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About Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Live theatre beamed to your livingroom
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Sheila Reid in the first Sky Arts Theatre Live! play, Mind Away
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Sheila Reid and Siobhan Redmond
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Siobhan Redmond in Jackie Kay's stage debut play
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Raza Jaffrey in Sky Arts Theatre Live! Mind Away
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Lisa Livingstone and Raza Jaffrey in Mind Away
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Siobhan Redmond
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Raza Jaffrey and Lisa Livingston
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Sheila Reid plays a woman battling dementia in Mind Away
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Raza Jaffrey
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Lisa Livingstone in Sky Arts Theatre Live! Mind Away
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Siobhan Redmond and Sheila Reid
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Siobhan Redmond plays the daughter of Sheila Reid
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Raza Jaffrey, Sheila Reid and Siobhan Redmond in Mind Away
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Siobhan Redmond, Raza Jaffrey and Sheila Reid
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Siobhan Redmond and Sheila Reid in Mind Away
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Sheila Reid, Raza Jaffrey and Siobhan Redmond
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Siobhan Redmond and Sheila Reid in the rehearsals for Mind Away
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Sheila Reid in rehearsals for Mind Away, author Jackie Kay's debut stage play
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Siobhan Redmond and Sheila Reid rehearse Mind Away with director Pip Broughton
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Siobhan Redmond in rehearsals for Mind Away
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Sheila Reid in rehearsals for Mind Away
Sky Arts Theatre Live!
Siobhan Redmond and Sheila Reid rehearse a scene
Here at Sky Arts, we like to think of ourselves as a bit avant-garde; a bit cutting-edge and really, really keen on the arts. Which is why our newest project is live theatre – or Theatre Live!, as we prefer to call it.
Combining six bestselling authors; five established directors, twenty brilliant actors and six brand new Sky Arts-commissioned plays, Theatre Live! is an ambitious new project that brings live drama back to the small screen for the first time since the mid-Seventies. (Or the mid-Eighties if you count the time Nicholas Witchell and Sue Lawley’s studio got invaded on the Six O’Clock News.) Better still, we’re also broadcasting these six theatrical world premieres in high definition.
We can’t take all the credit though: the idea is the brainchild of polymath Sandi Toksvig, who realised that literary festivals were full of established writers who would welcome the challenge of becoming first-time playwrights. As she noted in a recent Telegraph interview, “There’s been a big attempt over the past five years to find new writing talent for television, but the one place they never looked was literary festivals. I thought, ‘Why don’t we go to people who already know about words?” Here at Sky Arts, we couldn’t argue with such impeccable logic, and after a few pow-wows down the pub, the legendary Ms Toksvig agreed to make her debut as artistic director of the Theatre Live! company.
As a result, six acclaimed authors – Jackie Kay; Kate Mosse; Morag Joss; Nicci French; Tina Mcbuig and Michael Dobbs – make their collective debut as playwrights, collaborating with respected directors (Pip Broughton, Fiona Laird, Sue Tully and Patrick Sandford) and high-profile actors including Pauline Collins and Siobhan Redmond to create original plays, performed to a live audience in the purpose built Sky Arts Theatre Live! studio. You may wonder about Tina Mcbuig - we have a surprise in store for you there!
We think Theatre Live! is an invigorating new initiative in the fields of both theatre and television; not least because it’s live, and anything can happen. As Sandi Toksvig notes, “Live drama has a rawness and immediacy in which anything can and did happen including on one sad occasion the death of the leading actor (Gareth Jones in ‘Underground’ on Armchair Theatre in 1958). Now Sky Arts brings back genuine ‘reality’ television – drama as it happens, whatever happens.” We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.
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Latest comments
Lydia Beddoe
Wed 8 July 2009, 12:31
Sandi is, I know short of staff for these events. Please tell her all she needs to do is provide me with a bed and I’ll even do the sweeping up!
Regards,
Lydia Tel 07706 118 668
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sue littleson
Wed 8 July 2009, 21:53
thanks to jackie and those who asked her to put the play on. It was great - real, poetic and moving.
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Neli
Sat 18 July 2009, 16:44
Will these plays be published?
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iosu
Sun 19 July 2009, 22:22
Great! I was actually thinking of writing you guys and asking you to show more plays! There is plenty of music in Sky Arts, some very good films (but not enough of them!) and now there is a few plays! yey!
But please show more plays! Why not show old plays too? I would love to see some of those plays from the 70s and if you have a chance please show some Bretch plays and some absudist theatre!
Cheers!
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Colin Price
Mon 20 July 2009, 11:13
I thoroughly enjoyed Syrinx, and congratulations and thanks are due to all concerned. I was particularly impressed by the television direction, which succeeded in feeling just as a theatre would. I look forward to the other plays in the series, and hope that they will be just as enjoyable.
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Anne Trew
Fri 24 July 2009, 19:09
As a Amateur Director I really loved these plays and would love to enter one in a local drama festival especially as they have excellent roles for ‘’women of a certain age’’. Can you tell me if they are going to be published
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Sarah-Ann Jones
Sat 25 July 2009, 15:20
I thought Pauline Collins impersonation of the Big Brother announcer was the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages!
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Maria Cubitt
Thu 6 August 2009, 21:59
I don’t understand the point of this series. It looks like a piece of under-rehearsed village hall amateur drama. The great TV plays of the past were done in a studio, with no audience, and they were live because there was no alternative. And they were technically a great deal more impressive than this.
Every one of the plays I’ve watched has had unforgivable technical mistakes.
What I’m seeing are good actors performing way below what they’re capable of (over-acting, mainly) in dull sets, boringly shot.
And everyone is so self-congratulatory!
Unbearable.
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andrew
Thu 13 August 2009, 06:32
I have loved this series of live theatre.
I do hope it will come back, I have enjoyed every production.
It would all so be good to see youth theatre live , showing the young and up and coming new talent .
Longing for the new series .
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VS
Sun 16 August 2009, 17:31
I enjoyed the plays very much- well done to all concerned.
I’d have preferred to see them filmed more like a whole play- there were too many close ups and you couldnt see the whole stage which to me is the point of theatre.I think that is why it may have looked over acted.
You dont always want to see the speker- it is interesting to scan the cast for reactions.
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L B
Wed 16 September 2009, 22:59
I think that Theatre Live is going to be fundamental in bringing back the televised plays that were once such a major element of British broadcasting.
Eacj play offers a unique and exciting experience for both the studio and telelvision audience. I certainly think it will help to highlight the power of straight drama over other theatre froms, notably Musicals
I look forward to the next series and hope for the plays to branch even further out.
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