VENUE: Synergy Shopfront Gallery
WORKSHOPS: 4 August-22 September
SEASON: 27 September, 4 October, 11 October

Facilitated by David Ryding
Production design advice by Tanja Beer
Performed by Members of Platform Youth Theatre

Part improvised theatre, part installation with a little dash of street performance, Pestilence, the last horseman of the apocalypse, is riding into view Saturday 27 September, Saturday 4 October and Saturday 11 October at the Synergy Shopfront Gallery in Northcote. Performed from 12pm to 4pm each Saturday, the audience is invited to wander and linger in the space, and witness entirely improvised moments, stories and scenes – stay a minute, stay the afternoon and encounter an ensemble of improvised characters. And all for a gold coin donation.

Under the direction and guidance of artist David Ryding, Pestilence has been created with no script, just devised characters. The Pestilence performance ensemble comprises young artists from various backgrounds who aren’t comfortable calling themselves ‘just actors’ or ‘just writers’ or ‘just designers’ or ‘just performers’. These young people have been working with David Ryding since the beginning of August in devising, creating, producing and performing a multi-artform production.

The theme ‘pestilence’ is inspired by one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which is the overall theme for Platform Youth Theatre’s projects in 2008. The horseman pestilence will link in with the notion of the ‘plague’ of consumerism rather than a biblical plague of locusts or disease. The Syngery Shopfront Gallery, usually a hub for visual arts, will be stripped back and re-fashioned into a familiar supermarket setting which is non-descript in its generic atmosphere but universal.