Theatre M

International Ibsen Award 2022 winner Back to Back Theatre to tour UK

Image Credit: Jeff Busby
  • After picking up their Ibsen Award prize in Oslo this coming September, Back to Back Theatre are to tour two of their most celebrated works across the UK
  • The company, who were the first Australian group to win the award, is composed predominantly of actors with intellectual disabilities
  • THE SHADOW WHOSE PREY THE HUNTER BECOMES and THE DEMOCRATIC SET will tour venues in Brighton, London, Leeds and Cambridge from 19th October to 5th November

Acclaimed Australian theatre company Back to Back have announced a string of performances across the UK this autumn. The company, which features an ensemble of actors with disabilities, won the coveted 2022 International Ibsen Award earlier this year, considered the ‘Nobel Prize of Theatre’. Based in the Victorian regional centre of Geelong, they have undertaken 72 national and 89 international seasons of their work, performing at leading contemporary arts festivals and venues all over the world.

By fusing the factual and fictional, the experienced and speculative, the brutal and gentle, Back to Back Theatre creates dramatic art that is always unpredictable, always unexpected, and always unique. Since starting out in 1987, they have, in the words of the International Ibsen Awards committee, “consistently and defiantly challenged social and cultural perceptions and constructs.” Never settling for easy solutions and neat notions of closure, Back to Back Theatre opt instead for a theatre of possibilities, a theatre grounded in collaboration, multiple co-existing perspectives and necessary chaos, acknowledging that democracy is messy and difficult.

This Autumn, Back to Back will tour across the UK with two of their most celebrated works, THE SHADOW WHOSE PREY THE HUNTER BECOMES and THE DEMOCRATIC SET. THE SHADOW WHOSE PREY THE HUNTER BECOMES was co-conceived in 2019 by Back to Back’s core ensemble of 6 full-time performers. Weaving a narrative through human rights, sexual politics, and the projected dominance of artificial intelligence, the play is a sly theatrical revelation inspired by mistakes, mis-readings, mis-leadings and misunderstanding, reminding us that none of us are self-sufficient and all of us are responsible.

In this provocative and challenging story, Simon, Scott and Sarah, a trio of disability activists desperate to save the world, hold a town hall meeting about the future impacts of artificial intelligence. However, as the meeting unravels, they discover that their own prejudices are the greatest threat of all. Dealing with individual and collective responsibility, THE SHADOW WHOSE PRAY THE HUNTER BECOMES questions how we can come together to make decisions in the best interest of society.

Disturbingly obvious and tantalisingly strange, THE DEMOCRATIC SET is an experimental residency model for working with communities. Using a custom-made film set, a neutral room with two opposing doors, THE DEMOCRATIC SET is a free space to be pushed, extended or manipulated, with each participant having full control over how their time is spent in the set. THE DEMOCRATIC SET authors a unique living trace of a community at a particular snapshot in time.

Tickets are on sale now. For more details visit https://backtobacktheatre.com/touring-calendar/

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