When his friend is stabbed, a young lad from a housing scheme falls in with a gang. The terrible revenge he takes at random brings disaster on himself and the family of his victim. Inspired by the Iliad and drawing on Glasgow’s ‘knife culture,’ Fleeto is a hard-hitting contemporary Scottish re-invention of the Greek tragic form. Using appropriately strong language, it is by turns frightening and deeply moving, provoking much thought and debate on the issue of violence in our communities.

Cunneen’s play uses the rhythm of Shakespearean verse and applies it to a story about a modern day Glasgow street stabbing, in which a youngster is indiscriminately killed by a gang while trying to defend his friend from their vengeful rage. Inspired by The Iliad, Fleeto reinvents the Greek tragic form in this timely exploration of issues surrounding so called ‘knife culture’. This brief, yet compelling, fifty-five minute tragedy is by turns, thought-provoking and deeply moving.

“performed in a stunningly rich, flexible Shakespearian style verse”...

***** British Theatre Guide.

**** ‘a gripping portrait of inner-city violence’- Mark Fisher, Guardian

**** ‘a powerful and beautifully-produced short play for Scotland today . . . a stunningly fine job.’ - Joyce McMillan, Scotsman

**** ‘truly frightening… a wonderfully acted and, sadly, scarily truthful play’ The Herald

‘Cunneen's extraordinary script is the star’ What’s On Stage

Revenge brings disaster. Inspired by ‘The Iliad’ & Glasgow’s ‘knife culture’, Fleeto is a hard-hitting, contemporary Scottish modern day classic.

Winner of the Brighton Fringe Emerging Talent Award 2011 and the Holden Street Theatre Edinburgh Fringe Award 2011.

TUMULT IN THE CLOUDS is a new Glasgow-based theatre company, bringing 'Fleeto' and 'Wee Andy' by writer/director Paddy Cunneen to the 2012 Adelaide fringe Festival.

Season and Ticket Price

HOLDEN STREET THEATRES – THE STUDIO

PREVIEWS - 22 Feb 2pm All Tix $15 & 25th Feb at 9pm

Preview price $17.00

SEASON - 3, 10 March at 2:30pm. 4, 6, 8, 13, 15, 17-18 March at 7:30pm. 28 Feb, 1 March at 9pm

Season Ticket prices A - $25.50, C - $20.00, FB - $20.00, G (6 +)- $18.00

Director’s notes on Fleeto

I wrote Fleeto in response to my own experiences in Edinburgh, I was working as a composer for a children's theatre company and every day I took the bus from the city centre to Muirhouse, an area on the city’s outskirts. I was horrified at the way the Edwardian Grandeur of the city centre gave way to areas of real hardship - within a just few short minutes of passing Fettes (a private school, which had educated Tony Blair, the prime minister at the time). I couldn't understand how a city could be so rich and confident in its centre and so poor and despairing within a couple of miles. It felt like a terrible form of political denial that we can ignore the deprivation that sits so close to us, as long as we don't see it. I took the view that it was only when trouble spilled from schemes into the city centre that the greater mass of people were moved to voice an opinion on it.

Fleeto was written in 2007 and in it Wee Andy is an offstage minor character who is merely referred to. While working on Fleeto with the internees of Polmont Young Offenders Institute (near Edinburgh), I was struck by how anxious they were to learn more about Wee Andy's fate. Here was a group of “violent young men” expressing concern for a fictional character and in so doing revealing their own histories as vulnerable children growing up within the established patterns and rules of violence of their communities. I wrote Wee Andy as part of a debt of honour to them as they had been so generous in their commitment to working on Fleeto, had made such positive contributions to the process and in so doing had accepted me into their company.

The two plays focus on various aspects of community violence, and although Edinburgh was the inspiration for Fleeto, the plays are resolutely set in Glasgow. Both plays are written in a poetic form made all the more muscular by drawing on contemporary Glaswegian "street speak". They follow the story of the consequences of violence - for individuals, and for the community more widely. They are strongly driven by unfolding cause and effect, dramatic and philosophical, along the way. I am keen on an intense form of theatre which is Spartan in its use of technical resources and which as a consequence places a huge demand on the actors, and similarly treats our audiences as intelligent and involved, so the plays are staged as simply as possible, generating a high level of imaginative participation from the spectators. The violence, which feels rather graphic, is actually theatrically highly stylised and takes place more in the mind of the viewer than onstage.

The pieces are also inspired by my own love of Ancient Greek Classical plays - and not simply for the emotional speeches their characters often deliver, nor simply for the intensity of the plotted events, but from an appreciation that Ancient Greek plays were platforms for social enquiry, debating the ethical questions of its time. Knife crime is an ethical question of our time. It is my hope that by using this ancient theatrical model the audiences at Fleeto/Wee Andy will experience a tragedy viewed from different perspectives and so be prompted to examine some of the implicit questions and consider their own reactions - and social - placing in relation to the issues.

‘The Arts and in particular Drama is a very powerful medium in communicating and delivering not only a powerful message, but it also provides opportunities to work collectively with a wider audience to start to unravel and address the many complex facets within our society which makes this for many of our youth of today an all too frequent occurrence.’

- DETECTIVE CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT JOHN CARNOCHAN,

(Head of the Violence Reduction Unit, Strathclyde Police)

BIOGRAPHIES

Actors:

Andy Clark:

Theatre: The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, Miss Julie, Gobbo (NationalTheatre of Scotland) Something Wicked This Way Comes (Catherine Wheels/NTS); Tartuffe, The Ching Room, Anthony and Cleopatra (Oran Mor); The Cherry Orchard (Royal Lyceum Theatre), The Government Inspector (Communicado), Hoors (Traverse Theatre), The Last Witch (Traverse/Edinburgh International Festival) Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, Hamlet, Othello (Citizens’ Theatre), Roam, The Devil’s Larder (Grid Iron), Vernon God Little (Young Vic), Measure for Measure (Clywd Theatr Cymru), Duchess of Malfi, The Seagull, The Winter’s Tale (Dundee Rep). TV/Film: River City (BBC Scotland), Rebus (STV), Taggart (SMG TV), High Times (SMG TV), Sea of Souls (BBC)

Pauline Knowles:

Theatre: Pass The Spoon (Magentic North), Marilyn (Edinburgh Lyceum/ Glasgow Citizens'); Man of La Mancha, Cuttin' a Rug (Edin Lyceum); Don Juan, Othello, Wizard of Oz (Citizens') While You Lie, Knives in Hens, Gorgeous Avatar, Heritage (Traverse); Macbeth, King Lear, A Doll's House, Medea (Theatre Babel); Tir na nOg (Edin Fringe Best New Musical); The Speculator, A Scot’s Quair (Edin International Festival) Matsuzake, A Drop in the Ocean (Oran Mor); Tutti Frutti (National Theatre of Scotland), Shining Souls (Old Vic), Vassa (Almeida). TV: Case Histories, Personal Affairs, Garrow’s Law, Manhunters (BBC); Taggart (STV). Radio: The Alterer (BBC)

Neil Lieper:

Neil is from Paisley and is playing Kenzie for the fifth time in Fleeto & Wee Andy. He has been acting for over 15 years and has recently been in Ken Loach’s new feature film The Angel’s Share. He was Assistant Director on Lark, Clark and the Puppet Handy (Raindog Productions). Theatre: Fleeto & Wee Andy((Edinburgh Fringe/Tumult in the Clouds), Fleeto (V.amp Productions – UK & European Tour), The Ushers (Raindog), Playing Houses (Glasgay), TV: River City (BBC Scotland), Taggart: For Their Sins (STV), Chewing the Fat (BBC), Rab C Nesbitt (BBC), High Times (SMG TV).

Jordan McCurrach:

Jordan trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Theatre: Fleeto (Edinburgh Fringe/Tumult in the Clouds), Wedding Night (National Theatre of Scotland) Sense (Imaginate festival), Mother Goose (Byre Theatre), Playing Houses (Arches Theatre), Yellow Moon (TAG – European Tour), Cinderella (Byre Theatre), Fleeto (V.amp Productions – UK & European Tour), Romeo & Juliet (Dundee Rep), Fleeto (Oran Mor), Project Macbeth (National Theatre of Scotland) James & The Giant Peach (Citizen's Theatre) TV/Film: Dani’s House (RDF/CBBC), Lip Service (Kudos/BBC 3), Push (Camden Creative/ FIVE), The Adventures of Daniel (BBC Scotland), Taggart: Fallen Angels (STV Productions), Being Victor (SHED Media Scotland/ MTV/STV), Solstice (NFTS), Joyeux Noel (Nord Ouest). www.jordanmccurrach.com

Paddy Cunneen (Writer and Director)

Paddy Cunneen is a theatre director, playwright and composer. In addition to being Artistic Director of Tumult In The Clouds, he is an associate director of Cheek by Jowl Theatre, and of Charioteer Theatre Co. As a composer he worked on some 150 productions for various theatre companies in the UK, Ireland and on Broadway, among them many productions at National Theatre, RSC and with Cheek by Jowl. He is a recipient of the Christopher Whelen Award for Music in Theatre, a Critics' Award for Theatre in Scotland, and a Music Industry Award for Best Cast Album for the Donmar Warehouse production of Company.

He composes for radio, TV and film - his score for the Channel 4 film "Boy A" was BAFTA nominated.

As a writer he has had two plays broadcast on BBC Radio 4 - Sunburst Finish (with Andrea Gibb), and Disenchantment, and has written four stage plays which have all gone on to perform throughout Scotland. Fleeto has also toured to London and Holland, and recently played in Piccolo Teatro in Milan.

He lectures in playwriting at Glasgow University and is a regular tutor here in Adelaide with South Australian Film Corporation working on its award winning "FilmLab" scheme.

He runs "The Sirens Of Titan" community choir in Glasgow, regularly commissioning new works from Scottish-based composers and writers, and doing far too many gigs...

PRODUCTION STAFF

Music: Scott Twynholme

Producer Lalitha Rajan

Thank you:

David MacLennan (Glasgow Oran Mor’s A Play, A Pie and a Pint), Colin Beattie, Playwright’s Studio Scotland, Anita Clark at Creative Scotland, Andrew Jones at British Council, Jon Clark at Federation of Scottish Theatres, John Carnochan, Martin Hassard, Fraser Booth and Andy MacKay at Strathclyde Police. Jeff Downey, Mark Devlin and Johan Harten at Southern General and Gartnavel Hospitals. Laura Cairns and the lads at The Kibble Centre, Paisley.

Tumult In The Clouds is a Glasgow based theatre company led by writer, director & composer, Paddy Cunneen. Facebook: Tumult In The Clouds Twitter: TumultinClouds