Silo 2016: Anarchy, Vulnerability and Survival in the Modern World

Silo Theatre’s Artistic Director Sophie Roberts is thrilled to announce their 2016 season, a powerful and diverse collection of work that ‘celebrates the anarchic, the wild and the beautiful fight in us all to survive in a troubling world.’ As well as continuing to fill Auckland’s Q Theatre and Herald Theatre with their distinctive contemporary offerings, the 2016 season will also see Silo push into the North Island with a very popular return season and will also include events that foster the work of two extremely talented emerging artists. Silo’s 2016 season is itching to get underway.

Returning to the Q Theatre mainstage in February is the critically acclaimed, sell-out show that took the 2015 Auckland Arts Festival by storm – The Book of Everything. With its wide appeal to include a family audience, Silo is proud to offer up this work to create a vital conversation around family violence, courage and friendship. ‘It’s a show that intends to be everything for everyone and, astonishingly, it succeeds’ – The Pantograph Punch. Following the Auckland season, the production will then tour to New Plymouth, Hamilton, Napier and Palmerston North. With plans in the pipeline to tour the highly successful Silo production of Hudson & Halls Live!over the next 18 months, The Book of Everything tour is another step in a strategy to develop a national audience for Silo work.

Silo is committed to representing a diverse range of people and perspectives on stage, and in a first for the company will bring two children centre stage in leading roles for a contemporary reinvention of Medea. Created by Australian theatre-makers Kate Mulvany and Anne-Louise Sarks, Medea offers an astonishing retelling of Euripides’ classic, focusing on two young brothers as they bicker and play onstage while the infamous duel between Medea and Jason rages offstage. This is a joyful and achingly tender observation of childhood, and of the inevitable impact of the choices of adults around them. Acclaimed actor and director Rachel House returns to Silo to direct this award-winning work in its New Zealand premiere.

Continuing to champion female voices and artists, Silo’s 2016 season includes a ferocious and unapologetic look at misogyny and who’s got the power with Australian playwright Melissa Bubnic’s Boys Will Be Boys. Set amongst the trading room floor, it’s a no-holds-barred, biting satire on what it takes to survive in a man’s world. With in-your-face dialogue and a healthy bump of cabaret, Boys Will Be Boys boasts an all-female cast – often playing men’s roles – led by celebrated actor Jennifer Ludlam.

Seeing out Silo’s year will be a comedy like no other. Described as a wild absurdist deconstruction of reality, identity and theatre itself, Perplex spins domestic comedy on its head for a deeply funny and incredibly bizarre farce about nothing and everything at the same time. Affirming Silo’s predilections to challenge boundaries, German playwright Marius von Mayenburg throws theatrical conventions at the fourth wall till it breaks. In this show with very few rules and surreal character swapping, Silo will be testing the wits of some of New Zealand’s best comedic performers with their first casting going to comedian/actor Nic Sampson.

Rounding out the programme will be two works by rising theatrical voices. In 2016, Silo will support actor Chris Parker (Hudson & Halls Live!), director Jo Randerson and producer Sophie Dowson with their return season of the 2015 New Zealand International Comedy Festival hit No More Dancing In The Good Room – presented in association with Q Theatre and Auckland Pride Festival. In development with Silo since their 2015 Working Titles series, Chye-Ling Huang’s new script Black Tree Bridge will be presented in its latest draft to a live audience for one night only as part of the 2016 Auckland Arts Festival RAW season.