“Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.” Anne Herbert

A special promenade site-specific performance in and around Putney Library as a part of Wandsworth Arts Festival on Wednesday 18th, Thursday 19th & Friday 20th May.

The library is a place of solace. A place of hushed tones and concentrated foreheads. But what lurks between the book shelves? What’s hidden in the pages? What hides around the corner? What happens when it’s gone?

This May, in the lead up to their upcoming 50th Year celebrations, People Show will create a special site specific promenade performance in and around Putney Library as a part of Wandsworth Arts Festival 2016.

In partnership with Putney Library and the University of Roehampton, People Show is working with emerging artists to create a unique interdisciplinary theatre experience in response to the library spaces. It uses the themes of how libraries survive in today’s world as a starting point for the work to be devised from.

People Show invite the audience to uncover what happens to the treasures of the library once they are returned and forgotten; to find out what has happens to the mighty leather bound encyclopedias now we have our phones to find the knowledge we want to know.

The show takes the audience on a unique journey through the library, to discover hidden spaces with a few surprises along the way. It includes input from library users and the local community and encourages the audience and users of the space to question how a library can continue to be used by the community it serves. It challenges the stereotypes associated with libraries and how we must behave within them.

People Show has an established track record of creating wildly imaginative shows in hidden and unusual spaces. These site specific shows include: People Show 122: The Pump House Project (Pump House Gallery, Battersea Park, 2010), and People Show 119: Ghost Sonata (Sefton Park Palm House Liverpool, commissioned as part of City of Culture in 2008), 128: The Crypt Project (the Crypt of St Mary Magdalene Church, Paddington in 2015).

People Show 131: Putney Library is a part of a series of events planned in the lead up to People Show’s 50th Year celebrations.

April 14, 2016