"A bedroom full of leaves. A paper boat on stormy seas. A fantastical odyssey.
Shaun Tan’s award winning picture book is illuminated with striking movement, puppetry and live animated projections.
For children and adults; for anyone who's ever felt lost: a story of coming home."
What Is The Project?
We are adapting Shaun Tan’s amazing picture book The Red Tree for the stage. Shaun is an Oscar winning author and artist from Australia. His books have a devoted international following.
We are devising our very own stage version of The Red Tree, using live animation, dance, object and shadow puppetry and giant bubbles to tell its story.
Featherweight will be the first UK company to adapt The Red Tree and following previews at HEART in Leeds our show will receive its world premiere at Zoo Venues as part of the 2013 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Check the book out >>> www.shauntan.net/books.html>
Why Do We Want To Do This Project?
When we discovered Shaun's beautiful book we knew that we had found our next project. It deals with difficult feelings and a world seemingly 'without sense or reason' but is playful, striking and accessible.
Caroline: "The Red Tree is extraordinary to encounter: a 'picture book' that converses with its reader regardless of age or circumstance through few but perfectly chosen words and spectacular depictions of fantastical landscapes. It's world is at once strange and familiar, treading the path between fantasy and truth to explore our more complex feelings that can often only be expressed through metaphor."
We want to give the show (and the book) this opportunity; to share it with as big an audience as possible. Edinburgh offers an unparalleled platform for exposure to a diverse audience, not to mention press and venue programmers. This is the chance the company needs to achieve its long term goals for touring and continuing to make work together.
We are creating this show to capture the imagination of our audience, to entertain them, to genuinely move them, to speak to everyone, to anyone who has ever 'felt lost'.
Our plans post-Edinburgh, aside from touring nationally and internationally, also include working with philosophy-in-schools organisations and mental health charities with the intention of encouraging debate and empathy between children who may be struggling to find a way to express themselves.
Why Do We Need Your Help, and Where Will The Money Go?
We are entirely self-funded, but none-the-less wildly ambitious. Performing on the Fringe is an expensve business. We would love your help.
Any money raised will help to cover the costs of the following:
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Travel to Edinburgh
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Rehearsal Space
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Venue Hire
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Set and Props Cost
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Marketing Material
Who Are We?
Featherweight are a collective of Exeter University graduates including George Wigzell (Director & Producer), Caroline Milsom (Assistant Director & Designer) and Madeline Shann (Choreographer & Performer). We have commissioned sound artist Robert Hart to write an original score for the piece.
Sound Artist Rob Hart, working on A Tale of Gilead. Photo © Oliver Harrop
Our debut show 'A Tale of Gilead' was an outdoor, audio led promenade, site sensitive work for The Dalston Eastern Curve Garden made in collaboration with Hackney Youth Parliament. The show went on to be performed at Wild Things Festival raising money for Hackney Pirates and at The Last Refuge in Peckham.
A Tale of Gilead at Dalston Eastern Curve Garden. Photo © Oliver Harrop
The Red Tree will run at The Aviary, Zoo Venues in Edinburgh, at 13.45 every day from the 2nd until the 26th of August 2013.
www.zoofestival.co.uk
Box office:
There will also be previews at HEART, Headingley in Leeds on the 2nd and 3rd of July.
www.featherweighttheatre.com
Twitter: @featherwght
The owner of this project has not made any updates yet.
