In May 2009, Kindle Theatre collaborated with filmcafe, Tony Appleby and the digital planetarium at Birmingham’s Thinktank, Millenium Point to showcase the first scene from The Balham Ladies Amateur Astronomy Club, a neo-traditional play set between 1835 and 2009, in which three women struggle for Enlightenment and emancipation in the man-made world of the sciences. Using innovative fulldome content shot by Steve Davies of filmcafe, and Kindle’s playful, intimate style of audience interaction, the invited guests were hushed into the planetarium to attend the inaugural meeting of the Balham Ladies Amateur Astronomy Club. With the night sky opening up on the dome above them, they witness a demonstration of meteor showers disintegrating into confusion, exasperation and sublime terror.  What is truth?

“I thoroughly enjoyed, as ever with Kindle performances, the sense of event, of occasion and of a complete experience; the show began the moment we all began accumulating at the bottom of the elevator, long before we arrived in the Planetarium. What I took away with me from the event was certainly a sense of the potential that space offers and the potential impact the interplay of those two media – film and theatre – might offer an audience in that space.” Audience Member

We aim to develop the project through 2009 with a view to fully realising the performance in 2010. Keep an eye out for the next stage when the Balham Ladies host a Winter Solstice Festival, 21st December 2009, complete with constellation lectures and flamenco at sunrise.

Visit www.filmcafe.co.uk to watch a showreel of the event, and let us know if you’d like Balham to come to you!

Visit Tony Appleby at www.coachwerks.org.uk/search/label/TonyAppleby