Punching the Sky a play about the Internet, parenting & peer pressure, at Live Theatre in March
Written by Lizi Patch
Directed by Mark Hollander
Designed by Scott Thompson
Composition / Sound Design by Aron Kyne, Alex Turner, Rich Huxley, James Hamilton
Animations by James Taylor & Nick Lewis Arcus Animation Studios, Gateshead
Punching the Sky at Live Theatre at 7.30pm on Wednesday 9 March is writer Lizi Patch’s personal response to discovering her 11 year old son had been shown graphic online images.
The play tells the true story of a young boy’s experience of stumbling across online pornography. This very personal account, written and performed by his mother, shines a light on the extraordinary public and media response to a blogpost she wrote about the experience in her attempt to reach out and make sense of what felt like a monumental failure as a parent.
“He told me how he could never ‘unsee it’, and, very significantly, he talked about how he felt his childhood was effectively finished. He experienced an instant and brutal loss of innocence – and whilst there is much to be salvaged, there is a lot of work to do.”
The show combines live performance, an original score and animation. The animation has been created especially for the show by Gateshead based animation studio Arcus Animations, who first met Lizi when they were both commissioned to produce work for Enchanted Parks in 2011. Lizi created Echo Funnel in which visitors could speak to a tree and receive a reply and Arcus The Loop, a projection of snowmen inside a wooden shelter. They liked each’s other’s work and their first collaboration is the animation in Punching the Sky.
Coming to Live Theatre, Newcastle as part of a new national tour, Punching the Sky explores the complexities of our relationship with online pornography, the dangers and redemptive qualities of the Internet, the power of the media and the contradictory nature of our feelings about sex, censorship and parenthood.
Gez Casey, Literary Manager, Live Theatre, said:
“Punching The Sky is an engaging, funny and thought-provoking piece of theatre. It examines some prickly and morally complex issues in a sensitive and entertaining way. It also asks some grown up questions about how quickly our young people grow up.”
Punching the Sky is one of three pieces of visiting theatre coming to Live Theatre in March, all with strong female leads. In award-winning play Iphigenia In Splott on Friday 11 and Saturday 12 March Effie’s life spirals out of control, in a mess of drink and drugs. Memoirs of a Bunny Boiler on Wednesday 16 and Thursday 17 March is a hilarious debut one woman show about a girl’s desperate attempt to find ‘the one’.
To find out more about Live Theatre’s visiting theatre programme and to buy tickets call Live Theatre’s box office on (0191) 232 1232 or see www.live.org.uk.