Actors from Sale's Rocket Theatre are taking plays out of the theatre and into your living room
Photography by John Cocks
Actors from Sale are taking plays out of the theatre and into your living room - Photography by John Cocks
It’s a theatrical experience like no other - the drama unfolds while you watch from the comfort of your favourite armchair, the actors using your living room as the stage and your furniture as props.
And to prove Shakespeare’s assertion that all the world’s a stage, Martin Harris and Dan Willis can perform their play anywhere. ‘It’s a two-man show which doesn’t need lighting, a stage, or many props so we can perform it in restaurants, hotels, castles, churches, or anywhere else,’ said Martin, who founded Rocket Theatre in the mid-1990s.
‘The play is Oscar Wilde’s Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime,’ Martin added. ‘I play Lord Arthur Savile and Dan plays all the other parts - from a little girl to a German anarchist. It’s really good fun and people seem to like the concept of us performing it in a very different environment. We move around the venue, so everyone is in the front row at some stage and some scenes are done over people’s heads.’
Martin, a former student at Birmingham School of Acting, has wanted to act since he was a child and now also teaches acting skills at the Waterside Arts Centre near his home in Sale, but he said: ‘It is getting increasingly difficult to identify the people who genuinely want to act from the people who just want to be famous. It’s a modern contagion, driven by things like the X Factor and hopefully it’s just a passing phase.’
Rocket Theatre0161 969 1444 / 07788 723570martin@rockettheatre.co.ukwww.rockettheatre.co.uk
Trailer for Rocket Theatre's production of The Collector by John Fowles, adapted by Mark Healy. The production will be touring to theatres and arts centres in Autumn 2011
