Laurie Anderson announces dark comedy live stage show about the end of the world
Factory International have announced the world premiere of a new live stage work from artist Laurie Anderson at Manchester’s landmark cultural venue, Aviva Studios.
Fuelled by Anderson’s fascination with humanity’s current reality, ARK: United States Part V (14-24 November 2024) brings together new music, cinematic imagery, stories and songs at her largest scale yet. ARK is an imaginative and personal interrogation of where we are now, asking: what has brought us here and how much time do we have left?
ARK fuses these themes in an ambitious new stage show about fear, disaster, preservation, invention, love and escape - from the Biblical Flood to current natural disasters and beyond. Set at a dream-like moment where the data cloud breaks, ARK offers a pause where digital representation and reality are separated, within this brief window, Anderson asks: are we running out of time? Is it too late?
Laurie Anderson says: “For a long time I’ve wanted to make a new large-scale work about the United States - a collection of songs and stories about what has shaped this country in the 21st century. I plan to tell these stories moving through myth, journalism, fable, and Tik Tok, conjuring alternate realities and stories from my own life. Part ruminations, part long-form poems, ARK will also be a kind of 3D movie."
Tickets go on sale from Friday 12 July at 10am via factoryinternational.org.
- IDLES to headline Bristol’s Queen Square for their only UK shows of 2025
- Listen to never-before-heard versions of George Harrison's “Be Here Now”
- Freddie Gibbs drops surprise album, You Only Die 1nce
- Laura Mvula and Corinne Bailey Rae to perform at Southbank Centre x Montreux Jazz Festival Residency celebrating Nina Simone
- Fontaines D.C. share Andrea Arnold-directed video for "Bug" starring Barry Keoghan
- DOVES unveil "Renegade" as first new music in four years and announce forthcoming album, Constellations For The Lonely
- Iggy Pop announces headline show at Alexandra Palace
Get the Best Fit take on the week in music direct to your inbox every Friday