In 1997, Femi Elufowoju Jr. pioneered the first theatre company in the UK to specialise in producing works focusing on voices hailing from the African diaspora and heritage. Challenging preconceived ideas perpetuated by mainstream media, tiata fahodzi, meaning ‘theatre of the emancipated’ offers a platform for the playwriting stars of tomorrow to unveil a range of perspectives on what it means to be African in the UK. 18 years on and it’s current Artistic Director, Natalie Ibu celebrates almost a year with the forward thinking theatre company. As Natalie prepares for this year’s tiata delights festival, Theatrefullstop are lucky enough to speak with her about what the festival has to offer, why she was drawn to becoming tiata fahodzi’s Artistic Director and offers advice to aspiring theatre makers.

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Nicola Wilson’s Plaques & Tangles is a deeply emotional piece dealing with the complicating and devastating effects of Alzheimer’s. Megan, a mother of two, must fight this terrible illness knowing full well that no cure is yet to be found. Breaking her family apart and eventually leading to a tragic death that breaks your heart as an audience member. We also get to see the earlier years of Megan’s life which are flashbacks to her first realising she was diagnosed.

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Game is the gloriously geeky, hilariously irreverent debut show from newly formed company Unstable King, bringing their innovative mix of circus skills, encyclopaedic gaming knowledge, and rapid fire puns to the studio stage of the Bristol Old Vic for Bristol’s Circus City Festival. As a gaming enthusiast myself, seeing a theatre company prepared to champion gaming as the artistic and sociable endeavour that it’s become, I have high hopes for the piece. I am not disappointed.

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L’Enfant Qui comes to Bristol as part of the Circus City Festival, a show created by France/Belgium based company Theatre D’Un Jour (or ‘T1J’).  Their self-proclaimed manifesto of ‘What is the role of man in this world?’, a theme that informs the vast majority of their projects, is here analysed through the eyes of a small child lost in the woods, and the things that happen there.

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Master of the Macabre bills itself as the most horrifying magic show in London. This is possibly true, though the play is competing within a relatively select niche… Set in the eminently atmospheric Vaults in Waterloo, this one-man show depicts an ominous story of sibling rivalry, punctuating the tale with frequent, suitably sinister, sleights of hand.

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Forming in 2009, Non Zero One have shaken up the theatre scene with their unique, immersive theatrical experiences. Challenging conventional theatrical spaces, Non Zero One are renowned for staging pieces in galleries and museums, reinforcing the idea that theatre is a form of art that can be admired, but not from a passive stand point. The theatre collective are now taking part in London’s edition of The Other Art Fair, after receiving a commission from the art festival. Ahead of Non Zero One’s participation at this year’s festival, Theatrefullstop were able to speak to the company’s founder, John Hunter about creating interative theatre performances, taking part in this year’s festival and the inspirations for forming the company!

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Lloyd Webber‘s sexy reinvention of the Easter story is currently on tour across the UK. To call Jesus Christ Superstar a musical seems a bit tame: it’s a rock opera rich with excellent technical touches and incredibly strong vocals from the ensemble cast.

Pamela Raith

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Captivating, intriguing and very abstract, Vera Tussing Projects presents The Palm of Your Hand at The Place Theatre, London. A merge between dance and physical theatre the piece invites audiences to follow the performers into the space, discarding all belongings to the side of the large dark studio, before exploring the area independently. There are no seats as the piece itself is a collaboration between the theatre makers and the audience. One cannot exist without the other in this experimental but deeply questionable production.

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A text cited as one of the literary greats, John Milton‘s Paradise Lost provides a magnificent playground for a theatre maker to interpret and illuminate onto the stage. An epic poem initially published in 1667, the work consists of 10 books, each presented in blank verse. The much adapted narrative zones in on one of the greatest stories ever told, the creation of the first man and woman on Earth, Adam and Eve, and their fall from the highly aspirational and idyllic Garden of Eden.

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The Great Gatsby is a renowned and revered novel. Written in 1925, nearly a century later it still manages to captivate readers. Unsure of how the novel would translate into a theatre production, I’m eager to see how it pans out.

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