HOME announces Oct 2015-Mar 2016 season

“HOME is about storytelling through contemporary visual art, film and theatre,” says Dave Moutrey, the multi-arts venue’s director and chief executive, at the launch of HOME’s new season. “Our aim is to continuously find new ways of developing cross artform links, but also to create a HOME for everyone that introduces our audiences to new and extraordinary experiences of outstanding art – showing off to the world just what is possible in our amazing new building.”

The freshly-minted venue's new season, announced today, is as ambitious as ever and full of these cross-artform links.

Theatre

In terms of theatre, the next six months will see work from three medium-defining giants take to the HOME boards. The previously announced, stripped-back version of Aeschylus’ epic The Oresteia (23 Oct-14 Nov) is joined by adaptations of plays by William Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett. A co-production with the Young Vic, HOME’s version of Macbeth (2-6 Feb) reunites director Carrie Cracknell with choreographer Lucy Guerin to create a new, dance-infused version of the Bard’s supernatural tragedy. Beckett’s absurd and macabre Endgame (25 Feb-12 Mar), meanwhile, is brought to life again under the direction of Glasgow Citizens Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill.

Also announced by HOME's artistic director of theatre, Walter Meierjohann, are two world premiere productions. The first is Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring. (22-16 Mar) from Quarantine, HOME’s associate company. The quartet is described as a piece of “mass portraiture, spanning the human lifecycle and made with ‘real people’ in place of actors.” Each work in the quartet stands alone or can be enjoyed in an epic, day-long marathon. The other is The Passion (25-26 Mar), a site-specific production for Easter 2016 that will take place at Campfield Market Hall. Directed by filmmaker Penny Wollcock, it will take the form of a full opera version of Bach’s oratorio St Matthew Passion.

Other theatre highlights include Barbarians (28-30 Jan), a trilogy from the Hofesh Shechter Company, and a new look Re:Play festival, which is reborn as PUSH (12-23 Jan).

Film

In film, the most exciting announcement was People and Places, a season dedicated to American independent filmmaker and essayist James Benning. “I’m particularly excited about the James Benning season,” says Jason Wood, HOME’s artistic director of film. “Not only because it is a true cross-art project in terms of the director’s aesthetic, but also because I think Benning is one of the most distinctive voices at work in cinema today. His films give you the space to sit and think, which is all too rare in most modern cinema.”

Another cross-art season announced is From Caligari to Hitler, which offers up a series of films made during the Weimar era (think Murnau, Lang and Lubitsch) to coincide with theatre company 1927’s production Golem (7-17 Oct). There’s also a season celebrating Manchester screenwriter Jim Allen, best known for three of Ken Loach's more blistering movies: Hidden Agenda, Raining Stones, and Land and Freedom.

Visual Art

An iconic film is the inspiration for one of HOME's most eagerly awaited exhibitions. Safe (14 Nov-3 Jan), curated by HOME’s artistic director of visual art, Sarah Perks, and independent curator Louise O’Hare, takes its cue from Todd Haynes’ 1995 film of the same name, and presents five new commissions by Clare Makhlouf Carter, Chris Paul Daniels, Yoshua Okón, Camilla Wills and 2014 Turner Prize nominee James Richards alongside existing work by Michael Dean, Sunil Gupta, Laura Morrison and Jala Wahid.

“Safe encompasses what HOME is all about: bringing together a diverse set of artists from around the world, with new contemporary commissions, to debate – in an accessible and meaningful way – aspects of our current climate,” says Perks. “Our programme is distinctive through its work with artists to create and tell stories that experiment and explore, probe and provoke, reply and respond, across productions, exhibitions, commissions and projects – interrogating and illuminating our contemporary existence.”

Another highlight of the visual arts programme is Incidents of Travel in the Multiverse, from British artists and filmmakers AL and AL, and we’re told their “sci-fi vision will investigate a new era of scientific exploration, both real and imagined.” This solo show will feature film, drawing, installation and a live concert hall performance with music by Philip Glass.

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For full details of HOME’s new season, go to www.homemcr.org