About the performance

Welcome to a seedy spoken-word underworld where gangsters, high rollers and con men compete in a high stakes Scrabble game to end them all.

A Night On The Tiles is the debut show by theatre collective Pen-ultimate. An electric mix of tightly woven wordplay and send ups of heist, caper and kung fu movies, it is a Tarantino-esque tale of revenge, murder and Devonshire cream teas.

Key Personnel

Rebecca McKnight - Producer
Monserrat Gili - Director
Ali Gadema - Writer and Performer
Ben Mellor - Writer and Performer
Niven Ganner - Writer and Performer
Samira Arhin-Acquaah - Writer and Performer
Martin Stannage - Writer and Performer
Will Power - Dramaturg
Lucy Frost - Set Designer
Dan Steele - Sound Design
Richard Ramchurn - Animator
Angela Thompson - Stage Manager
David McBride - Technical Manager

Production Information

Running time at full length: 1 hour

Suitable for age 12+

No use of text

Use of recorded music

Require a clear understanding of English

Touring Information

Small scale show (up to 400 seats)

Appropriate for a studio and spaces up to 450 seats

Number of people on tour: 7

Number of peformers on stage: 5

Available to tour Spring and Autumn 2012

Outreach and Educational Work

Pen-ultimate are experienced workshop facilitators and are able to deliver both informal and formal education workshops and post-show talks to complement your program. Workshops can be tailored to your needs and developed for the following groups:

• Young People, Schools, Students
• Adults
• Special Needs Groups
• Specialist groups such as spoken word groups, MCs, actors, writers etc.

And can address any of the following genres/topics:

• Hip Hop Theatre and Physical Theatre
• The Process of making a show like A Night on the Tiles
• Writing for Performance and Developing characters
• Devising for theatre and Performance Skills
• Spoken word, MC’ing, Beatbox

Example workshop

This two-hour workshop is designed to give an insight into the process of making A Night on the Tiles. We hope that by sharing our techniques we will inspire people to find new ways of approaching theatre-making. It can be adapted to work with participants of all backgrounds and levels of experience.

The workshop consists of several warm-up exercises; ones which we found particularly useful in sharpening us up, increasing our focus and becoming accustomed to playing with words on a daily basis. We then move into character development exercises, using poetry, rhyme and physicality to create personalities and back-story.

After the individual work necessary to create characters, we then explore methods of collaborative writing, which was an important part of our process. The end product is a series of short monologues and dialogue between the newly-created characters, all in verse.

Company History

Pen-ultimate are a diverse collective of nationally and internationally recognised poets, actors, MCs and playwrights.

Ben Mellor is the current Slam Champion for BBC Radio 4 and Pen-ultimate were recently featured extensively on Radio 4’s long-running poetry series Bespoken Word. The verbal dexterity of Mellor and Lucidity inspired producer Graham Frost to take an unprecedented chance, inviting the rest of the crew to perform on air without having seen Pen-ultimate live. A section from A Night On The Tiles was featured on the most recent series to a great response. Says Frost:

“Pen-ultimate are an unusually talented performance collective, each of them distinctive, each of them massively powerful, and together they’re richly entertaining”

Pen-ultimate made their debut at the 2007 Edinburgh Festival, and have since performed in theatres and festivals including Contact, The Albany, Bristol Old Vic and The Big Chill.

In spring 2009 Contact Theatre made Pen-ultimate one of their key Partner companies and supported the collective to work with American playwright and performer Will Power. A Night On The Tiles is their first full-scale production and major national tour.

Recent Productions / Tours

A Night on the Tiles - Contact and The Albany (Nov 10)
A Night on the Tiles Spring Tour 2011 (The Broadway, Tara Studio, ARC, The Core, The Egg and SpArC).
Autumn Tour 2011 (Harrow Arts, Redbridge Drama Centre and MAC).

Reviews

All Nov 2010“Deliciously lyrical”
Afridiziak

“Packed with wordy wit…laced with sharp physical comedy”
METRO **** Four Stars

“Fresh…dynamic…not to be missed!”
Whatsonstage.com **** Four Stars