The LightSwitch Project
A TippingPoint Commission

'What happens when you switch on a light?' The LightSwitch project will seize this microscopic moment and create a performance that connects the individual to the implications of their actions and their place in the world. Following a series of highly intense encounters with scientists and thinkers from many disciplines the LightSwitch project will feature in a radio programme on BBC Radio 4.

The LightSwitch Collective includes: writer and performer Lucy Foster, seen in Improbable’s Panic at the Barbican and in her own one-woman show Oh My Green Soapbox; Toby Jones of Frost/Nixon and W; artists Pete Harrison and Tim Vize-Martin of propeller performance company, and producer Laura McDermott. James Cook, Producer of Radio 4’s In our Time is an adviser to the project.

www.tippoingpoint.org.uk

Paradise Lost

The Opera Group is in early stages of commissioning a new opera, Paradise Lost, with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group by the composer Luke Bedford and poet Glyn Maxwell. Their new opera re-imagines Milton’s epic creation myth for an age of environmental decay and explores the possibility of a new covenant between humans and the globe.

The Opera Group is a socially minded not-for-profit company that commissions, produces and tours new music, and curates debates around the issues in their productions.

www.theoperagroup.co.uk

AD2050
Kali Theatre

Playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, whose play Behzti sparked protests at the Birmingham Rep in 2004, is developing a futuristic epic, AD2050, set in a dystopian world marked by climate change and religious extremism.

Rising sea levels have splintered cities from countries, and countries from continents, and in AD2050, London has become a feudal island kingdom. The play follows a diverse group of Londoners as they try to escape repressive London for a liberal Istanbul.

Produced by Kali Theatre Company, AD2050 aims to use physical and visual theatre to trace an epic journey. The play embarks on a national tour in 2011.

www.kalitheatre.co.uk