Pentabus Theatre present the world premiere of award-winning writer Clare Bayley’s new play Blue Sky, a gripping political thriller Following the hugely successful run of For Once last year, Pentabus return to Hampstead Theatre this October with a new artistic director, Elizabeth Freestone, and the world premiere of a brand new play - Clare Bayley’s Blue Sky, a fast-paced political thriller tackling ’extraordinary rendition’. Developed in collaboration with the National Theatre Studio, Blue Sky opens at Hampstead Theatre in London in October before a week-long run at the Sherman Cymru in Cardiff in November. Blue Sky asks us to question what might be happening in the English countryside in the dead of the night. Isolated airports, secret assignations - how much do we really know about what our governments are involved in? And do we want to know, or is it easier to turn a blind eye? The play explores the role of investigative journalism as a means of exposing truth and how the boundaries between traditional and citizen journalism are becoming increasingly blurred. Jane, a driven journalist, and Ray, a cautious plane-spotter, are old friends who lost touch, but Jane has a hunch about a story and now needs Ray’s help. Meanwhile, a man is missing and his wife Mina doesn’t know where he’s gone. Ray’s ambitious daughter Ana is keen to blog about Jane’s story, but might she prove more hindrance than help? Blue Sky brings these characters together to probe big questions about our collective responsibility in the face of the seemingly innocent. The cast includes Sarah Malin, Jacob Krichefski, Dominique Bull and Manjeet Mann. Elizabeth Freestone, Artistic Director of Pentabus Theatre says: “Blue Sky is a terrific new play by a writer at the top of her game. Following the huge success of Clare’s play The Container, she has established herself as a heavyweight playwright with theatrical flair and political intent. My first season as Artistic Director at Pentabus is all about reclaiming the rural world as a place of protest and discourse. We might think of the English countryside as charmed and passive, but in reality, it’s as engaged in and affected by the turn of global events as anywhere else. Blue Sky looks at just that.” Playwright Clare Bayley said: It’s easy for us all to feel very powerless, that there’s nothing we can do against governments and security services. It’s not even that we’re scared – we just don’t feel we can have any effect. I was amazed, writing this play, how few people really knew what had been going on around so called “extraordinary rendition”, even though by then all the information was in the public domain. Blue Sky is part of Pentabus Theatre’s Radical Rural season running throughout 2012 and marking the first season led by new artistic director Elizabeth Freestone. Radical Rural seeks to examine our relationship to our political rural past, and present. It includes three world premieres by award-winning writers, a first collaboration between Pentabus and the Royal Shakespeare Company, a village hall tour of last year’s hit For Once, and a large scale outdoor community project. www.pentabus.co.uk Blue Sky is on at the Hampstead Theatre Studio from Wednesday 24 October until Saturday 3 November and at the Sherman Cymru in Cardiff from Tuesday 13 until Saturday 17 November. Press night for Blue Sky at the Hampstead is on Thursday 25 October at 7.15pm |
| Pentabus Theatre web site: www.pentabus.co.uk |
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Tuesday, November 6, 2012 |
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