The Lauriston Studio 2018/2019 SEASON
The Lauriston Studio is the Altrincham Garrick’s award winning studio theatre.
If you are looking for something more exciting to tickle your theatrical taste buds, why not throw caution to the wind and visit our smaller theatre, The Lauriston Studio. The studio is perfect for that feeling of being part of the action and where you can experience the intimacy of the story telling. Here you can get up close and personal with the actors as they wow you with their performances. We do not allow touching or the feeding of our actors however as some of them have been known to bite !
The Lauriston Studio has its own private entrance onto the carpark and patrons have full use of the Garrick bar and all our facilities in the main building. The Lauriston seats approximately 50 people comfortably and it is accessible for wheelchairs. The studio is where we stage plays that are not always suitable for our main stage (400 seats) and therefore our shows often fill up quickly. The Lauriston’s reputation has continued to grow over the years with its thought-provoking and exciting plays. We regularly experience sell out shows. These productions can be challenging, deeply moving, hilarious or outrageous! You decide.
We hope to make the 2018 / 2019 season an extra special one, with it being the 100th anniversary of women first getting the vote. As a nod to this ‘year of the woman’ we have specifically chosen plays with strong female roles.
We start the 2018 / 2019 season with Playhouse Creatures by April De Angelis. This is a bawdy and earthy ensemble piece looking at some of the first ladies ever to grace the English stage. It is joyfully theatrical and as much as it is riotously vulgar in places, the play is deeply moving. As the characters sit backstage gossiping about their life and loves, and their somewhat fragile and often cruel place in a male world, they slip into various Shakespearean scenes, Restoration Comedies and extracts from the more florid romantic pieces. This play runs from 29th August to 4 September 2018.
We go to 1970’s America for our second offering. The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds by Paul Zindel. Despite its curious title, this moving and often humorous play observes the difficulties of Beatrice, an embittered single parent struggling to bring up her two teenage children, Tillie who has a fascination for science and Ruth, an epileptic, with a fascination for boys and gossip. Over the course of the play, Beatrice constantly tries to stamp out any opportunities Tillie has of succeeding due to her own tormented past and lack of success in life. The old converted vegetable shop where they live is more like a madhouse than a home. This play runs from 24th to 30th October 2018.
In December, for our third play we offer The Female of the Species by Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith. This play features a feminist writer suffering from writer’s block who encounters a deranged former student unexpectedly at her country home. The student blames the writer for warping her mother’s mind with her hit book The Cerebral Vagina. There then follows an often hilarious battle of words between the feminist and her ex-student. The protagonists are soon joined over time by the writers’ daughter, followed shortly by her sensitive and concerned husband. Include a macho taxi driver and a gay publisher and you have an outrageously funny play dealing with feminism and other genuine issues.
The Lauriston Studio season ends in February with The Secret Lives of Henry and Alice by David Tristram. For Henry Smith, actor, raconteur, business tycoon, secret agent, Casanova and acting President of the United States, life was rarely dull. For his wife, Alice, life was rarely anything but dull. Enter Michel a French waiter, tall dark and available! Exactly what happened next, no-one’s quite sure, except it involved a rotting melon, a difficult deck chair and a bottle of neck rub. Fantasy blurs into reality and secret passions explode in this two hander where both actors slide in and out of a variety of characters and only their pet goldfish ‘Orca’ and you will ever know the true story. Runs 27 February to 5th March.
We look forward to seeing even more of you this season and as always we are happy to receive feedback on all our productions and the Lauriston Studio Theatre itself.
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The reviewer for the Sale and Altrincham Messenger, Rick Bowen, wrote in his annual review of Drama in Trafford that the opening of The Lauriston Studio was the “highlight of the year” for 2006! The Lauriston Studio’s inaugural season was a huge success, staging six outstanding productions this season.
Seating only 49 people, it is an extremely intimate and stimulating theatre space that has become a fully integral part of the Altrincham Garrick Playhouse.
Following the generous donation of some tiered, retractable seating by The Lauriston Trust, the newly christened Lauriston Studio was officially opened to the public in October 2006 with a memorable production of ‘Two’ by Jim Cartwright.
Since then The Lauriston Studio Theatre has produced many exciting and cutting edge productions and has won awards for the quality of work produced there. It greatly expands Altrincham Garrick Playhouse’s creative repertoire by strongly encouraging community theatre and contemporary theatre arts in the North West and also in helping local writers develop brand new plays.
The Lauriston Studio is also used extensively by GAPA – The Garrick Academy of Performing Arts. This helps to generate an important and creative breeding ground’, not only for the Altrincham Garrick Playhouse, but also for the wider community of South Manchester, as children and young adults develop their acting and technical skills and gain vital experience in an intimate and professionally set-up theatre space.
For actors, directors, technical staff and audiences alike, it is an exhilarating alternative theatre experience.
We feel that The Lauriston Studio Theatre is easily the ‘second’ best theatre in Altrincham so why not come and find out for yourself?
