City News

Stan’s Cafe Theatre Company emerged victorious from a dragon’s den style battle on Wednesday evening when the company’s bid to present its international hit show Of All The People In All The World received the unanimous backing of a panel of business leaders, media experts and arts industry professionals.

Of All The People In All The World is an extraordinary installation assembled from a mind-blowing 120 tonnes of rice and in a nail-biting contest James Yarker, the Artistic Director of Stan’s Cafe, outlined his company’s intention to present its provoking performance installation in the UK. “The show has headlined events around the world in cities that include Melbourne, Los Angeles and Milan but as yet an opportunity to present this unique performance installation at home has eluded us, partly because of the shows biggest financial factor, obtaining one hundred and twenty tonnes of long grain rice.”

James Yarker explains, “My desire to see the world’s population in a three dimensional form led to experiments with a variety of substances and in the end I chose rice; one grain of rice to represent one person. Therefore requiring 6.6 billion grains of rice to represent the population of the world, a massive one hundred and twenty tonnes of rice in total. Performers weigh out the rice into piles to illustrate everyday statistics, from the population of China to those who watched the Eurovision Song Contest, to Condoleezza Rice, and the show has successfully been presented as a world version in Stuttgart, Germany and in other countries on a smaller scale. Now we want to bring the world version of the show to the UK, preferably to our home city of Birmingham.”

Organised by Birmingham City Council’s Urban Fusion Programme, the business sponsorship contest ‘A Match Made in Heaven?’ held at Birmingham’s Custard Factory, saw four arts organisations battle it out for a cash prize. Beating off competition from Birmingham’s Hippodrome Theatre, Fierce Festival and Hamfisted!, Stan’s Cafe won the first prize of £1,000 and capitalised on the opportunity to pitch to the assembled business leaders for the £45,000 sponsorship it is seeking to present Of All The People In All The World in the UK next year. Panel member Neil Rami said, “Stan’s Cafe have a real winner of a show here, they‘ve proven that already with critical acclaim and audiences in the tens of thousands in Australia, the USA and across Europe. A strong sponsorship proposition exists here and it is the desire of all the panel to see a business come forward to support Stan’s Cafe and reap the benefits of working with this prestigious theatre company”.