ELECTRONICA is a bold, cross disciplinary piece that signals our first collaboration with playwright Tom Morton-Smith, director Purni Morell and composer Ruth Chan, all award-winning artists.

At the start of the 20th century a Russian physicist invented the world's first electronic musical instrument: the Theremin. Sent to jazz-era New York as a propaganda tool, he fell in love with an African American ballerina, causing a scandal that saw him exiled back to the USSR. Whilst there, Theremin created the first espionage technology, launched on the world at the same time as his extraordinary instrument was starting a musical revolution, a precursor of synthesisers and the birth of electronic music. This is not a biopic of Leon Theremin, rather his complex story illuminates the struggle between art and politics, human frailty and technological possibility.

Soundscapes have always been integral to our storytelling, but ELECTRONICA will put the Theremin and its unique sound-seemingly ‘plucked from thin air’ by the player- at the centre of the new production, not simply to score the piece but rather as a central character in its own right.