Black Theatre Live Announce 2018 Tour

Black Theatre Live in co-production with Yellow Earth Theatre and Royal Exchange Manchester has announced that they will tour new play Mountains - The Dreams of Lily Kwok, which tells the extraordinary story of the three generations of women behind famous Manchester restaurant Sweet Mandarin. Based on Helen Tse's family memoir, the show will include live cooking onstage, and at selected venues there will be a pre-show cooking demo from Helen and her sister Lisa. The show is led by an all-female creative team.

Helen has grown up in the UK, but always felt a piece of her story was missing. When she visits her mother's birthplace in Hong Kong for the first time, she's determined to find out who she really is and where she belongs. Amidst the skyscrapers and bustling streets, she meets her grandmother, Lily Kwok, and steps into her past, discovering shocking family secrets that will change her life forever.

Touring in Spring 2018, Mountains - The Dreams of Lily Kwok is the first major mid-scale tour of a British East Asian play. It is the seventh Black Theatre Live show following the Autumn tour of Big Foot, Britain's first all-black Hamlet, new play She Called Me Mother, one-woman show The Diary of a Hounslow Girl, Inua Ellam's An Evening with an Immigrant and Macbeth. The show will tour the consortium's eight venues across England, which have come together to commission and showcase excellent theatre from BAME companies.

Writer In-Sook Chappell was born in South Korea and raised in England. Her first play This Isn't Romance won the Verity Bargate Award and was produced at the Soho Theatre, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and most recently presented in Korean at the National Theatre of Korea. Her other plays include Tales of the Harrow Road (Soho Theatre), Absence (Young Vic), and P'yongyang (Finborough Theatre).

Director Jennifer Tang is a stage director and theatre-maker. She has worked in theatre and opera across the UK and internationally, including the Scandinavian premieres of two Nick Payne plays. She's recently directed We Are You (Young Vic, British Museum) and Clytemnestra at The Gate Theatre as part of the Iphigenia Quartet, and worked with Chris Goode & Co on Weaklings (tour) and WANTED (West Yorkshire Playhouse). She was a shortlisted finalist for the JMK Directors Award in 2013.

www.blacktheatrelive.co.uk