Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch have today announced the cast and creative team for In This Smoking Chaos, playing 15 – 24 September as part of the Theatre’s Blueprint Festival.
Part theatre, part art installation, part cinema – artist and designer Laura Ann Price and her team of collaborators have devised a raw human drama of 31 scenes in 31 minutes. It will be played by two performers, who act, dance and perform spoken word poetry and create live soundscapes. Laura is interested in how design and scene changes can tell a story beyond words.
This production is led by its design. The playing space is an impressive five-metre high cube on the main stage of Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch that revolves to reveal the different facades and interiors of the constantly shifting scenery. Projections and bold lighting illuminate the cube, and a soundtrack of high-octane contemporary music sets the emotional tone of the haunting drama.
From the poetic paintings of Edward Hopper to the “disrupt and disturb” cinema of Gaspar Noé, In This Smoking Chaos is inspired by a whole range of cultural influences. Classical music meets rave meets ambient sound on a soundtrack originally inspired by the heartfelt music of Fred Again (the DJ and producer to Stormzy, Ed Sheeran and Aitch).
Laura Ann Price represented the UK at Prague Quadrennial, an international event that aims to bring together the best of performance design, scenography and theatre architecture from around the world every four years. To celebrate the diversity of performance design in the UK, the Society of British Theatre Design selected some of the most exciting artists working today to exhibit in a show called Staging Places: UK Design for Performance 2015-2019. She showcased her 2018 design for Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads for Leeds Playhouse.
Other design credits include: The Rising Sun in association with David Shearing, Donmar Resident Design Assistant, Hello & Goodbye (York Theatre Royal), Dinner 18:55 (Leeds Playhouse), Linbury Finalist 2019, Talking Heads (Leeds Playhouse), Economy of Ecology (New Diorama & HOME Manchester), and Heretic Voices (Arcola Theatre).
31-year-old Laura said “Blueprint is opening doors for creatives to explore ground breaking ways of working both inside and outside of conventional theatre spaces. To be afforded the opportunity to experiment and create with the support of the technical staff at Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch is a game changer for me as an artist and designer. Thanks to QTH for taking a risk at a time when it would’ve been easy to fall back into safe norms and for championing artists and new work.”
Laura’s collaborators are: Raisa Daya Deputy Stage Manager, Jitney (Old Vic/Headlong), Bring It On (Southbank Centre); Charlie Derrar Director, Dramaturg and Lyricist, Hand of God (The Hope Theatre), Clockwork (Bolton Great Hall); Yael Elisheva Performer and Deviser, Pride Table (Avenues: The World School), Take On Me (Retro Factory); Bar Groisman Movement Director and Deviser, This Is Not A Show About Hong Kong (Edinburgh Fringe – Fringe First Award), Bar co-founded Sababa Co (a contemporary dance theatre company); Tatenda Matsvai Performer, Deviser and Lyricist, Anybody of Water (Theatre Peckham), Dark Matter (Black Womxn In Theatre); Stephen Pemble Lighting Designer, All My Sons and Neville’s Island (Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch); and Anna Short Sound Designer, Seven Celebrations (Orange Tree), I Know I Know I Know (Southwark Playhouse).
Blueprint: a festival of new ideas has something for everyone. Two weeks of 12 exciting events inside and outside the theatre using every available space from the rooftop to the basement and carpark – with new writing, immersive experiences, a scratch night, culinary delights, promenade performances, Essex stories, accessible performances, DJ Deaf Rave and more. Most events are £5 plus 65p QNext Fee and some are free.
Tickets for In This Smoking Chaos are £5, £3 concessions. For more details about In This Smoking Chaos and the full programme of the Blueprint Festival, visit www.queens-theatre.co.uk or call the Box Office on 01708 443333. Blueprint runs from 12 – 24 September.