|| THE GOOD, THE GOD AND THE GUILLOTINE

Public showing: Saturday 26th January 2013, 7.30pm ||

Tickets and venue information are available here

The showing will be part of Rip it Up – a season of “something new” at Tramway. We hope that you’ll come along and give us your feedback to help us develop the piece further.

As a little teaser, here is our trailer which has been specially created by Adam York Gregory and features a demo of one of the tracks from the show (here voiced by MMUle member Paul Rogers).

The Good, The God and The Guillotine from Adam York Gregory on Vimeo.

More information on the project and collaborators here

Photos from the rehearsal process here

|| 2nd -5th July – COLLABORATIONS IN FRANCE WITH COMPANY DEREZO

Proto-type were delighted to be asked to travel to Brest in North-west France to work with Compagnie Derezo. They spent a few days with the company sharing work and ideas based around Derezo’s current theatrical investigations into the text La ville est un trou (City Hole) by Charles Pennequin and their work with a ‘live director’. Proto-type are all excited to be engaging in a European collaborative project which continues their  investigations into ‘The City’ and it’s inhabitants, begun in Fortnight.

You can read more about our experiences here

|| July – THE KILLER

The company have started exploratory rehearsals of Eugene Ionesco’s The Killer. Proto-type will again be working with acclaimed lighting designer Rebecca Makus on creating a work to be sensorially experienced over multiple platforms.

You can find out about the company’s experience of the first rehearsal here and any future news will be updated on The Killer page of this website.

|| August – THE GOOD, THE GOD AND THE GUILLOTINE

Phase one of the rehearsals for Proto-type’s music-led theatre piece have now finished. Work will continue throughout autumn and spring in order that the piece premieres in 2013.

The company have released a first trailer below which has been specially created by Adam York Gregory and features a demo of one of the tracks from the show (here voiced by MMUle member Paul Rogers).

More information on the project and collaborators here

Photos from the rehearsal process here

The Good, The God and The Guillotine from Adam York Gregory on Vimeo.

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Based in Manchester, we make original theater and media work that tours internationally. This page includes a brief history of the company, contact details and links to company member profiles.

Mission Proto-type Theater is a company of multi-disciplinary artists interested in live performance. Creating original works that are diverse in scale, subject and medium, Proto-type are currently exploring distributed narrative, city as source/site, the relationship between technology and intimacy, the sung-through format of music theatre and the nature of love and death. Proto-type’s work is demanding and intricately crafted to create experiences for a diverse audience of intelligent, modern humans.

Proto-type are an ensemble based company led by Co-Artistic Directors Gillian Lees, Rachel Baynton and Andrew Westerside. Our work has been performed throughout England and in the US, Korea, Zimbabwe, Armenia, Scotland, Russia, China and Mongolia. We like to experiment with different media and forms, developing site and subject responsive work.  We have made (amongst other things) installation work in a Roman garden in Chester (UK), multi-media theatre that unravels the stereotype of American suburbia, a two-week long performative experience for pervasive technologies, a delicate two-hander that looks at the mythology surrounding two of history’s most notorious criminals and a unique sight-read performance for a revolving cast of 3 performers that has been performed hundreds of times in locations across the globe. All of our work has a focus on precision in execution and in making complicated material accesible.

Recently, Rachel has worked on the national and international tours of THIRD PERSON (Redux) [2010-], VIRTUOSO (working title) [2009], WHISPER [2007-], and collaborated on FORTNIGHT [2011-].

She graduated in Devised Theatre at Dartington College of Arts and has gone on to work as a writer, performer, producer and director of collaborative, often site-specific, theatre including: the performance pieces THE BULLIVER PROJECT [2002]: created with the support of South Hams Railway in Totnes, Devon and THE CALMER FUTURE? [2005]. Rachel also created and curated the online international writing collaboration FINISH THIS [2004/5] and undertook dramaturgical duties for AN INTERVIEW WITH DORIAN GRAY [2006].

In addition she has worked as Artistic Director with several successful youth theatre companies in venues and festivals around the country, toured large-scale performances to English Heritage sites, designed drama and literacy packages for secondary schools and managed the Peter Scott Gallery collections at Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Arts (LICA).

Most recently, Wes has performed and toured nationally and internationally with Proto-type Theater in: THIRD PERSON (Redux) [2010-], VIRTUOSO (working title) [2009], WHISPER [2007-], and worked as a creative collaborator on FORTNIGHT [2011]. He has directed two performance works premiering in the UK: THE CALMER FUTURE? [2005] and AN INTERVIEW WITH DORIAN GRAY [2006].

Depending on the direction of the wind, his biggest influences are: Robert Wilson, Societas Raffello Sanzio, Reckless Sleepers, Rimini Protokoll, and Andrew-Graham Dixon.

He is one of the few contemporary performance makers in the UK who is openly and unashamedly passionate about football. In the past 10 years he has unsuccessfully tried to: learn the violin, speak Russian, rollerblade, hack a computer network in California and cook a poached egg. He is succeeding in learning German.

Wes is a Lecturer in Drama at the University of Lincoln.

Gillian Lees gained a First Class Honours Degree in Contemporary Theatre Practice, specialising in Performance, at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Gillian has worked as a freelance performer and devisor with some of Britain’s most well respected experimental theatre practitioners/companies, including The Pacitti Company London, Third Angel Theatre Company, Proto-type Theater, Lisa Wesley, Grace Surman, Reeling and Writhing, Benchtours and Poorboy Theatre Company. Her own practice focuses on the physical element of contemporary performance, often dealing with the process of physical exhaustion. The content informs the task based/durational form which the work takes. She has shown work as part of the National Review of Live Art 01’ and 03’, a Dark lights Commission 02’ (Tramway Glasgow) and was awarded a Commission by Stalker Theatro, Turin.