Melbourne’s Polyglot Theatre is excited to announce a tour of its acclaimed work We Built This City across the UK and Ireland in May, June and July 2010, culminating in a performance at the prestigious Royal National Theatre, London, as part of the 2010 London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT).

The London performance is a four-way partnership between Polyglot Theatre, the National Theatre’s Watch This Space program, LIFT, and the London Festival of Architecture. The tour will also reach Stirling (Scotland), Dublin (Ireland) and Carlisle (England) in Lakes Alive, part of the cultural program for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Polyglot’s Executive Producer, Simon Abrahams, will also form part of an arts industry panel discussion (Theatre for Young People: An International Perspective) at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, London as part of the LIFT program.

“This tour is an enormous milestone for Polyglot,” says Abrahams, “and our eighth international tour in two years. We are thrilled that the world’s leading arts centres – from Washington’s Kennedy Centre to the National Theatre of Korea, to the Royal National Theatre in London – are discovering what Australia has known for 32 years: that Polyglot’s world class performances can ignite every child’s imagination, regardless of their circumstances.”

We Built This City is a large-scale participatory theatrical installation celebrating absolute simplicity and the power of children’s imaginations. It takes the form of a public ‘construction site’ using nothing but thousands and thousands of cardboard boxes and the energy and ingenuity of kids and families. The children build an entire city in one day, before the whole thing is crushed into a recyclable heap of cardboard rubble.

“We Built This City places children in the role of architect and builder,” says Polyglot’s Artistic Director Sue Giles, who came up with the concept. “We provide a creative space where parents and kids play with equal enthusiasm and joyful imagination.”

Trying to describe the work – a cross between a performance and a giant participatory installation made out of cardboard. 

Giles says “We Built This City is not a play… it IS play.”

The work has been performed to over 30,000 children across Australia since its premiere in 2001, including the Melbourne International Arts Festival in 2006. It has also toured to Singapore twice, to Washington and, earlier this year, to Pittsburgh as part of the International Performing Arts for Youth showcase.

In London, Polyglot’s artists will also work with disadvantaged children from a school in Canning Town, as part of the National Theatre’s access program, replicating the community development work that Polyglot does in Australia.

Polyglot will also tour to the National Theatre of Korea and Nowon Theatre, Seoul in May 2010 with two productions, Tooth and Claw and Check Out! (Excellent Production Award winner at the 2009 Shanghai International Children’s Theatre Fesitval).

Check Out! will also tour to the Hong Kong International Arts Carnival in August 2010.

In September and October, Polyglot will premiere a new work in Shanghai.

Tour details

WE BUILT THIS CITY by Polyglot Theatre

• 25 to 29 May at Macrobert, Stirling (Scotland)
• 3-5 June at Lakes Alive, Carlisle (England)
• 26-27 June at Draiocht, Dublin (Ireland)
• 2-4 July at Waterloo Terrance at Royal National Theatre
  (as part of London Festival of Theatre, England)