LIFT 2014 Announces First Three Shows; Festival to Run June 2-29, 2014

LIFT 2014 is on its way! Three shows at the Barbican are the first to be announced for the 2014 Festival, which will run from June 2 - 29.

Together LIFT and the Barbican will introduce three exceptional companies to British audiences - all of which are in their ascendency as vigorous theatrical forces in their own countries: She She Pop from Berlin; Young Jean Lee from New York and the Dmitry Krymov Lab from Moscow.

LIFT will, for the first time in a decade, be selling festival tickets from the LIFT website. Opus No.7 tickets will be available from LIFT from 6 November, all other shows will be available from the Festival launch in February 2014.
www.liftfestival.com

All LIFT 2014 shows at the Barbican will also be available from the Barbican box office from 6 November.
Barbican Box office: 0845 120 7511 or online www.barbican.org.uk/theatre

She She Pop (and their fathers) - Testament

Tuesday 3 - Saturday 7 June 2014 7:30 PM, The Pit
Tickets £18, Age Guidance: 12+

Jewellery, legal succession, family trees, care for the elderly, gas receipts ...just some of the topics that arise in this joyful and poignant show which lays bare the complex dynamics of the relationships between three women and their fathers who appear together on stage.

Award-winning German performance collective She She Pop has emerged as one of Europe's most exciting young companies, devising work which has a very personal connection to their own lives or to Berlin, their home town.

Shakespeare's King Lear serves as a backdrop, ingeniously propelling the dialogue of an audacious show which uses music, family history, dance, film and Shakespeare's text to look at how the ageing process changes the nature of relationships between parents and children.

Testament is performed in German with English subtitles.

Dmitry Krymov Lab - Opus No. 7

Wednesday 4 - Saturday 8 June 2014, The Pit
Tickets £30, Age Guidance: 12+

Considered one of Russia's most influential directorial voices, and rarely seen in the UK, Dmitry Krymov and his collaborators devise deeply moving, visually majestic theatrical experiences conjuring beguiling images of epic proportion from simple materials. Seated on the stage, audiences enter a world of transformation where objects, sounds and people can change in the blink of an eye.

Dmitry Krymov's work stems from his background as a designer and visual artist whose work can be seen in galleries worldwide, including the V & A, and his ensemble includes performers who are also designers and artists. Krymov's work often references moments of great significance in Russian history, and in Opus No. 7 he looks at the oppression of Jews and the role of artists, including Shostakovich, in the Soviet era. Larger-than-life puppets, duelling pianos, living walls and blizzards of newsprint form a genre-defying double bill.

Opus No. 7 is performed in Russian with English surtitles.

Young Jean Lee - The Shipment

Tuesday 10 - Saturday 14 June 2014, The Pit
Tickets £18, Age Guidance 16+ (adult language)

Not afraid to tackle thorny issues of race and religion, New York's Young Jean Lee; writer, director, musician and performer, is one of the most exciting theatre makers of her generation. Of Korean origin, her exploration of her personal and ethnic identity informs the core of her work. For The Shipment she began by setting herself the most uncomfortable challenge she could imagine: to make, as a Korean-American playwright, a work about African-American identity and politics.

Developed in collaboration with an all-black cast, this biting satire invites audiences on a rollercoaster ride through assumptions, clichés and distortions. Cultural caricatures, from a foul-mouthed comedian to a drug dealer-turned-rapper superstar, are lampooned in variety numbers that recalls the days of the minstrel show.

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