By Kit Lambert, Directed by Felix Cross and Kwesi Johnson
We all like to see and hear stories about our own lives, about issues that directly relate to us, no matter what walk of life we come from. But imagine being able to step into the story of your life, or of a life like yours, and determining its future, its direction; being able to make the decisions of the central character and altering, improving his or her journey. This is the core of Forum Theatre and Nitro partnered with the wonderful Dance theatre company Kompany Malakhi from Bristol to create Freestyle Forums – it’s Forum Theatre with the energy of freestyle rap.
Nitro worked in November 2010, on the background to the story and subsequently the writer – Kit Lambert – scripted the very first Freestyle Forums called ‘Concrete & Steel‘. It tells the story of ‘Alex’ as he battles with the pressures at home and on road whilst dreaming of a new life at university.
Concrete & Steel will perform mainly in schools, youth centres and other non-theatre venues around the UK. They participated in our rehearsals to become involved from the earliest stages in the production and then we booked performances with them.
To keep ALL directly involved you could exclusively watch Live Streams of the open rehearsal on from this page. The live stream increased our open rehearsal audience three fold!
In true forum style, we opened the forum to our online audience. So, when the audience thought ‘Alex’ should act differently, they told us to ‘STOP’ via our online chat and briefly explain what ‘Alex’ should do. Before the eyes of our online viewers and our live audience it was performed by the actors. Get it!?
We had a live showcase of Concrete & Steel on the 4th March at Greenwich Theatre.
If you’re interested in finding out more about Concrete & Steel and Freestyle Forum Theatre call 0207 609 1331 or email info@nitro.co.uk.
