The Lowry has announced a new cohort of artists who will be supported by its prestigious Artist Development Programme over 2020.
Joining as part of the Developed With programme are musical theatre company Colla Voce Theatre, TV and theatre actor and disabled artists advocate Melissa Johns and director Lily Levin, provocative theatre makers Fio, circus artist Fran Hyde and interactive theatre company TOOT who flip modern fears & anxieties into joyful collective experience.
Over the course of a year long relationship each artist or company will be given bespoke mentorship and support in order to develop and present brand new work and take a step forward in their practice.
Claire Symonds, Senior Producer: Artist Development, said
“The Lowry’s ‘Developed With’ programme take a bespoke approach to each artist or company. We support them to make work here and now, and at the same time we help them explore the things that will shape their practice over the next five or ten years.”
“We are particularly excited to be working with these new artists and companies as they are all making work that speaks to the issues in today’s society. From reclaiming the right to take joy in our bodies to the lessons of the Somali genocide, from the seductive dangers of group think to how inanimate objects and technology might replace human connection, these projects will give audiences plenty to think about.”
In addition to the ongoing Artist Development Programme The Lowry and Sustained Theatre Up North (STUN) have partnered on a commission for North West based BAME-led artists or companies making performance work.
This commission develops local Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic artistic talent, offering underrepresented voices a new opportunity to be supported by both organisations as they create a brand new production to premiere in The Lowry’s Aldridge Studio.
The STUN X Lowry Commission has been awarded to New Slang Productions, a theatre company led by Black British director Tian Glasgow, who has previously created work through programmes at The Barbican and The Young Vic. The new production, ‘Tomorrow Is Not Promised’, tells the story of a woman waking to find her house has been flattened in an earthquake as a starting point for how Black women support each other through loss.
The Lowry Artist Development Programme is supported by Arts Council England, the Eranda Rothschild Foundation and The Garrick Club Charitable Trust.
