Maiden Voyage Dance bring Enrique Cabrera‘s short, playful Quartet For 15 Chairs to the banks of the Thames. As part of the family festival currently running there, four dancers get on stage at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and, well, play with chairs.
UK’s biggest dance event Move It combines dance classes, live dance performances, a freestyle stage, a showcase theatre, merchandising and shopping all in the same space: the Olympia. It is undoubtedly an exciting experience to be immersed in such an environment, with people dancing joyfully everywhere regardless of their level of skill. Everyone is free and encouraged to express themselves through movement, from children to people in wheelchairs.
As you enter the theatre you can’t help but notice the giant sweeping piece of silk held up by helium balloons, shaped in a crescent across the stage. We are later told that it represents everything, this represents the Earth.
Ablutions: an act of washing oneself. A word associated with ceremonial routines, sacred and ritualistic in its nature, how could this possibly relate to the goings on of a small LA Based bar you may ask? Well it does seamlessly. Adapted from Man Booker Prize nominee, Patrick DeWitt‘s novel, Ablutions smartly yet subtly questions whether you can change the cards dealt for yourself in life or not.
Brendon Burns has credits on The 11 O’ Clock Show, performed across the world, and in 2007 won the prestigious if.comedy award for his show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Now, the Australian comic is touring all across the UK, performing anywhere but comedy clubs in an attempt to live ‘Outside the Box‘. Louise Jones talks to him about podcasts, angering Scousers, and fake edge.
What exactly led you to doing the Outside the Box tour?
I did the Free Fringe this year, and my venue wasn’t quite where it was listed in the Fringe guide, so people had to work to find me. It was just die-hard fans, and in that environment I didn’t have to deal with anyone with folded arms, and anyone going “I f**king hate this guy, and it isn’t for me.”
This year’s VAULT Festival is well and truly underway, entertaining audiences from all walks of life with exciting pieces of theatre, topical discussions and lively club nights. Brightening up the gloomy, victorian subterranean landscape located in the very heart of London’s Waterloo, the festival aims to showcase an array of new voices and ideas. We’re taught from the outset never to lie, that being truthful is moral… however… I’m sure that at one point or another, we’ve all told a white lie or two… Yve Blake’s new show, Lie Collector explores this idea of the lie, taking its inspiration from lies shared on Yve’s website, whowerewe.com. Lie Collector is now showing at The Vault Festival, and we were lucky enough to speak to the playwright and performer about her inspirations for the show, her thoughts on interactivity in theatre and her must see shows at this year’s festival.
We all tell lies and occasionally those lies take on a life of their own, either as hilarious stories or horrific mistakes. Yve Blake has effectively crowd sourced the material for her latest show Lie Collector, and has come up with an hours worth of comedy based on lies shared with her by the internet. From simply reading aloud the lies shared to writing elaborate song/dance/video pieces her energetic performance will keep you captivated from beginning to end.
The Landor is a wonderfully intimate venue and is currently showing a sparkling rendition of the musical-comedy She Loves Me. Last put on in the West-End in 1994 to critical acclaim, the fifty year old musical has found a new home in the Landor and will delight all fans of Rom-Coms and of the musical.
Initially performed at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, True Brits has added to the pertinent debate of what it means to be British in the 21st century. Written by the talented Vinay Patel, who will shortly be writing a short film for BBC iPlayer and working on a pilot on the prestigious C4 screenwriting programme, True Brits will make its return to the theatre scene at this year’s VAULT Festival. With VAULT Festival’s theme of ‘inequality in politics’ being the driving force for this year, True Brits is a piece of theatre that could not be anymore timely or on the mark! Ahead of this year’s festival, Theatrefullstop were able to talk to Vinay about his motivations for writing the play, what he’d like to achieve with his play and why London is so welcoming!
Emile Zola’s novel Thèrese Raquin, adapted into a play, is playing at the Courtyard Theatre as part of the New Writing Festival. There is not much that is new about it though. Being that the story is familiar, one would think that the genre of writing or the staging would be fairly modern and fresh, but it fails to bring the element of surprise onto the stage.
