The Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust

Promoting innovation in theatre

The Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award 2008

The 2008 OSBTT Award Winner, Slung Low, is a company based in Yorkshire producing new work.

Specialising in theatre installations and site-specific work, Slung Low creates "traditional stories" for total sensory experiences utilising all the techniques available to 21st-century artists and aims to place the audience — one way or another — at the centre of their tales.

In Helium, Bella's grandfather, Max, keeps sending her parcels. Inside each box is a helium balloon. Tracing Bella's footsteps into her grandfather's past Helium takes you through secret doors to times long past, events best forgotten and, in the end, to unfinished business.

A short adventure for one

A theatre installation combining live and digital performance, birthday parties and cathedrals, a bombadier and a gargoyle, Helium is an investigation of guilt, responsibility and the true meaning of the word release.

Four shorlisted candidates were awarded research-and-development grants: Claire Coaché for Big Bertha, Brother Tongue (Elly Green) for About Tommy, Slung Low (Alan Lane) for Helium and Coney (Tassos Stevens) for Sangreal.

Helium ran at the Pit in the Barbican Centre 3-20 September 2008

www.slunglow.org
www.barbican.org.uk


Reviews

"a genuinely enchanting experience" - The Telegraph

"a charmingly inventive piece of experimental theatre" - Time Out, one of their Critic's Choices and Shows of the Year

"a company of idiosyncratic vision and promise ... the piece is entirely itself in its emotional tug and mix of the fantastical and everyday" - The Guardian