The Rose Company is a newly formed Lancaster-based all-female theatre company We specialise in bringing historical texts to contemporary life.
To that end, our first production will be Lady Jane Lumley's adaptation of Euripides' Iphigenia At Aulis, which is the first translation of Euripides into English and the first known dramatic work by a woman in English. It is a dynamic, surprisingly modern-feeling translation of the Greek and will be a challenging and fun text to work with and perform.
The date for this performance is the evening of Tuesday July 9th and the venue is the Minghella Theatre at Reading University; the performance is part of an academic conference being held at Reading that week.
Rehearsals, provisionally, will take place in Lancaster (venue to be confirmed) on the weekends of June 22nd/23rd and 29th/30th, as well as the evenings of the week before the show - July 1st to 6th. We intend to travel to Reading early on the 9th (by train - unless performers wish to drive) and return the following day, hopefully staying in university accommodation overnight - keeping everything as cheap and manageable as possible.
We would then like to revive the show in the autumn and perform in the north-west. Future productions will follow...
We are holding a reading/casting for the show on Monday 20th May at 7pm, upstairs in The Borough, Lancaster - and we would love to see you there! Please RSVP to rosecompanytheatre@gmail.com letting us know your availability/interest. Additionally, do consider coming along to the meeting, even if you are unavailable for this first show. The Iphigenia needs a cast of 8; future productions are likely to be larger, so it would be great to start a network of women performers and creatives of all kinds. If you are not Lancaster-based, but would like to be included in future communications, again, please let us know.
Best wishes,
Emma Rucastle (director)
on behalf of The Rose Company (founder members Aliki Chapple, Alison Findlay, Ruth Gregson, and Emma Rucastle).
Email: rosecompanytheatre@gmail.com
Twitter: @The RoseCompany