Animate your Autumn with Cygnet

Animate your Autumn with Cygnet

Cygnet Theatre has a fabulous autumn season beginning this September full of warming entertainment! 

Beginning on 22nd & 23rd September with a real treat – Richard Darbourne’s highly acclaimed new production of Jane Austen’s much loved classic Pride and Prejudice.  You’ve seen it on film and TV but perhaps never before have the five Bennet sisters and all Austen’s colourful characters been brought to life by just two actors!   It delighted audiences, selling out in Bury St Edmunds.

‘Austen’s ability to pull her reader in and out of her protagonist’s consciousness, her deft overlay of competing voices and styles is vividly realised in the embodied space of an intimate production.’ – Ros Ballaster, (Mansfield College Oxford)
Booking information for Pride & Prejudice can be found here

Cygnet is ‘exe-tremely exe-cited’ to be celebrating our building’s 100th birthday with a brand new play! Alistair Ganley Cygnet’s Artistic Director is poised to weave his magic with the Cygnet & Community Company in Tom Nicholas’ new play Trinity – an exciting opportunity to discover the secrets of Trinity Hall’s 100 year history.    Tom Nicholas (New Model Theatre) has had a great success with Static and has also written for Paines Plough and Plymouth Theatre Royal. Now he is making an immersive piece of theatre inviting audiences to explore the whole building.  Trinity runs from 28th October – 1st November as part of the city-wide ‘exetreme’ imagination festival.
Booking information for Trinity can be found here

Cygnet is delighted to host the return of Plymouth-based Cyclone Theatre, who brought an intriguing and tightly directed production of I am Hamlet during the IGNITE festival.  A very talented group of actors, who have played at the Barbican Theatre, return on October 3rd and 4th with Frank McGuinness’s funny and moving play Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me exploring the ordeal suffered by the Beirut hostages.  A compelling evening – finally showing that light prevails over darkness.
Booking information for Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me can be found here

Cygnet is commemorating the Centenary of the Great War with a special season.  On 10th October, Mark Carey’s hugely entertaining show Into the Breach, charts one man’s personal battle with Shakespeare, spanning both world wars and animating Agincourt!
Booking information for Into The Breach can be found here

On 6th November Dorset’s multi-award winning As One Theatre Company presents a gripping new play with live music: Passion, weaving together 100 years’ experience of war using original testimony of soldiers and those who waved them off to fight, recalling Afghanistan as well as WW1.
Booking information for Passion can be found here

The following don’t yet have a link but can be found on Cygnet’s What’s On page:

On 8th November Richard Roddis (tenor) and Clive Pollard (piano) with readers Rosalind Williams and Gillian von Fragstein bring a personal anthology of words and music of composers and poets who perished in that terrible conflict in a moving and celebratory recital entitled Casualties of War.  Not a selection of War Poetry as such, but rather a snapshot of writers and composers at work in 1914 or before (and a few after): a commemoration of potential cut cruelly short by war.

On a lighter note, step into Oscar Wilde’s world with Chantry Dance Company’s The Happy Prince on 7th November – meet the sorrowful Prince, who grieves for the lives of the poor, and his friend the swallow as they spread hope and fortune.  They also bring ‘All I Can Do Is Be Me – The Bob Dylan Ballet’. Included in the programme is a duet to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and if the thought of that gets your toes tapping, join Chantry Dance for a workshop on Monday 3rd November at 2.00pm.

Talented local dancers and choreographers, Exim Dance, known for their passionate and thought-provoking work, bring a triple bill of dance theatre presentations: ImPACT TOUR on 14th November.
Exim are also offering a workshop on Monday 10th November at 2.00pm. Contact the Cygnet Office to join these two inspiring dance workshop opportunities!

‘Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast…’ and Kaja Pecnik a gifted and charismatic young Slovenian Soprano, in her final year at Cygnet Theatre, is preparing a wonderful recital of love songs, accompanied by apt readings from the Cygnet Company.  Adrian Hicks who trained at the Royal Academy and has worked extensively as pianist, choral director, teacher, singer and composer is her accompanist.  In Love with Love is on 21st November and will be a rich antidote to the dark November night.

Brighten up another dark November night with When the Moon is Full – a programme about Werewolves!  Inspired by Sabine Baring-Gould’s Book of Werewolves, Wren Music – who brought us three fabulous evenings of top folk artists earlier in the year – return on 29th November with a touch of Gothic.  
Devon’s eccentric clergyman, Sabine Baring-Gould, famous for his hymn ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ is well-known as a Folklorist, but perhaps less well-known for giving classes with a bat on his shoulder and for his interest in Werewolves! Champions of local folk song and legend, the Wren Band bring a programme of rich harmonies and top-class musicianship, which will appeal to Harry Potter fans and lovers of Dartmoor legend alike.  And don’t worry, you won’t meet any werewolves on the way home – the moon won’t be full for another week!

Cygnet is also proud to host Glyndebourne who bring Five Deaths and a Happy Ending; a special performance for Primary Schools, and on the previous day are offering singing workshops hosted by Mary King – nationally recognised specialist and advisor to aspiring youngsters in all genres of singing from Opera to Musical Theatre.  There will be two singing workshops open to 18- 25 year olds at 10am and 2pm on Tuesday 25th November.  Further details from the Glyndebourne Academy at www.glyndebourne.com

Animate your autumn with visits to Cygnet: celebrate the richness of our arts and heritage – all the best of human endeavour, as well as what is hard and sad.  Cygnet can offer you something to lift your spirits this autumn, and bring you joy and delight.