'Everyword' returns to Hope Street

Thursday 14th to Saturday 16th November 2013
Royal School for the Blind, Hope Street

The Everyman and Playhouse’s ‘Everyword’ writing festival returns to Hope Street this year with a line-up of events, insights from industry experts and new plays in development.

From Thursday 14th to Saturday 16th November 2013 writers and audiences can watch performances in the secret spaces and hidden places of Liverpool’s Royal School for the Blind on the corner of Hope Street and Hardman Street, as Everyword invites you to explore new plays in new ways.

Everyword is presented at the Royal School for the Blind thanks to festival partners Hope Street Hotel who own the site. Soon to be an extension of their boutique hotel, Everyword will provide audiences a unique insight into one of Liverpool’s most intriguing buildings ahead of the redevelopment. The theatres are also pleased to be working again with a talented team of design and production students from LIPA and collaborating with DaDaFest.

The heart of the Everyword festival is the ‘work in progress’ readings of new plays. This year we present Jeff Young’s Bright Phoenix, an homage to Liverpool taking us onto the roofs, into lost cinemas and secret garden, while David Spencer’s A Rook Flew Through The Room is performed by George Costigan and Niall Costigan and is the story of one man’s love/hate affair with life. Unsung is a new play remembering the extraordinary life of Edward Rushton, Liverpool’s most implacable opponent of slavery and original founder of the Blind School in 1791. The play, presented in partnership with DaDaFest and Turf Love, is written by John Graham Davies andJames Quinn and directed by Young Everyman Playhouse Director Matt Rutter. Friday night action will be provided by Cop Thriller, a show based on an original crime from Liverpool’s past when the Blind School was headquarters for the Police Special Squad during the 1920s.

Another part of the building’s history, murals of trade unionist movement, will be explored in Revolution which has been devised and developed by members of Young Everyman Playhouse.

Each day the festival will bring together a cocktail of composers, writers and directors to create a series of miniature musicals entitled The Music Rooms, including Lizzie Nunnery, Tayo Aluko, Laurence Wilson and Matthew Xia.

Everyword includes two workshops for aspiring writers this year which focus on creating work in unusual and disused spaces outside traditional theatre settings. John McGrath from National Theatre of Wales shares his experience in Thursday’s workshop and on Friday Everyman and Playhouse Literary Associate Lindsay Rodden and playwright Stephen Sharkey talk about this increasingly popular form of theatre-making.

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