Really Real Teenz!

11 March — 14 March

What happens when you cross the queen of “shameless showmanship and live-art provocation” (Time Out) with a group of teenagers?

The Yard’s company of young performers The Queen’s Yard Company follow up their sell-out “superb” and “stunningly honest” debut show You Do Not Have To Say Anything by teaming up with one of contemporary performance’s most infamous artists, The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein (Notorious, The Barbican; Splat!, SPILL Festival) to create a show about bodies, pop culture, and what happens when you take young people seriously.

Expect sexy brats, explosive fruit, and the worship of KFC; filthy dissections, Lady Gaga’s fetishes, and fierce hawk-women; Trump’s dumb hair, bloody Britney, and wild maniac dancing. These teens have some sh*t to say.

This is not the work that usually gets made with young people.
This might get uncomfortable.

Photography by Maurizio Martorana

ACCESS

Access tickets are priced at £10 and can be booked online. We offer free tickets for companions and these must be booked over the phone (020 3111 0570) or by emailing lara@theyardtheatre.co.uk

*OPEN CONCESSIONS
Open Concession tickets are available at £5 for anyone who feels they would really benefit from this reduction. As these tickets are limited please only purchase if you need to.

Credits

Director - The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein
Assistant Director - Myah Jeffers
Designer - Lauren Dix
Lighting Designer - Lauren Woodhead
Stage Manager - Chloë Dorato

Cast

Holly Gibson
Maria Kayum
Hasan Patel
Lamesha Ruddock
Alex Uzoka
Rumi Wolf

With support from

BIOGRAPHIES

The Queen's Yard Company

The Queen’s Yard Company are The Yard Theatre’s in-house company of exceptional young people aged 15 – 19 from across East London making radical new theatre with award-winning artists. Pairing the youthful energy of teenagers and young adults with the same risk-taking and experimentation that happens on our stage, The Queen’s Yard Company work in year long projects to tell the stories closest to their hearts in ways audiences have never seen before.

The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein

The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein’s practice investigates contemporary feminisms, critiquing problematic representations of women in mainstream culture whilst proposing alternative modes of female subjectivity. Her practice centres around mid-to-large scale stage-based work, blurring the lines between Live Art, Dance, and Contemporary Performance, whilst putting her own body at the centre of the work. In 2017, Holstein premiered and toured her largest work to-date, Notorious, supported by Arts Council England, The Barbican, Reykjavik Dance Festival/Lokal, PACT Zollverein, and Koneen Saatio, and commissioned by Fierce Festival and Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts. It has since toured to Kampnagel, Hamburg as their season opener, and will open Take Me Somewhere this coming May.

In 2018, Holstein was featured in a BBC Radio 4 Interview alongside Marina Abramovic and Laurie Anderson, interrogating the relationship between popular culture and performance art. In 2013 Holstein’s last large-scale work ‘Splat!’ reached wide audiences through its premiere at The Barbican, opening SPILL Festival of Performance to sold-out audiences and critical acclaim, including a feature on BBC Radio 4 Women’s Hour.

Her work has been studied by international scholars and students, as it’s been featured in Kim Solga’s Theatre & Feminism (2016), and articles by Rebecca Schneider, Anna Watkins-Fisher, and Adam Alston (forthcoming) in various publications. In 2016 Holstein completed her PhD at Queen Mary, University of London, researching contemporary feminism, popular culture, and ‘ugly feelings’. For the past 7 years, she has lectured at numerous UK and European universities, and she has also published several articles, in: The Only Way Home Is Through the Show: The Performance Work of Lois Weaver; On Repetition: Writing, Performance, Art; Performance Research; Feminist Times; and Dance Theatre Journal.