Two DMU Performing Arts students are busy rehearsing their play about boat refugees to take to a prestigious festival later this month.
Ross Thomson and Kirstie Johnston together form the Ten29 Theatre Collective and will be performing at the two-day Departure Lounge Check-In Festival at Leicester’s Attenborough Arts Centre on Saturday.
The third year Performing Arts students came up with the idea for their play A Place By the Sea during a #DMUglobal artistic residency trip to Malta last September.
There, they met a church minister who told them a story about a refugee who had fled from Libya by boat eight years earlier.
Their play uses mainly a table and chairs as stage props, and focuses on the refugee’s boat journey with his family, what happens when he arrives in Malta, and his relationships with his brother, the other boat refugees and the minister.
Kirstie, 20, from Luton, said: “The opportunity to showcase this performance and this issue is really important to us.
“We are very excited to perform at a festival that we have attended before.”
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Ross, 21, from Edinburgh, added: “This is a springboard for us to meet and talk to artists from across the country, which is an opportunity not many people get at this stage.
“The feedback we’ve received so far has been lovely to hear and to present it to a wider audience is something we are really looking forward to.”
The pair performed the play at DMU’s #LoveInternational 24-hour vigil last month and were invited to take it to the Departure Lounge Check-In Festival, which aims to be a platform for writers, actors and producers of the future from the East Midlands.
You can catch Ten29 performing at the festival at the Attenborough Arts Centre, University of Leicester, Lancaster Road, from 5pm on Saturday, March 25.
Email igc@derby.ac.uk to book tickets. There are no set ticket prices for any of the festival events; the audience are invited to pay what they would like to, with all income supporting the festival and the artists.
Posted on Tuesday 21 March 2017