PRESS RELEASE - FUEL ANNOUNCES A PROGRAMME OF WORK FOR 2022

[Jan McNulty]

FUEL ANNOUNCES A PROGRAMME OF WORK FOR 2022

 

• A NEW PLAY BY DAVID FARR DIRECTED BY RACHEL BAGSHAW WILL PREMIERE AT WILTON’S MUSIC HALL - A DEAD BODY IN TAOS
  
   
• ADDRESSING THE LACK OF PROVISION OF ARTS IN SCHOOLS, FUEL AND SLUNG LOW COLLABORATE ON A NEW EXPERIENCE THAT WILL TOUR INTO SCHOOLS - ISSY, BOSSS AND FRACTAL
  
   
• MELLY STILL WILL CREATE A NEW PERFORMANCE THAT LOOKS AT THE ROOTS OF CLIMATE CRISIS - THE GRETCHEN QUESTION WILL PLAY AT THE MASTER SHIPWRIGHT’S HOUSE AS PART OF LEWISHAM BOROUGH OF CULTURE 2022
  
   
• FUEL CONTINUES ITS COMMITMENT TO PRODUCING WORK FOR BROADCAST AND ONLINE WITH NEW PROJECTS BY GLORIA PATRICK, LEWIS GIBSON, AND UNINVITED GUESTS
  
   
• FUEL WILL REMOUNT AND TOUR WORK BY INUA ELLAMS, COMMON WEALTH AND HEATHER AGYEPONG
  
   

Kate McGrath, Director of Fuel has today announced a programme of work for 2022 that encompasses a commitment to work for children and young people as well as work that investigates urgent global questions that face us all. Following the launch of Fuel Digital, 2022 continues this work with more groundbreaking digital projects. Projects that launched in 2021 and earlier will be revived throughout 2022 to complete an ambitious and inspiring season.

 

Kate McGrath said: “It’s a new year and a new start for us all. Despite the ongoing challenges of the pandemic, the team at Fuel – including all of the freelancers and partners with whom our work is created - have been working hard to plan an ambitious new programme of work for 2022, which we’re launching today. This season we invite you to world premieres of new shows asking the big and vital questions of our times, including David Farr and Rachel Bagshaw’s A Dead Body in Taos, and Melly Still and Max Barton’s The Gretchen Question. Powered by a commitment to the nation’s young people accessing the very best in artistic experiences, we’ll be heading right into schools – online with an inventive adaptation of Lewis Gibson’s celebrated The Day I Fell Into A Book, and in playgrounds around the country, with the premiere of Keisha Thompson and Alan Lane’s Issy, BOSSS and Fractal. Our Fuel Digital programme, launched in 2021, will see new works for streaming and broadcast next year with the world premiere of Hema Palani’s Salt and Sugar, our first animation, Osoyegbon by Gloria Patrick, and a brand new live online performance from Uninvited Guests, To Those Born Later. And to make sure our work has the widest and deepest impact it can, we’ll continue our commitment to the human rights collaboration, Fly The Flag, as well as remounting and touring Inua Ellams’ An Evening with an Immigrant and The Midnight Run, Heather Agyepong’s The Body Remembers and Common Wealth and Speakers Corner’s Peaceophobia. We know we may need to adapt our plans with agility and care and we’re ready for that. Wherever you are, we hope you’ll join us for some adventures together this year.”

 

Fuel presents

A Dead Body in Taos

Wilton’s Music Hall and touring

26th October to 12 November 2022; tour dates include Warwick Arts Centre 15th-19th November

David Farr (Writer), Rachel Bagshaw (Director)

 

The body of a 70-year-old woman is found in the New Mexico desert near the town of Taos, a place of pilgrimage for those seeking to embrace alternative forms of living. She is Kath Horvath. On her body the police find a message for her daughter, to whom she has not spoken for many years. The message reads, ‘Sam. Do not grieve. I am not here’. 

A Dead Body in Taos tells Sam’s story as she travels to New Mexico to bury her estranged mother. Gradually Sam uncovers her mothers traumatic past. her attempts to break away from her stifling American small-town upbringing, her protest days in the 60s, her experiments with alternative lifestyles and her lifelong, fruitless quest for freedom which eventually left her with nothing (and, as it turns out, everything) to live for. 

And this leads Sam to discover a shocking secret behind the mysterious message her mother left.  For in Taos, Kath Horvath has secretly exercised the ultimate right as a consumer - the right to defy death. In the most remarkable way possible.

And it leaves her daughter with a terrible decision to make.

Set against the backdrop of modern America, A Dead Body in Taos is part mystery, part sci-fi epic and part love story, that leaves the audience wondering whether, in the 21st Century, freedom is something we should run to or escape from.

A Dead Body in Taos is co-commissioned by Fuel and Warwick Arts Centre with support from Bristol Old Vic. The work is supported by Arts Council England and produced by Fuel.

 

Fuel in collaboration with Slung Low presents

Issy, BOSSS and Fractal

National tour to schools 

From May 2022

Keisha Thompson (Writer), Alan Lane (Director), Stuart Heyes (Designer), Nick Barnes (Puppetry Designer), Jack 'Hobbit' Hobbs (Composer)

 

Issy is an Environmental Specialist from the British Organisation for Seashore Surveillance or for short BOSSSsssssssss. Everything seems normal until one day something extraordinary washes up on the beach, humming, glowing, organic – like an organism found deep on the ocean floor. Issy knows enough to know that this has been built by someone very clever and can’t possibly be from this planet. It looks like a spaceship… an alien spaceship!

 

Issy, BOSSS and Fractal is a Fuel and Slung Low collaboration which centres around a journey from the classroom into a spaceship using nothing but your imagination! As the audience travel on this exciting mission, there are puzzles to solve, clues to discover, aliens to save and homes to find in this playful, interactive children’s production.

 

Issy, BOSSS and Fractal is commissioned and produced by Fuel in association with Slung Low and supported by Arts Council England. 

 

Fuel, in partnership with the Albany, We Are Lewisham and Shipwright, presents

The Gretchen Question

The Master Shipwright’s House

22nd September - 2nd October 2022

Melly Still (Co-writer and Director), Max Barton (Co-writer & Musical Composer), E.M. Parry (Designer)

 

The phrase ‘climate change’ induces helplessness and moral anxiety in almost everyone. How do we manage this sense of impotence and hopelessness?

Gretchen bears witness to the discoveries of world exploration at the Royal Society in the late 18th century. Maisie is an influencer with an exciting new brand partnership. Estelle is trying to remember what happened last night. Through these interwoven stories, The Gretchen Question dissects how we have arrived at the current climate emergency. Taking inspiration from the past, this exciting new production boldly invites us to inquire what the future holds for us.

This site-specific production will be staged outdoors in the historic grounds of the Master Shipwright’s House on the banks of the Thames in Deptford, with original composition by Max Barton and design by E. M. Parry.

Conceived by award-winning director Melly Still, this local collaboration with Shipwright will be part of We Are Lewisham, presented by Lewisham Council in partnership with the Albany. London Borough of Culture is a Mayor of London initiative.

 

Fuel presents

Osoyegbon

Release on Fuel Digital

June 2022

Gloria Patrick

 

Osoyegbon: I am not a slave.

Osoyegbon follows one woman’s journey to the UK from Nigeria following the promise of a better life; why she left, what happened when she arrived, and where she is now. 

Osoyegbon gives a moving first-hand account of courage, resilience, and survival. It is the story of the power and perseverance of one woman’s humanity in the face of unimaginable hardship. An act of testimony and defiance, Osoyegbon is a reminder of the fragility of freedom and the responsibility we all share to protect it. 

Through a combination of audio pieces, a short animated film, and an interactive live discussion, Osoyegbon seeks to raise awareness of trafficking and modern day slavery. A reminder that it is a phenomenon that happens on our doorsteps in England today.

Osoyegbon is commissioned and produced by Fuel, and was originally developed with Caryne Chapman Clark.

 

 

Lewis Gibson, Fuel and Southbank Centre present

The Day I Fell Into A Book

Schools remote touring

March 2022 previews, touring autumn 2022

Lewis Gibson

 

We are from The Institute - Safeguarding Minds.

 

We have everything under control.

We conduct experiments into the power of imaginations.   

We want to know what happens to your mind when you read.   

We want to get inside your heads.   

It is all perfectly safe.

 

Trust us. 

 

The Day I Fell  Into  A Book is a storytelling adventure for school groups that explores the magic of reading and the power of imagination. In a world where books have unexpected effects on reality and have been confined to laboratories, the students participate in a reading experiment with the Institute, journeying into a lost world of classic tales which soon seems to expand beyond the pages of books. 

 

Aimed at Year 5 and Year 6 students, The Day I Fell Into A Book tours to schools remotely, using live streaming, headphones, three-dimensional sound, and bespoke books to deliver an immersive live theatrical experience directly into the classroom.

 

 

Fuel with the support of Perform Europe presents

To Those Born Later 

Remote touring in partnership with IKUSEEARTE (Spain), Students’ City Cultural Center (Serbia) and Artopolis Association (Hungary)

April to June 2022

Uninvited Guests: Jessica Hoffmann, Richard Dufty & Paul Clarke

 

To Those Born Later is an interactive online event, which brings together groups from different countries to discuss what should go into a time capsule to be opened in 150 years.

What do you want to save for our children’s children’s children’s children? What do you want to pass down to future inhabitants of the world? Join us in preserving something of you, your community and culture, for those who are yet to be born.

Every show will be different, made with and for its audience. The content of the time capsule is chosen by those in each meeting and added to a growing online archive.

Covid and the climate crisis have made us more conscious of how we live in one world and how our problems and our dreams for the future need to be looked at on an international basis. In response to this unique moment in history, To Those Born Later will bring geographically distant people together for live connection and debate about our legacy and what matters. The aim is to enable exchanges between people in different cities and countries, around what personal objects should be passed down and what from our cultures we should take care of.

 

 

Fuel presents
Salt and Sugar
Fuel Digital
Spring 2022
Hemabharathy Palani (creator and performer); JJ Abraham (director); Jasmin Kent Rodgman (composer)

Salt and Sugar is a new dance film by award-winning choreographer and dancer Hemabharathy Palani. The project was commissioned by Fuel, developed as a live performance with acclaimed director Hetain Patel, and adapted into a film with director JJ Abraham, with original music composed by Jasmin Kent Rodgman.   

 

Salt and Sugar begins with a memory. A comment from her mother reveals to Hema the impossible gap between who she is and who others demand her to be, leading to a tail-spin through growing up in a society teaching that a woman should not have dark skin. Deeply personal and evocative, Hema’s choreography in Salt and Sugar combines classical Indian dance forms with contemporary movement to tell an urgent story which leads us through the psychological journey of finding the determination to redefine beauty and captures, against the epic landscapes of Bangalore, our capacity for resilience.  

 

Salt and Sugar looks at the complexities of Indian culture through classical Indian dance, spoken word, contemporary movement and cultural references. This striking new film explores feminism, family relationships and what it means to be an Indian woman today.

 

Salt and Sugar is commissioned and produced by Fuel in collaboration with Attakkalari.

 

Revivals and remounts

 

In addition to these new productions, Fuel will present revivals of previously presented work including: an international tour of An Evening with an Immigrant by Inua Ellams, new iterations of Inua Ellams The Midnight Run, Common Wealth, Speakers Corner and Bradford Modified Club’s epic site specific Peaceophobia, and London transfer dates for Heather Agyepong’s The Body Remembers.

 

 

NOTES TO EDITORS 

 

About Fuel 

Fuel leads the field in independent producing in the UK’s live performance sector. They work with  brilliant artists to make fresh experiences for adventurous people. To date, many of these experiences  have been theatre, whether that’s in an actual theatre, on the streets, in community settings, or in  purpose-built structures. All of the artists Fuel works with produce shows, performances or experiences  which have clear, direct and playful relationships with their audiences. They appeal to the emotions and  the intellect. Things that make you laugh and cry. These artists see the world in a different way; they  respond to challenges and difficulties with ingenuity and ideas; they create something unexpected  which articulates something new to audiences. Fuel was founded in 2004 and is led by Kate McGrath.  Fuel is supported by Arts Council England as a National Portfolio Organisation, the Backstage Trust, the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, the Fenton Trust, the Foyle Foundation, the  Garfield Weston Foundation, the  Garrick Trust, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust through Sustaining Excellence. Fuel’s programme of work for children and young people in 2022/23 is supported by an Arts Council England Project Grant.

 

Fuel reaches a wide audience both in and outside London: 75-80% of their annual activity happens  outside London. In 2020/21, Fuel worked with 453 artists, creatives and crew over 664 presentations at 39 venues reaching 519,130 audience members. Partners include: National Theatre,  Edinburgh International Festival, Leeds Playhouse, Birmingham Rep, Manchester Royal Exchange,  Wales Millennium Centre, and Royal Lyceum Edinburgh. 

 

Fuel acts as producer, fundraiser, dramaturg and marketer, encourages collaboration between artists, researchers, creatives, organisations and technical teams to enable artists to create the very best work they can. Fuel aims for its work to reflect the UK and its people on stage, behind the scenes, and in the  audience. 

 

Fuel works with theatre-makers from diverse backgrounds, with a particular commitment to underrepresented voices. Fuel seeks to reach diverse audiences by making high-quality work as accessible as possible, and presenting work throughout the UK. 48% of Fuel’s 2020/21 programme of work was led by Black, Asian and ethnically diverse artists, and 37% of Fuel’s audience were first time attenders.

 

Perform Europe is an EU-funded project aimed to rethink how performing arts works are presented across borders in a more inclusive, sustainable and balanced way by testing new touring and distribution practices and providing policy recommendations for a future EU support scheme. This 18-month journey includes a research phase, launching a digital platform, testing a support scheme, and designing policy recommendations. Perform Europe is funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and co-managed by a Consortium of 5 organisations: IETM – International network for contemporary performing arts, the European Festivals Association (EFA), Circostrada, EDN – European Dancehouse Network, and IDEA Consult.