Metta Theatre's JUNGLE BOOK to Launch UK Tour

Award-winning Metta Theatre have announced a brand new show and national tour for 2016. Acclaimed street dance choreographer Kendra J Horsburgh is working with Artistic Directors Poppy Burton-Morgan and William Reynolds on a new version of JUNGLE BOOK using streetdance, skateboarding, circus and spoken word.

Poppy Burton-Morgan's radical re-imagining of Kipling's much loved, albeit problematically colonialist, classic sees JUNGLE BOOK transposed to a contemporary urban jungle of skateboarding Wolves, street dancing Monkeys, a beat-boxing bin man Baloo and graffiti artist Bagheera. Kipling for the 21st century - this production will simultaneously astonish with its physical virtuosity and challenge with its politics.

Metta Theatre are known for their powerful visual storytelling and exploration of multi-cultural stories often from a female perspective. Here we follow Mowgli on her search for identity and belonging - vulnerable, isolated and trying to find her place in an alien environment - the story transcends boundaries - resonating with audiences young and old, urban and rural.

With a beat-driven score by sound artist Filipe Gomes created from real world sounds of the city alongside designer William Reynolds' trademark minimalism, an urban jungle is created - a stark forest of streetlamps disguising circus equipment - on which these recognisably human animals cavort and contort themselves. Using street dance and circus to explore the search for identity and belonging in contemporary multi-cultural Britain, a diverse cast of the UK's leading dancers and circus performers are joined by a community chorus drawn from excluded and vulnerable groups, local to each venue.

Metta Theatre are prolific theatre makers and masters of storytelling who combine circus, new writing and physical theatre forms to make challenging and richly layered work - with a strong commitment to making such work for family audiences alongside their adult productions. Previous work using the multi-dimensionality of circus to unlock narratives includes their adaptation of The King of Tiny Things (a circus Family Arts Campaign award-winning show which toured nationally in 2015 to major venues and festivals ("effortlessly charming" - Exeunt). Recent new writing includes Mouthful at London's Trafalgar Studios in September 2015 (Critics' Choice, The Times), a response to the global food crisis from six of the world's leading dramatists in partnership with six world-renowned scientists. These projects were both part of Metta 10 - ten shows staged across one year to celebrate the company's tenth birthday - of which Jungle Book is the 10th.
Supported by Arts Council England Strategic Touring Fund

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