Bold, experimental theatre company On Theatre team up with Billy Bragg to explore what it means to be English. Naima Khan takes a look at what they might bring to the debate.
Who indeed, are the English? Writer Mick Gordon poses the question and Billy Bragg and his band attempt to answer it in Wellcome Collection's first ever major theatrical production. Pressure Drop will run from 19th April.
An appropriately timed analysis of right-wing arguments, British social identities and military and foreign policies is blossoming in Theatreland in the run up to the elections. The Empire at Royal Court Theatre kicks off on 31st March with a narrative that looks at British soldiers in Afghanistan, A Day at The Racists runs until 27th March at Finborough Theatre and Three Good Wives opens this week with an insightful acknowledgement of the often shrouded part that military wives play on the home front.
What Bragg, Gordon, and director Christopher Haydon will bring to this discussion is a determination of who the English are as a people through one family's struggle to define 'home'. Three generations, all white working class, try to adjust and find their place amidst the changing social landscape at the edge of London town.
Unapologetic playwright Mick Gordon who describes himself as a theatre maker “whose business it is to put human life in all its grubby contradiction on show”, is a firm believer in theatre as one of the best artistic mediums for the discussion of human issues. His pairing with the outspoken Bragg can only result in a creative cacophony of social politics, music, art and dramaturgy.
Part gig, part installation, part theatre piece, this promises to be a concise but open-ended, musical, highly-visual exploration of English working class identity, one that includes a history of welcoming immigrants.
Click here to read an interview with Billy Bragg and Mick Gordon.
Pressure Drop runs at Wellcome Collection from 19th April until 12th May
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