BOAT, Theatre N16

This October plays host to the first full-length production run at Theatre N16’s thrilling new venue in Balham. New company PIGDOG will conduct this maiden voyage with BOAT, the debut play from award-winning poet and novelist Kiran Millwood Hargrave.

The girl is eleven and all she wants is to find a new home. But she’s been on this boat for what feels like forever. She can’t remember her name, or the last time she saw one of the litter lands. For miles around it’s just her, the sea creatures and her twin sister. And her twin has been asleep for a very long time.

Millwood Hargrave creates the fantasy world of a girl who has been wrenched from her own country and thrust into an unfamiliar world, as part of the child trafficking industry that plagues our society. The story of two young non-British girls on a boat – one of whom has lost her life – cannot fail to conjure up some of the tragic images of the migrant crisis seen recently on the news and social media.

In BOAT, Millwood Hargrave hauntingly wrestles with her own experience of assault, which has informed her work for several years. She is an internationally-renowned poet, whose work won her the Yeovil International Poetry Prize in 2013 and gained her the honour of being named a Barbican Young Poet. Her debut novel comes out in the US (Knopf [Random House]) and UK (Chicken House Books) in 2016.

This is PIGDOG’s first piece as a company. Co-founders Max Barton (director) and Shawn Soh (designer), who collaborated on the critically acclaimed and award-nominated Piranha Heights at the Old Red Lion in 2014, and on Philip Ridley’s Karagula, which has its professional world premiere in 2016, will work with renowned sound artist Jethro Cooke (who performs live) to create a world vivid enough to do justice to Millwood Hargrave’s stunning imagery. The diverse cast and creative team include artists from Singapore, Romania, Mexico and British artists of Indian and Jewish descent.

All performances will be Extra-Live*/Relaxed and a selection will be BSL interpreted (dates TBC).

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Title: BOAT
Company: PIGDOG
Performance Dates: October 19th 2015 – November 5th 2015, Sunday to Thursday, 7:30pm
Running Time: 75mins
Venue: Theatre N16, The Bedford, 77 Bedford Hill, London SW12 9HD
Ticket Price: £14 (£10 concessions)
Box Office: Theatresource (www.ticketsource.co.uk/theatren16)
Travel: Balham station (2 min walk), Streatham Hill station (20 min walk)
Links: Theatre ([theatren16.co.uk]theatren16.co.uk), Company ([wearepigdog.com]wearepigdog.com)

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