beautiful in relationships and how we can come up against a dead end, no matter how much we care for each other. It also speaks about our dreams and the courage and resilience it takes to follow them. In equal parts hilarious and heart-breaking, Shotgunned is a relatable and intimate piece of theatre about the people we lose that shape who we become.

The show is brought to the stage by Kangaroo Court - a creative studio specialising in theatre and film production. Off the back of a successful three-night run in Falmouth and Truro last year, the team at Kangaroo Court have been busy building a self-funded UK-wide tour of the show. Now, as things stand, Shotgunned has 37 shows performing at theatres in Cornwall, Exeter, Bath, London, Brighton, and Edinburgh.

Secure your tickets for this spellbinding new show on Exeter Northcott's official website by searching for Shotgunned. Performance dates are Friday 1st and Saturday 2nd March, 7:30pm.

Be sure to keep up-to-date with all things Shotgunned by following @roocourt on Instagram.

Shotgunned

kangaroocourt — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 15:54:44 +0000

Shotgunned tells the story of Dylan and Roz, a couple who unexpectedly fall out of love.

It is a poignant and humorous reflection on the messy and the beautiful in relationships and how we can come up against a dead end, no matter how much we care for each other. It also speaks about our dreams and the courage and resilience it takes to follow them.

In equal parts hilarious and heart-breaking, Shotgunned is a relatable and intimate piece of theatre about the people we lose that shape who we become.

Written and directed by Matt Anderson, Shotgunned is Kangaroo Court’s debut production. It comes to The Barnfield as part of a UK-wide tour, performing at theatres in Cornwall, Devon, Bath, London, Brighton, and Edinburgh.

Press for this production

‘Both actors did an amazing job… Roz and Dylan’s story is told with a healthy mix of charm and wit. You find yourself laughing out loud one moment and gripping for tissues the next… Shotgunned breaks your heart, patches it together and then breaks it again.’ FalWriting

‘Despite focussing on a break up, Shotgunned is very funny throughout.’ ★★★★★ The Packet

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Event Date

Friday, March 1, 2024 - 7:30pm to Saturday, March 2, 2024 - 8:45pm

Category

Events

Theatre

Venue

The Barnfield Theatre, Exeter

Radio Head Documental Theatre

Cally Hayes — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 15:03:35 +0000

An Unmissable Evening Of Eavesdropping

Go on admit it! Don’t you love to listen in on other people’s conversations?

The beauty of cracking good radio drama is you can revel in this guilty pleasure without being caught. But in an age of iPhones, and iPods, people increasingly listen to audio drama alone, while being jostled by commuters or mithered by children, and have no one to gas to about the characters with afterwards. Now a group of Devon-based playwrights are plotting to buck this trend...

This July Exeter’s historic Boat Shed will be taken over by The Bike Shed Theatre for a pop-up season of events. The Boat Shed once housed Exeter’s Maritime Museum, which celebrated obsolete traditions from a bygone age. So it seems fitting that on 16th July, Documental Theatre will be reinvigorating the long-lost tradition of sitting round the wireless to hear a radio play.

“There is something so intimate about radio drama,” says Documental Theatre’s Cally Hayes, “You create all the images in your head. And if the play is broadcast in a theatre space the audience can immerse themselves in the story and enjoy the reactions of other listeners. Afterwards they can discuss the characters in the bar. All this makes for a really absorbing experience that people haven’t made time for in decades...not since the days of gathering around the wireless for a drama from Auntie Beeb.”
During the “listening evening” on 16th July, appropriately called RADIO HEAD, audience members will be invited to bring knitting and share tea and cake. There are three short New Writing radio dramas on the bill and there will be time for a short Q &A afterwards, so that people can ask the writers what inspired the audio landscapes in their pieces.

First on the bill is SPLIT SECOND by Cally Hayes, a gripping tale of a couple’s reaction to an unplanned-for antenatal test. The drama unfolds with beautiful sound design by Philip Robinson - “a rawness & vulnerability that struck a chord” It was recorded in Exeter’s Sound Gallery Studios.

Next up is YOU CAN HIDE THE EARTH WITH YOUR HAND by Jon Nash. Two Teenagers, Lewis and Sophie meet on Cley Hill in Wiltshire to watch a meteor shower. Their home town seems so small and boring by comparison but they discover that sometimes the magical and extraordinary thing you are looking for has been right in front of you all along. A theatre version of the script delighted audiences at the Salisbury Fringe in 2015.

Last up is PULLING OUT by Lucy Bell, a “fast paced, emotive and tender” (EXEUNT) story of failed contraception and angry baby mothers, also produced at Exeter’s Sound Gallery, and inspired by conversations with teenage dads. The drama is woven with eye-opening talking heads.

Documental Theatre, which represented Devon in Nation’s Theatre Festival 2016, is blazing a trail with audio drama. They have organised other shared “listening evenings”, one in Fore Street’s Glorious Arthouse Café, and are interested in co-producing small scale radio drama with community groups, and broadcasting plays in prisons and hospital units. This way this most intimate of art forms, can become a truly shared experience.

RADIO HEAD will be a celebration of this endeavour, and hopefully others will be inspired to self-produce radio drama too. Not everyone can get to the theatre and Radio Four doesn’t always represent the diversity of stories to be told out there.”

So get out your earbuds, clean out your ears, and get along to RADIO HEAD at The Boat Shed on 16th July at 6pm. It’s amazing what you hear if you listen closely...
Tickets available online
https://www.bikeshedtheatre.co.uk/shows/radio-head/

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Event Date

Sunday, July 16, 2017 - 6:00pm

Category

Theatre

Venue

Exeter Boat Shed the Quay

Radio Head Documental Theatre

Cally Hayes — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 15:03:35 +0000

An Unmissable Evening Of Eavesdropping

Go on admit it! Don’t you love to listen in on other people’s conversations?

During the “listening evening” on 16th July, appropriately called RADIO HEAD, audience members will be invited to bring knitting and share tea and cake. There are three short New Writing radio dramas on the bill and there will be time for a short Q &A afterwards, so that people can ask the writers what inspired the audio landscapes in their pieces.

So get out your earbuds, clean out your ears, and get along to RADIO HEAD at The Boat Shed on 16th July at 6pm. It’s amazing what you hear if you listen closely...

Tickets available online
https://www.bikeshedtheatre.co.uk/shows/radio-head/

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Image

Event Date

Sunday, July 16, 2017 - 6:00pm

Category

Events

Venue

Exeter Boat Shed the Quay

Documental Theatre at the Boat Shed

Cally Hayes — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 13:10:13 +0000

An Unmissable Evening Of Eavesdropping

Go on admit it! Don’t you love to listen in on other people’s conversations?

During the “listening evening” on 16th July, appropriately called RADIO HEAD, audience members will be invited to bring knitting and share tea and cake.

There are three short New Writing radio dramas on the bill and there will be time for a short Q &A afterwards, so that people can ask the writers what inspired the audio landscapes in their pieces.

“Documental Theatre wanted to explore radio drama production because our actors are so ugly. Only joking. We figured that in a climate of arts cuts, radio allows you to create topical, powerful, well-scripted drama, and there is no limit to how many people you can reach, " says Lucy Bell, writer and co-founder of the company. "There is a really exciting grass roots podcast-making scene developing in Devon. As well as listening evenings, Documental would like to explore “Forum Radio” where listeners call in to influence the ending of a radio drama. RADIO HEAD will be a celebration of this endeavour, and hopefully others will be inspired to self-produce radio drama too. Not everyone can get to the theatre and Radio Four doesn’t always represent the diversity of stories to be told out there.”

So get out your earbuds, clean out your ears, and get along to RADIO HEAD at The Boat Shed on 16th July at 6pm. It’s amazing what you hear if you listen closely...

Tickets available online
https://www.bikeshedtheatre.co.uk/shows/radio-head/

Twentysomething: a reading list (part of Exeter Ignite)

tomd — Wed, 14 May 2014 10:59:16 +0000

A new, intimate play about Millennials and trying to get on in that 'real life' thing that everyone harps on about...

4th (6pm), 5th (8pm) and 6th (6pm) June 2014
Tickets available now from ignitexeter.org.uk
£7 (or cheaper the more shows you book - 5 shows for £25)

Relationships are complicated. So is University. And so is ‘real life’ afterwards. Over a third of graduates have to move back home after University, and not by choice. Almost half remain unemployed or on minimum wage. ‘Twentysomething: a reading list’ is a new play about ‘Generation Y’ and life before and after graduation.

It’s about conversations, coffee, good books, and camping. About dissertations, student nights, and Uni Halls. It’s about graduation, unemployment, and the Millennial Generation. Told through a series of conversations between themselves and the audience, we follow a young couple who meet at University, crisscrossing their memories and timelines in a non-chronological fashion.

Starring Ali Sondreal and Patrick McHugh
With music written and performed by Tim Clack

Written and Directed by Tom Drayton, who’s small scale, intimate shows (with Pregnant Fish Theatre) have been described as ‘exactly what theatre should try to be: relevant to both company and audience... Tangible, and human scaled’ (Empire of The Will on 2012’s Dorian Gray). Test audiences have described ‘Twentysomething...’ as ‘beautiful and relatable’; ‘it made me very happy, and very sad - but in a good way.’

Find us on Twitter: @20somethinglist

Tags

Exeter ignite festival

Exeter ignite

The rusty bike

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External Video

Twentysomething: a reading list - Show Trailer

Event Date

Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - 6:00pm to Friday, June 6, 2014 - 9:15pm

Category

Theatre

Venue

The Rusty Bike, Exeter