Latitude in a Minute: Kirsten Turner from Nabokov
Yesterday evening, in a conversation marred only by its proximity to the loos, I heard from Kirsten Turner, stage manager for Nabokov theatre company, about the four shows they’ve been doing across the festival site this weekend.
Nabokov are keeping you pretty busy this weekend; tell me about the shows.
We’ve got four shows here: Is Everyone OK?, which is by Joel Horwood, which is about a group of 30-somethings going through a mid-life crisis, all monologues and duologues; we’ve got Crunch and When Cheryl was Brassic,which together make up a thing called Skint, which is all about the credit crunch and how people are dealing with that. Crunch is by Duncan Macmillan, who has written another show that we’re working on as well, which is called Sleeve Notes. And we’ve got an installation art piece around that, which is called Every Brilliant Thing.
Is there life after Latitude for any of the shows?
Is Everyone OK? has been on tour and will be continuing its tour after this, but Crunch and When Cheryl was Brassic were specially commissioned for Latitude by Nabokov. Every Brilliant Thing has been going on for about a year and half a year now, its got its own Facebook group and has taken on a bit of a life of its own; there are 5000-plus entries on the group and the artists have illustrated them all with pieces of paper stuck up around the tent [next to the Tea Dance Stage].
How does performing at Latitude compare to putting on shows in traditional theatre contexts?
It’s very different and it’s not even like Edinburgh Festival where everyone’s locked into an event. Here everyone just comes and goes and if they don’t like it they leave, which can make it quite tricky for the actors, but actually makes a really lovely environment, because by the end of it you’ve got people who really want to be there.
What’s your pick of the Festival?
Hmm, there’s a lot of really quite strange stuff going on. My festival pick would probably not be in theatre, it would be Kate Tempest in the poetry arena. She’s brilliant, an amazing, life-affirming performer.
by Jo Caird