‘The city is alive. Wandering the streets, The Child, The Poet and Death trace memories and map dreams onto a landscape shifting under the spell of time.’
Award-winning Liverpool poet and playwright Lizzie Nunnery will embark on a tour of her successful 2017 play this spring, inspired by iconoclastic Mersey Sound poet Adrian Henri.
Described as a ‘modern day Under Milk Wood’, Horny Handed Tons of Soil explores how the landscape of Liverpool 8 – the same area that recently featured on the B.B.C.’s hit television show A House Through Time – has changed over the past 50 years.
Horny Handed Tons Of Soil blends spoken word, live music and film and is written and performed by Lizzie Nunnery (Winner of U.K. Theatre’s Best New Play award for Narvik), alongside musicians Martin Heslop, Martin Smith and Vidar Norheim.
Between March and June the show visits Liverpool Unity Theatre, Bury Met, Milton Keynes The Stables, London New Diorama, The Arts Centre at Edge Hill University, and York Theatre Royal. The tour is produced by maverick spoken word outfit Phrased & Confused and Liverpool’s Unity Theatre.
Lizzie Nunnery said, “For a long time I’ve been performing live as a musician and incorporating spoken word in to my set, but the length of this piece meant I could go much further in crafting a narrative, exploring Liverpool 8 and sparking off the Mersey poets’ renderings of the city. It’s been wonderful working with composers Vidar Norheim, Martin Heslop & Martin Smith alongside videographer Tim Brunsden and designer Laura Lomax to push the piece beyond a poem set to music, turning it in to a cross disciplinary show with all the energy of a gig and the inventiveness of a happening. I like to think Adrian Henri would approve of the experiment!”
Lizzie’s first play Intemperance (Liverpool Everyman 2007) was awarded 5 stars by The Guardian and shortlisted for the Meyer-Whitworth Award. She co-wrote Unprotected, winner of the Amnesty International Award for Freedom of Expression (Everyman/Traverse Edinburgh 2006). The Swallowing Dark (Liverpool Playhouse Studio/Theatre503 2011) was shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award; Narvik (Box of Tricks/Playhouse Studio 2015, national tour 2017) won best new play at the U.K. Theatre Awards. Other recent work includes The People Are Singing (Manchester Royal Exchange Studio, 2017) a cross-disciplinary stage play in collaboration with Ukrainian director Tamara Trunova, and play with songs The Sum (2017) commissioned for the theatre’s new rep company.
She has written extensively for B.B.C. radio and is also a poet, singer and songwriter, performing regularly with producer/composer Vidar Norheim
Tickets for Horny Handed Tons Of Soil on March 28th at the Unity Theatre are on sale from the Box office now.