Transport to Tour 1001 NIGHTS, 2 May - 5 July

From 2 May - 5 July, Kent-based theatre company Transport will tour their compelling family production of 1001 Nights around the UK. Devised and directed by Transport Theatre's Artistic Director Douglas Rintoul, the production premiered at the Unicorn Theatre in 2013, where it was nominated for an Off West End Award for Best Production for Young People.

The UK tour will kick off in Ipswich at the New Wolsey on 5 May 2014. It will then visit Didcot (Cornerstone), Farnham (Maltings), Canterbury (Gulbenkian Theatre), Folkstone (Quarterhouse), Oxford (North Wall), London (Unicorn), Bath (The Egg) and Maidenhead (Norden Farm Arts). The tour will end in Derby (Live Studio) on Saturday 5 July 2014. For a full list of tour dates, please see 'listings information' at the end of this release. Based around the timeless folk tales of The Arabian Nights, the enduring Islamic tales are collected and brought to life for a modern young audience by Shahrazad, a young girl torn between her home in Syria and her new life in the UK. Using everyday objects, the bookish Shaharazad fashions saucepans into crowns, old pipes into enchanted telescopes and a mop into a magic carpet to transport us into an imagined and fantastical world of kings viziers and jinns.

Director Douglas Rintoul uses the power of storytelling to examine complex subjects such as the passage of time, the concept of distance and our affinity to places. Names of the places in the stories that Shahrazad weaves will have new associations for audiences today: Basra, Baghdad, Mosul, Aleppo, Damascus, and ongoing events in the Middle-East have shaped and informed Transport's adaptation.

Douglas Rintoul is the Artistic Director of Transport. His recent theatre credits include As You Like It (UK and European tour), Elegy (Theatre503 winner of a Royal National Theatre Foundational Playwright Award), Invisible (UK and European Tour), All My Sons and Of Mice & Men (Watermill Theatre, Newbury), Closer (Les The?a?tres de la Ville de Luxembourg), Endgame, A Disappearing Number and Measure for Measure (with Complicite as associate director).

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