Moving work that theatre company hopes will catch on

A city will become a theatre this week. Arts Correspondent Nick Ahad spoke to the man behind the bold project transforming Hull.

Slung Low, for the record, is one of the most exciting, boundary-pushing theatre companies in the UK today.

This is a generally accepted fact – it has almost become a tag that always runs alongside the company’s name when it appears in the national Press.

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So when the man in charge of Slung Low, Alan Lane, makes the breathless announcement that the company’s latest show “is by some distance the most epic thing we’ve done”, you sit up and take notice.

This, after all, is a company which staged Beyond The Frontline, a show which featured a cast of 134, exploding trucks, and took its audience on a journey around Manchester’s Lowry theatre. In its latest show, Mapping the City, is the company really going to go even bigger than that?

“Well, Humber Rescue are involved, our audience get taken on a bus, they end up a mile away from where they started and we take them on a journey across Hull over the space of the three hours,” says Lane. “Yes, it’s pretty epic.”

Slung Low are specialists in their field – the arena of immersive theatre. Bored with the idea that theatre meant sitting in the dark and watching actors perform on stage, Slung Low have taken theatre outside the walls of a building.

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Lane has always argued that, in our increasingly solipsistic world where iPods create a musical playlist to our lives and television is on demand, theatre needs to adapt. It is no longer enough to have one size fits all; theatre needs to put the audience at the centre of its plays.

Lane says: “In the last 30 years the way we take in and process information has totally changed – but the way we watch theatre has stayed the same.

“I’m not saying there isn’t a place for buildings and shows that happen on stage in the traditional way, but I think that means there is a place for a different sort of theatre.”

This different way of making theatre will be on display this week around Hull, the setting for Slung Low’s latest production, Mapping the City.

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The production is being funded by Imove, the programme of the Legacy Trust which celebrates the cultural arm of the 2012 Olympics.

Mapping the City starts out at the box office of Hull Truck Theatre and wanders around the city’s streets and its empty buildings.

The audience follow the story wearing headphones, listening to a script and encountering actors along their journey.

As ever, Lane is happy to talk about the elements that make up the show, but is equally keen to keep them under wraps to the wider public.

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Suffice to say, the director, working with a creative team of 31 in and around Hull, is excited about the piece.

“It is like the circus has come to town,” laughs Lane. “But we are running the thing like a military operation. We have to, it’s the only way something as epic and wide reaching as this can work.”

For the Leeds-based company, it is not so much a step up in class – The New York Times took notice of its last piece with a kind review – but a move closer to home. Lane is keen to make work in his home city, but is also aware that he has to go where the company can be supported to reach its ambitions.

“Because of the nature of what we do, it is quite important that we work with people that understand what we are trying to achieve,” says Lane.

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“The council here in Hull was very responsive and made it possible for us to come to the city. There seems to be a real groundswell of support for us here, which is wonderful and gives us the confidence to make something like this.”

Which brings us to the contentious issue. Theatre like this can work on a large scale, but for the most part it relies on the intimacy of a small audience. In this case the size of the audience on each of the five nights is limited to about 35 – the number that can get on a bus. Is it really worth creating a piece of theatre that will only be seen by about 150 people?

“It depends what you see as the aim of theatre. If it is to entertain the largest number of people possible then okay. For me it’s about the quality of experience. With this piece people will go on a journey and they will experience loss, death, be excited and see something that we hope will profoundly change them. If the choice is to profoundly change 35 people or mildly amuse 2,000, I know which I would rather do.”

Mapping The City, Hull, May 4 to 8. For more information and tickets call 01482 323638.

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