PRESS RELEASE
An indoor fairground tent will contain a forty-minute visual evocation of ideas and aspects of Paradise as told to the producers by a huge cross-section of Londoners.
Their voices will be heard as a troupe of actors, all over the age of 60, create, through dance, physical theatre, tableaux and conjuring tricks, a series of short and witty theatrical scenes.
3rdthought, the over 60's drama group and satellite of 1st Framework have been making sound recordings with people from community centres, schools, convents,
sheltered housing units, markets and many other places in five London boroughs for the last eight weeks -assembling many different views of the heavenly, lost world, religious, domestic and ecstatic aspects of the idea of Paradise.
Guest
Artistes At each location on the five borough tour a five minute
presentation will be made by a local over 60's voluntary arts group.
They include :
Tower Hamlets - Green Candle Senior Dancers, Croydon - Together In
Waddon, Camden/Islington - Latin American Elders Group,
Westminster/Kensington& Chelsea - Venture Centre Elders Group,
Newham Leap Of Faith Dance Group.
The production team involved have been two radio producers, Jules Wilkinson and Lore Windemuth, designer Ana Jebens and choreographer Marie Lawrence together with 1st Framework's artistic director Peter Avery and producer Maxine Webster.
Early workshops have taken place at Stratford Circus under the auspices of Theatre Venture. Arts Council England awarded the group and the project a grant in April 2006.
Rehearsals begin in earnest in September with performances taking place in Camden, Croydon, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Westminster in November and December 2006 with a gala event involving the participants from all five boroughs in Stratford Circus in the week of December 4 –10.
