HOME Manchester has announced that all of November’s theatre shows will be live streamed during lockdown.
The culture venue will make tickets for the shows streaming from the Theatre 1 stage available on a pay-what-you-decide basis.
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Following news of the new lockdown, HOME Manchester put their plans in motion straight away to switch the shows to an online audience. Each show will be filmed with Covid-19 protocols in place to ensure the safety of the cast and crew.
Shows which HOME Manchester will live stream include the World Premiere of David Hoyle’s A Grand Auction of My Life, along with Javaad Alipoor’s The Believers Are But Brothers, Bert and Nasi’s The End and Beats and Elements’ High Rise eState of Mind. The venue will also stream Daniel Kitson’s Dot. Dot. Dot. which was conceived as an online show.
Speaking about the move to an online programme, HOME’s Director and CEO Dave Moutrey commented, “We at HOME had gone to great lengths to provide a safe and enjoyable experience for our audiences when we reopened, and the feedback from visitors has been that they felt we had gone above and beyond in every way. Our team had worked tirelessly and we had been enjoying sold out, socially-distanced film screenings, had incredibly managed to bring live theatre back to the stage and had just this weekend reopened our gallery with three simultaneous exhibitions.
“While it is devastating to have to close again, we have always known this was a possibility, and so the team have incredibly been working to not only produce live events but also to always have a Plan B which would allow us to provide enriching, entertaining cultural experiences digitally until we can reopen again. That work is why we can make this announcement today that audiences will be able to experience all three of our artforms digitally during the lockdown.”
Conrad Murray, who was due to appear at HOME with High Rise eState of Mind, said, “When lockdown was announced it was absolutely gutting. I thought straight away about our performance at HOME. It was something that we had to look forward to, and we wanted to share our work with new audiences in Manchester. The upcoming performance was a ray of light amongst a lot of darkness this year. Like a lot of artists and performers, we hadn’t left our houses to perform for a long time.
“Now that it is still going ahead as a livestream is super exciting. We haven’t done anything like this before, so although things have changed we get to perform our work in front of audiences. And we get to do something that we haven’t done before.”
HOME Manchester has also reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the freelance community, promising to continue to invest in commissions and develop new projects to try to ensure there is more work for freelancers.
image of HOME Manchester courtesy Drew Forsyth