Hot Air
by Mike Akers with Heather Williams, music by Kieran Buckeridge
Director: Heather Williams
Choreographer: Michelle Gaskell
Designer: Chris Gylee
Hot Air is a touching, funny and beautiful piece of theatre with music. It celebrates the people of Bristol through the focus of one of the city’s most legendary industries: hot air ballooning.
The play captures a day in the life of the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, beginning with the peaceful early morning mass ascent and ending with the riotous "night glow". As the Fiesta’s iconic balloons pass noiselessly above the city landscape, the action of the play throws the joys and struggles of those left on the ground into sharp relief. The play was premiered at Tobacco Factory Theatre, Bristol with a professional cast of nine actors.
Photographer: Graham Burke
“Myrtle Theatre are a clever bunch. By developing a community based piece of Verbatim Theatre, they have chosen something quintessentially Bristolian, that spans the entire community and brings together people that may not normally have reason to interact. Using transcribed sections of interviews carried out by Director and Dramaturg Heather Williams, we are taken through the Bristol Balloon Fiesta weekend. From the rude awakening at 4am through to the Nightglows, the trials, tribulations, highs and lows of the ‘Balloonatics’; and punters are charted with immense skill, sensitivity and with a true sense of respect.”
- Whats On Stage
