‘No other theatre looks like a spaceship that has landed in an existing building,’ says Roy Alexander Weise, the joint artistic director of Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre.
Roy is talking about the seven-sided steel and glass structure that occupies the Great Hall of the Exchange, a classical Grade II listed building that was built in 1809. It was here the commodity of spun yarn was traded in huge quantities, a bounty made out of the labour of slaves transported from Africa to the Americas.
Today, that history is no longer a half-forgotten footnote, but at the forefront of the way locals and visitors think about the building, thanks in large part to Disrvpt, the programme conceived by Roy and his joint artistic director Bryony Shanahan.
Launched last year, the project invites artists to engage with and question the Exchange’s relationship with colonialism and slavery. The venue’s focus remains on modern plays and renewed classics.
‘Our programme is a mix of extraordinary work by new writers such as Bloody Elle – A Gig Musical by Lauryn Redding,’ he says before flagging another recent show, Atri Banerjee’s acclaimed production of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie.