Future projects

Theatre Orchard Project will be producing Bitter Tales in March 2011, our first project made in collaboration with the Bristol Old Vic 'on location in North Somerset.’ Bitter Tales is a new writing project, enaging local writers who are based in the South West region.

Bitter Tales will be partly supported by Economic Development North Somerset, in order to attract new audiences and improved custom to rural pubs at a time when many are facing closure – a decline that is literally ripping the heart out of rural communities across the country. We hope that the Bitter Tales project can become a blueprint for introducing live theatre into rural pubs throughout the south west region and beyond.

Bristol Old Vic Writers Room: www.bristololdvic.org.uk/writersroom.html

South West New Writing Network:  http://groups.google.co.uk/group/swnwn

Economic Development North Somerset: www.n-somerset.gov.uk/Business/economicdevelopment

Ffi on pub regeneration : www.pubisthehub.org.uk

Bitter Tales

What’s going on in this village? The post office is shut, the postman has gone feral, a single woman has resorted to desperate daydreams and Salsa evening classes, a Romanian gypsy is trying to pass herself off as a Polish cleaner, a teenager is bored out of his mind, and a farmer has lost his Eileen. And not all spirits in this pub are of the bottled variety. As the action unfolds, the publican watches, listens and thinks aloud as he polishes the pint mugs with a dirty teatowel.

Bitter Tales will be a new writing project performed in traditional pubs in the heart of rural villages, bringing innovative work to theatre-parched communities. As the focus shifts from one character’s monologue to another, the voices will blend and grow and the ordinary will turn fantastical with the help of physical theatre, dance, music and song - creating a ‘heightened realism’ that raises the mundane to the extraordinary.