Open Air Theatre and Performance
The ruins of Reading Abbey have a history of live performance. From early impromptu artist-led events, the site has established a history of open air theatre.
In the late 1980s, the food art and performance collective 'La Grande Bouche' organised a cabaret under marquee in the ruins. The evening offered music and performance acts combined with food, much of which cooked by contributing performers.
In 1994, a large scale performance event 'From the Ruins' was held in the abbey ruins, the finale event for the 'Art in Reading' (AIR) festival, funded in part by Reading Borough Council. This was organised by and featured a large number of artists and performers living or working in Reading, and combined specially created music, dance, paintings, poetry and culminated in a spectacular evening performance involving large scale puppetry and pyrotechnics loosely based upon the history of Reading Abbey from the foundation by William I through the rise of the merchant classes to the dissolution and eventual sacking of the Abbey under Henry VIII.
In 1995, the ruined South Transept was used as the setting for the first Abbey Ruins Open Air Shakespeare production by MDM Productions and Progress Theatre in partnership with Reading Borough Council. In 1996, the outdoor production moved to the ruined chapter house and since 1999 has been staged by Progress Theatre in partnership with Reading Borough Council. This annual event expanded to the Reading Abbey Ruins Open Air Festival in 2007.
Because of the current access limitations, the 2009 and 2010 Open Air Festivals could not be held.
Read more about this topic: Reading Abbey
Famous quotes containing the words open, air, theatre and/or performance:
“Thank God we’re living in a country where the sky’s the limit, the stores are open late and you can shop in bed thanks to television.”
—Joan Rivers (b. 1935)
“Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love,
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills,
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out “Olivia!” O, you should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth
But you should pity me.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“What avails it that you are a Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)