The Stage

Vanessa Redgrave unveils Brighton Festival highlights

Published Wednesday 22 February 2012 at 16:57 by Natalie Woolman

Vanessa Redgrave will narrate a Lebanese woman’s life story on stage as part of Brighton Festival 2012, of which she is this year’s guest director.

Redgrave will narrate Wadad Makdisi Cortas’ A World I Loved: Story of an Arab Woman at Theatre Royal Brighton, as part of a show that will feature Cortas’ family as well as music and images.

Cortas’ book follows her life from her childhood in Lebanon under the French mandate and takes in the creation of Israel and the Lebanese civil war. The multimedia performance will take place on May 12. It is being presented in aid of the Barenboim/Said Foundation, which funds the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

The theatrical line-up in Redgrave’s programme also includes the British premiere of “a multimedia manga opera” by Danish group Hotel Pro Forma. War Sum Up will blend traditional warrior texts from Japanese Noh theatre with manga graphics on stage. It will also feature live music by the Latvian Radio Choir and pop orchestra The Irrepressibles. War Sum Up will be performed on May 25 at Brighton Dome.

Meanwhile, the team behind 2010’s Electric Hotel will return to Brighton to present the premiere of Motor Show, during which the audience will wear headphones and listen to the conversations in the cars they see in front of them. Motor Show runs from May 9.

French street theatre company Generik Vapeur will create a huge metallic “scarecrow” out of shipping containers for its piece, Waterlitz, in which audiences will see animals on the edge of extinction, fireworks and aerial dance on May 26.

Berlin Theatre Collective will be making its UK debut with a site- specific piece about the criminal justice system and, as previously announced, Brighton Festival associate company Dreamthinkspeak is to stage its interpretation of Hamlet in The Rest is Silence from May 2.

Redgrave follows a line of guest directors including artist Anish Kapoor, musician Brian Eno and Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose programme last year was created in her absence and was built around her struggle for freedom of speech and democracy.

Redgrave said that Seamus Heaney’s poem Republic of Conscience had been her inspiration for the programme.

“Heaney’s wonderful poem continues to inspire us to speak for those who do not or cannot speak for themselves,” she added. “This is a good focus for the Brighton Festival in 2012 - after all an arts festival is a rich opportunity to listen to other points of view and to learn from others’ experiences and be inspired into action.

“The festival will be similar to the Greek’s Agora - the places where we can gather to hear significant ideas and take part in discussions and yet might remind us of who we hope to be, how far we have yet to travel and the positive changes we can all make, large and small, to improve our world for future generations.”