PARTY SKILLS FOR THE END OF THE WORLD Claims Venue at Manchester International Festival

Award-winning theatrical innovators Nigel Barrett and Louise Mari have today revealed further details for their subversive and joyfully unsettling alternative Party Skills for the End of the World, their Manchester International Festival debut.

With previews from 27 June, Party Skills for the End of the World will inhabit the RIBA Sterling Prize winning Centenary Building, situated in Salford, home to a thriving arts, cultural and digital industry on the west border of Manchester. Part of the University of Salford, the building was constructed in 1995 to launch them into the new millennium. It will now host this party with a difference, alongside renowned Mancunian chef Mary-Ellen McTague's sold-out Dinner Party at the End of the World.

Nigel and Louise said, "We are so excited to be able to work in this amazing steel and glass space, built as a crystal palace for progress, a sparkling cathedral for curiosity in media and the arts. Here everything is visible and yet reflected back at you. It feels both expansive and claustrophobic. You can see and hear everyone wherever you go and can be seen and heard everywhere too. Sometimes it feels like you are in a ship and sometimes a prison. It's perfect"

Professor Allan Walker, Dean of the University of Salford's School of Arts and Media, said: "Manchester International Festival has a great history of bringing together the most adventurous pioneers from the global art world to showcase what's possible when creative figures collaborate. These values of creativity and collaboration are embedded in everything we do at the University of Salford and so it's absolutely fitting that we are working with MIF this year. I'm very excited that not only will we be hosting this exciting production but that our students will be given the opportunity to work behind the scenes on a performance which will be seen by theatre lovers from all over the world."

Party Skills for the End of the World invites audiences to learn the vital skills to survive and thrive in a world where everything they've taken for granted has gone and it's time to celebrate everything life has made worth living - from making the perfect martini, to playing the best music to get everyone dancing; skinning a rabbit to hot wiring a car.

Long-term collaborators and members of the pioneering cult performance collective Shunt, Nigel Barrett and Louise Mari make wild, bold, visual performance for people who don't really like theatre and unique theatrical experiences for those who do. In 2015, their ground breaking production The Body was awarded The Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award.

Commissioned and produced by Manchester International Festival and Shoreditch Town Hall. Created and performed by Nigel Barrett and Louise Mari. Design Consultant Lizzie Clachan. Designers Abigail Conway and Bethany Wells. Lighting Designer Marty Langthorne. Composition & Sound by Ben & Max Ringham.

Nigel and Louise have been working in partnership for the last 11 years, since curating, running and making work for the shunt lounge under London Bridge Station which they founded in 2006.

Since emerging from the subterranean vaults they have received commissions from Tate Britain, The Science Museum, Edinburgh Art Festival, The ICA, LADA, LICA, Shoreditch Town Hall, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Chapter Cardiff, National Theatre Wales, New Wolsey Ipswich and the National Theatre Studio.
Their recent work includes This Is What Men Do (Pulse Festival), The Eye Test (Latitude Festival, National Theatre), Nigel and Louise's Basement Grotto (Shoreditch Town Hall), margate/dreamland (Shoreditch Town Hall) and The Body (ICA, Barbican Theatre) for which they won The Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award. They are members of the shunt collective.

Dinner Party at the End of the World produced by Manchester International Festival. For the full festival programme, visit www.mif.co.uk

IF YOU GO:

PARTY SKILLS FOR THE END FOR THE WORLD
CENTENARY BUILDING, SALFORD, M3 6EQ
27 JUNE - 16 JULY, 7.30PM
MATINEES, SATURDAYS & SUNDAYS, 2.30PM
PRESS NIGHT: 30 JUNE
Book tickets
mif.co.uk | 0843 208 1840
Tickets £25 (previews), £30
£12 tickets for Greater Manchester residents on a lower wage
Age 18 +

DINNER PARTY AT THE END OF THE WORLD
CENTENARY BUILDING, SALFORD, M3 6EQ
4 - 15 JULY, 5PM
(except Sun & Mon)
Book tickets
mif.co.uk | 0843 208 1840
Tickets £50
Age 18+

Synopsis: Inspired by Party Skills for the End of the World, renowned Mancunian chef Mary-Ellen McTague (Aumbry, the Real Junk Food Project) has devised a dinner party with a difference. Each evening, just 20 guests will share a special last supper, with delicious and surprising food that explores themes of survival, extinction, scarcity and opulence. McTague's creative menu will give you a flavour of how we may choose to eat, and what we may have to eat, come the end of days.

Manchester International Festival (MIF) is the world's first festival of original, new work and special events, staged every two years in Manchester, UK. MIF launched in 2007 as an artist-led festival presenting new works from across the spectrum of performing arts, visual arts and popular culture. MIF has commissioned, produced and presented world premieres by artists including Björk, Steve McQueen, Robert Wilson, Wayne McGregor, Maxine Peake, The xx, Zaha Hadid Architects, Damon Albarn, Punchdrunk, Elbow and Marina Abramovi?.

MIF brings together world-renowned artists from different art forms and backgrounds to create dynamic, innovative and forward-thinking new work, staged in venues across Greater Manchester - from theatres, galleries and concert halls to railway depots, churches and car parks. MIF works closely with venues, festivals and other cultural organisations around the world, whose financial and creative input helps to make many of these projects possible. The Festival also works widely within communities around Manchester, originally with MIF Creative and now with a new initiative called My Festival.

MIF's Artistic Director and CEO is John McGrath, previously the Founding Artistic Director of National Theatre Wales. Earlier this year, MIF was confirmed as the operator of Factory, a new £110 million cultural centre in Manchester due to open in 2020.

MIF is a registered charity and company limited by guarantee.

The University of Salford, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, sits at the heart of a fast-developing community. Its expertise is helping to transform individuals and communities through teaching, research, innovation and engagement. Salford leads the way in areas such as health, energy, media and the built environment. 20,000 students contribute enormously to the local economy and the courses they study on are designed with employment in mind, helping them and the economy obtain real-world skills.

The University has a thriving School of Arts and Media, teaching programmes from Art and Design to Broadcast Journalism, Fashion and Dance with industry partnerships with organisations incluging the BBC, ITV, HOME, The Lowry, Centre for Contemporary Chinese Art, Lancashire County Cricket Club, Asian Media Awards and The Network - Edinburgh International TV Festival.

Students and academics from the school moved into the £55m New Adelphi Arts Centre last year - a 15,000 sqr mtr purpose built facility on the University's main Peel Park campus built to enable students to collaborate with top industry professionals in a state of the art environment. The eight storey building includes facilities such as a 350 seat theatre, professional quality TV studios, five professional recording studios, a band room large enough to record an orchestra and 600 sqr mtrs of specialist art and design workshops.

The large theatre, which can be adapted to a range of different seating configurations, is also opening its doors to the community as an exciting new venue where members of the public can enjoy an exciting programme of performances.

Over the past five years, Shoreditch Town Hall has established itself as a vital, non-traditional arts and live events space on the London cultural map: a unique home for original and adventurous arts and artists from across the world, and a flagship venue for Hackney. With a focus on emerging talent and site-responsive performance, the building has become a vibrant home for original and ambitious theatre and performance, welcoming 30,000 audiences and supporting up to 100 artists and 8 new commissions every year.

Built in 1865 and occupying a huge 46,500 sq ft, Shoreditch Town Hall was for over 100 years one of the grandest Vestry Halls in the city. It ceased to be a home for local government during the 1960s and since 2005 has been a fully independent venue. From the magnificent Victorian grandeur of the Assembly Hall and Council Chamber to the warren of untouched, atmospheric basement spaces the building includes eight performance spaces ranging from 40 to 800 capacity.

Shoreditch Town Hall has never received revenue funding, supporting on average 90% (£350,000) of its arts and community programme annually through earned income, supplemented by smaller project grants. Since 2012 it has also raised and invested £2m to transform the building's in-house audience and production facilities, bringing back to full use its 750 capacity Assembly Hall - the largest purpose built auditorium in Shoreditch - as a public space, as well as installing two lifts to significantly improve access.