By Louis Train
Reading’s Progress Theatre introduces two original plays to the world this year with their annual Progress Premieres event: The Equivocators, an historical drama by Dan Clarke, and Peter’s Wife, a new social comedy by Christine Moran.
progress theatre
One Million Tiny Plays About Reading, Progress Theatre
by Louis Train
In One Million Tiny Plays About Reading, a pride parade passes through the town, two kids commiserate over their hard luck at school, a tour group visits the town centre, and an MP takes photos at a food bank. This charming kaleidoscope takes the model invented by Craig Taylor in his landmark play One Million Tiny Plays About Britain to present a few dozens vignettes about daily life in Reading.
A Doll’s House, Progress Theatre
by Louis Train
A Doll’s House is a popular choice among high school English and drama teachers, who are as likely as not to be masochists: it is a long, dense play filled with subtext, the kind of poignant morsels that students are expected to pick out and examine, as if on their hands and knees groping through the muck of the text for an essay topic.
The Oresteia, Progress Theatre
By Louis Train
“Things evolve,” writes Rhys Lawton, director of this youth production of The Oresteia. “The same topics for examination that were needed then [in Ancient Greece] are not needed now, so instead we have to look at the parts of society that haven’t managed to evolve; the treatment of women, the questioning of authority and the fear of the other.”
The Play's The Thing UK 