Scytheplays Ltd: The Dead, Live at the first London Lovecraft Festival!

27 Jan 2018

The Dead, Live at the first London Lovecraft Festival!

Between Tuesday 6th and Sunday 11th February 2018, the renowned Etcetera Theatre in Camden Town plays host to the first-ever London Lovecraft Festival, and Scytheplays Ltd is thrilled to announce that the company will be part of the chilling entertainment on offer, with a special performance of The Dead, Live.

Artwork by Jake Geen

The play's writer, Daniel Thackeray, says: “In recent years a growing number of writers and producers of theatre have been emboldened to enter the realm of the supernatural, and often their inspiration is the work of HP Lovecraft - the man who, in many ways, redefined the territory of literary supernatural horror, and who is owed a great debt by every writer who has worked in that field since. Even though our play has no direct connection to Lovecraft’s works, when I was writing it, his universe of ‘cosmic horror’ was very much in my mind as something that might lurk beneath the surface of the world of the stage ‘psychic’. It’s high time there was a fully-fledged Lovecraft Festival and I'm beyond thrilled that we're part of it and sharing the bill with some of his greatest titles. The festival organisers are clearly doing it out of a great love for the material, and they’ve put together a really special programme."

Carly Tarett and Howard Whittock will be reprising their acclaimed performances from last year's tours as Rachael and Lawrence respectively. The performance of The Dead, Live will be a matinee at 3.30pm on the last day of the festival, Sunday February 11th, and tickets can be booked via the Etcetera Theatre website.

Other titles in the festival's packed line-up include adaptations of Lovecraft's terrifying The Shadow Over Innsmouth and At the Mountains of Madness, Eldritch-inspired comedy in The Society of the Strange, and much that falls in between. For more information please explore the festival website.

About the company

Scytheplays is a theatre company specialising in (but not limited to) the adaptation of literary science fiction for the stage.

Its first production was Kevin Cuffe's original black comedy play, The Say Can Blues, in July 2011, and it then produced an adaptation of the classic 2000AD comic book written by Alan Moore and drawn by Ian Gibson, The Ballad of Halo Jones. Both shows were staged at the Lass O'Gowrie in Manchester and Scytheplays has an on-going relationship with Lass Productions, going on to co-produce a new piece inspired by the true-life meeting between Sir Clive Sinclair and Alan Sugar, Together in Electric Dreams, an adaptation of Nigel Kneale's classic television play The Year of the Sex Olympics, the Leeds revival of Halo Jones, and the highly-acclaimed V for Vendetta and Wine of India. Scytheplays also collaborated with Lass Productions and Yer Maun Productions to co-found the Greater Manchester Horror Fringe Festival, which will be returning in October 2015.

Scytheplays works with a loose (and ever-expanding) pool of acting and production people, being keen to build on and strengthen the bonds within Manchester's creative community, and also to help new talent to emerge. The company's creative director is Daniel Thackeray and associated directors include Ross Kelly and Fi Hudson.

For more information please contact Daniel via guiltedge@hotmail.com or find us on Twitter (@ScytheplaysLtd). Proposals for new productions are encouraged, but we ask that any writers wishing to submit scripts send an enquiry e-mail in the first instance to ask if we are currently reading script submissions (as our reading team is small). Please be aware that the company aims in the main to produce plays that are either adapted from the science-fiction or fantasy of other media (literature/comics/TV), or original works that are concerned with real science and its history.

Scytheplays Ltd is a limited company, Companies House registration number 09041817.