Preview: Crime Of The Century in Bury

The piece was conceived after the tragic deaths of three teenagers associated with Chickenshed.

Using recordings of conversations with young people, hip-hop and dance music and projections, the show builds up to one terrifying and violent moment.

Co-director and choreographer Christine Niering says: “We’ve tried really, really hard to create a piece of theatre that is accessible to all because we really believe that this issue is important.

“Theatre can often be a way of helping people involved in gangs to articulate their feelings, and also to stimulate discussion.

“It’s really important to us that we attract people from right across the community. It’s so easy to read about it in the papers, but this makes more of a connection. We want people to go away and say, ‘What can we do, how can we help?’”

She says the creative team at Chickenshed tried to avoid portraying the subject — the proliferation of knife crime among young people — too simply, opting instead to make something realistically nuanced.

“The production we’ve created has a lot of light and shade in it,” she says.

“There are moments that are really fun and there are moments that make you stop and think, ‘Did that really just happen?’”

Christine says that dance theatre differs from traditional theatre in that the boundaries are more fluid, and it can communicate directly to a younger audience. “The thing about dance theatre is that it is quite accessible because it’s so visual, it goes right to the heart of the matter,” she says.

“With an issue like this you can’t muck around, you have to go straight for it.

“It’s also a little bit more open-ended and a little bit less finite because it’s not totally scripted.”

l Crime Of The Century is at The Met, Market Street, Bury, Thursday, May 20. Tickets are £10 or £6 concessions and members. Free tickets are available for under-26s. For more details, call 0161 761 2216 or visit themet.biz.