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INFORMATION FOR VENUES 2012
Quarantine and Company Fierce presents
SUSAN & DARREN
An event with dancing
“It’s the best night out I can remember” Miriam King, Total Theatre Magazine
Contents
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Box Office Briefing Notes
Press Release
Direct Mail
Press Pitches
Press Quotes
Information about Quarantine
International Tour Dates 2010 & 2011
Social Media Connections
Box Office Briefing Notes
Show: Susan & Darren
By: Quarantine and Company Fierce
Performed by: Susan Pritchard, Darren Pritchard
Directed by: Richard Gregory and Renny O’ Shea
Choreographer: Jane Mason
Writer: Sonia Hughes
Designer: Simon Banham
Lighting Designer: Mike Brookes
Production Manager: Greg Akehurst
Stage manager: Jess Penny
Re-lighting technician: Chris Whitwood
Producing Team: Kully Thiarai, Sam Stockdale
Suitability for a younger audience: We have not fixed a specific age guidance, as we feel it’s
very dependent on the individual child and their parent/guardian. The show contains some adult
themes and talks about violence, sex (including gay sex) and rape. There is one use of the word
“fuck”. There is no nudity. In the past the show has been attended and enjoyed by children
without problem at the discretion of a parent/guardian.
Running times:
Pre-show workshop: approx 50 minutes - 1 hour (minimum capacity 8 maximum 12)
The workshop is an integral part of the performance and not an add-on. The show cannot
happen unless a minimum of 8 people and a maximum of 12 sign up for the workshop before
each show.
People who take part in the workshop will be in that night’s show, but should not be told this. The
workshop should be advertised at every point of sale as ‘will alter the course of that night’s show’.
Interval: 30 minutes
This is important to give the Company a break and a chance to make the space ready for the
second part of the event.
Show: 90 minutes
Capacity – circa 100 depending on venue
Party: 60 minutes
The party is an integral part of the show and not an add-on. Audience are free to leave at the end
of the performance but may choose to stay behind for the party, which lasts an hour. It is
important that the theatre bar stays open for the party as guests/audience are encouraged to buy
drinks and to foster a social environment rather than a ‘closing up at the end of the night’. The
party takes place on the set of the show and if possible audience should be allowed to bring
drinks back in.
Basic info:
An ‘event with dancing’, Susan & Darren was created with and performed by Darren Pritchard
and his mum, Susan. Audiences are invited to help Susan and Darren prepare for one of their
famous parties, and to join them for food, chat, drink and a dance after the show. Friends and
neighbours pop in via video interviews.
One sentence: Susan & Darren is a critically acclaimed ‘event with dancing’, performed by a
dancer and his mother.
Company contacts
Company office: 0161 830 7318
Production/Press/Marketing: Kully Thiarai and Sam Stockdale
[email protected], [email protected]
Artistic Directors: Richard Gregory and Renny O’Shea
[email protected], [email protected]
Production Management: Greg Akehurst [email protected]
Quarantine request that as soon as tickets go on sale weekly sales updates are sent to
[email protected]
Sample Press Release
Susan & Darren: mother and son in performance
Quarantine and Company Fierce present
Susan & Darren
Directed by Richard Gregory and Renny O’Shea
Quarantine is quite simply a marvel, a company that's right at the forefront of British
theatre….Shows such as White Trash and Susan & Darren have been both immensely touching,
totally human yet also intellectually rigorous in their examination of the nature of performance and
the raising of questions about what makes theatre seem real and reality so strongly theatrical
The Guardian
Quarantine, one of the UK’s leading contemporary performance companies, is presenting its award-winning
production of Susan & Darren as part of the [insert festival here]. This unique event with dancing is performed
by a mother and her son and was first created in Manchester in 2006. The production constantly grows to
reflect actual changes in the lives of its performers. Susan & Darren last toured the UK in 2010 - including
Sadler’s Wells in London – and has previously been seen in Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and the
Netherlands.
Susan Pritchard is Darren Pritchard’s mother. She is fifty-six and he is thirty-two.
Darren lives at home with Susan, in the house he grew up in.
Darren is a dancer.
Susan cleans, for Darren, and professionally.
They dance together at home to John Holt, Althea and Donna and Diana Ross.
Audiences are invited to help Susan and Darren prepare for one of their famous parties.
Along the way there will be dancing, devastation, intimate conversation and some lovely food.
Friends and neighbours might pop in.
Quarantine is an award winning theatre and performance company based in Salford. It works with
both virtuosic performers and people who have never performed before. Their personal histories
and experiences are the source of material for performance. Quarantine invents a theatrical
form that’s tailored to each piece – from intimate encounters to epic events. In Susan & Darren ,
Quarantine and Company Fierce join forces with choreographer Jane Mason and writer Sonia
Hughes to invent a kind of performance where real life doesn’t stop when the show starts.
“Go out of your way to see it” The Times
“It’s the best night out I can remember. I’m moved, almost to tears, by the honesty, directness,
warmth, and clarity in the performance. This is poignancy unadorned. Extraordinary ordinary lives
celebrating just being.”
Total Theatre magazine
For more details please visit www.qtine.com
Direct Mail Letter
[address]
Dear [name]
Susan & Darren:
mother and son in performance
A huge hit nationally and internationally since it was first performed in Manchester four years ago,
Susan & Darren returns, updated for 2012. The production constantly grows to reflect actual
changes in the lives of its performers. You are invited to help Darren and Sue prepare for one of
their famous parties. Along the way there will be devastation, intimate conversation and a lovely
buffet. Friends and neighbours might pop in.
Come and join the party. And bring your mum!
Quarantine work with both experienced performers and people who have never performed
before. Using their personal histories and experiences, Quarantine invent a theatrical form that’s
tailored to each piece – from intimate encounters to epic events.
The performers are Susan and Darren Pritchard. Susan Pritchard is Darren Pritchard’s mother.
She is fifty-seven and he is thirty-two. You’d spot that they were mother and son instantly.
Quarantine is quite simply a marvel, a company that's right at the forefront of British
theatre….Shows such as White Trash and Susan & Darren have been both immensely
touching, totally human yet also intellectually rigorous in their examination of the nature of
performance and the raising of questions about what makes theatre seem real and reality
so strongly theatrical.
Lyn Gardner, The Guardian, October 2009
Book your tickets now by calling [number] or visiting [website] and treat yourself to an
extraordinary theatre experience with Susan & Darren at [venue]. Tickets are priced at [£x] .
We look forward to welcoming you to the [venue] soon.
Daren Pritchard will lead a dance workshop before each performance of Susan & Darren which
will alter the course of that night's show.
All ages and levels of dance experience are welcome.
Free to ticket-holders, but booking is essential. To find out more, call the Box Office [number].
Best wishes,
[sig]
[name]
Sales and Press Pitches
If press from your area want to see the show in advance at another venue, we are happy to
arrange tickets.
The company are happy for free or discounted tickets to be offered for radio and newspaper
offers and competitions within reason.
Key selling points for audiences and press:
Quarantine is acknowledged as being one of the leading contemporary performance companies
in the UK.
Susan & Darren is an award winning production – Winner Best Fringe performance at the Dublin
Festival
The 2011 version of Susan & Darren is a specially updated piece, reflecting the changes in the
performer’s lives in the four years since they first created the production.
Susan & Darren is created with a mother and son. A special night or ticket offer could be created
to encourage people to bring along their mothers.
As mentioned earlier, inclusion in the workshop will alter the performance of the show although
this needs to be carefully worded.
Quarantine’s work often creates room for voices not usually heard in theatre. Susan & Darren is
an opportunity to bring new audiences into venues
Press Quotes
The Company
“Quarantine is one of the hottest companies of the moment”
Lyn Gardner: The Guardian
“A unique and delightful form of theatre that sits right on the cutting-edge of debate about
what we mean by performance.”
Joyce McMillan: The Scotsman 2008
“The company creates beautiful, affirming and fragile shows about people’s everyday
lives.”
Lyn Gardner: The Guardian 2008
“A remarkable theatre company that has created a body of beautiful, fragile and authentic
work, which finds the extraordinary in the ordinary lives of real people.”
Lyn Gardner: The Guardian 2008
“There is no company in the UK working quite in the area of Quarantine - a truly wonderful
company that uses the lives and experiences of real people as the starting point for all
their shows and who put their subjects centre stage and let them speak for themselves.”
Lyn Gardner: The Guardian 2006
Quarantine has created a series of shows excavating the lives of real people and we've
never seen one of these fragile, beautiful performances that wasn't an outright winner.
Lyn Gardner, The Guardian, 2006
“The group’s work has a poetic integrity to which ordinary critical methods no longer
apply.”
Alfred Hickling: The Guardian 2005
Susan & Darren
“Grounded in tenderness and humour, their show may be rough around the edges but has
an exceptionally warm centre. Go out of your way to see it.”
Donald Hutera, The Times, May 2010
“At times their closeness is almost unbearable. “What will you miss about me when I’m
gone? Susan asks. Most of all, dancing with you,” says Darren.”
Luke Jennings, The Observer, May 2010
“Remade for a new tour, [Susan & Darren] is a brilliant show from the ever-brilliant
Quarantine, a company that mines real, artistic gold from the rough, everyday lives of
ordinary people.”
Lyn Gardner, Theatre Picks of the Week, Guardian Guide, May 2010
“Susan & Darren feels wonderfully fresh and unscripted: they just talk to us, even when
they’re acknowledging how theatrical this is.”
Zoe Anderson, The Independent May 2010
“In this brief 90 minutes they allow us to take part in their lives and you come away feeling
like you have known them forever…with a buffet and disco thrown in, this really is a little
gem of a show.”
Craig Hepworth, What’s On Stage May 2010
“Words cannot do this living, breathing work justice. Go and experience it for yourself – it
may change your life.”
Charlotte Kasner, ballet.co.uk May 2010
“…A beautiful, thought provoking piece of work.”
Joan Davies, Manchester Confidential, May 2010
“There's a moment when Susan looks at Darren and your heart squeezes at the raw
honesty of it.” Mary Brennan, The Herald 19 Oct 2007
“It’s intimate, life-affirming, utterly magical and unmissable.”
Noeleen Dowling: Irish Times 2008
“The most heartwarming, vein-thrumming, uplifting show of this Festival.”
Fiona McCann, Irish Times.com
“Striking in its simplicity and moving for its bare honesty. A moving and immensely
satisfying night out.”
Jesse Weaver: Irish Theatre Magazine 2008
“It’s not often, at the end of a show, that you long to rush up and hug the performers, but I
had to resist the urge after this piece produced by Company Fierce and Quarantine.”
Lyn Gardner: The Guardian 2006
“This not so much a performance as a gift – one that comes straight from the heart.”
Lyn Gardner: The Guardian 2006
“It’s the best night out I can remember. I’m moved, almost to tears, by the honesty,
directness, warmth, and clarity in the performance. This is poignancy unadorned.
Extraordinary ordinary lives celebrating just being.”
Miriam King: Total Theatre 2006
“One of the most original, intimate, warmly human and movingly open-hearted shows I’ve
seen in a very long time... The banal and the beautiful, the tragic and the joyful, exist side
by side, just as they do in life, in a marvellous show which is as full of surprises as it is of
life-affirming love…”
Kevin Bourke Manchester Evening News, 2006
See-saw
“ It just reminds us, in the most potent way possible, that behind every face we pass in the
street there beats a life of infinite complexity. In other words, it makes us see others
afresh, with a new intensity, humanity and respect; and you can’t ask much more from
theatre than that. “
Joyce McMillan: The Scotsman 2000
Butterfly
“The whole thing might be the bastard offspring of the Wooster Group crossed with the
Osbournes – radical reality theatre.” Robert Dawson-Scott, The Times
“This piece has genuine heart, humour, honesty and love. Take a hankie and someone to
hug.
Mary Brennan: The Herald 2004
“Quarantine has an impressive reputation for theatre that radically dismantles the
conventions by which we normally experience it.”
Claire Allfree: The Independent 2004
White Trash
“Both celebratory and quite extraordinarily moving without being in the slightest bit
sentimental. The entire evening has a matter-of-fact lyricism about it.”
Lyn Gardner: The Guardian 2004
“What you see is artfully directed and utterly authentic, a show within a show - because
the seven are finding themselves as they perform, because their performance is their
triumph, their nightly act of self-definition. In short, you're not told what happened; you're
there as it happens.”
Peter Preston: The Guardian 2004
Something a taxi driver in Liverpool said…
“Theatre for the soul”
BBC Northern Ireland
Company Information: Quarantine
Quarantine creates theatre, performance and other public events.
Our work is about the here and now. In its form, content and process of creation, it
examines the world around us.
Past projects have included shared meals, family parties and a journey in the dark for one
person at a time - as well as performances on stage, watched by audiences in seats.
www.qtine.com
Social Media Connections
Facebook FanPage:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Quarantine/105451996162527
Twitter:
@QtineMcr
Please ‘like’ us and ‘follow’ us and we will reciprocate. Please email [email protected] with details
of your Facebook and Twitter feeds.