Wandsworth Arts Fringe is back from Fri 9 – Sun 25 June 2023. Expressions of interest and applications for WAF Grants of up to £2,000 per project are open now.
An outrageous subversion of hypersexualised 90s music videos, Cherish Menzo stares straight back at the male gaze. This one-woman dance performance piece goes through several chapters of subversion with numerous references to black hip hop and all tied together with a staccato rhythm. Menzo’s movements are trance-like and at times her performance was mesmerising however, as a whole, the piece fell short as it lacked a change of narrative. The woman we meet at the beginning is the same woman we are left with, and parts of the choreography felt a little repetitive.
Courtesy of Bas De Brouwer.
Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre launches Schools Theatre Day, an initiative created to encourage schools back into the theatre following the pandemic. Theatres across the country will be highlighting the opportunities for school trips on social media using #SchoolsTheatreDay.
The older we become, the easier it can get to let go of what was, or perhaps not, dependant on how you generally encounter the world. Age and experience making us that much wiser, detachment from childhood seen as a necessary process that determines who we currently are. Many a memory ingrained, either sharp as day or gradually fading. An exploration of the things we tend to suppress and not resolve, critically acclaimed choreographer and director Botis Seva and his dance company Far From the Norm returns to Sadler’s Wells with his Olivier Award winning Hip Hop dance work BLKDOG.
Chinese Arts Now(CAN) today unveils an exciting new name and bold new visual identity:
Kakilang (自己人)
– ‘one of us’ in the Hokkien dialect, evoking kinship and affinity – widely used amongst East and Southeast Asian diasporic groups, is the company’s new name.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society is undertaking its biggest feedback drive in years following the conclusion of the 2022 festival. With the return of artists and audiences on a scale not seen since before the pandemic, there was heightened interest across a range of areas last August. As the festival joins other global cultural events on the road to recovery, the Society team are seeking input from a wide range of Fringe constituents as it looks to address the key challenges and opportunities ahead.
Today, UK Theatre announces the nominees for this year’s UK Theatre Awards, the only nationwide awards to honour and celebrate outstanding achievements in theatre throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by UK Theatre members.
“Oh I wouldn’t like to be a n***** in new England”
A play which today will be divisive. While the play is described to be “as relevant today as the day it was first performed “ in 1979, I would like to ask what the point of such staged reckless violence was. On the other hand, I could be persuaded to see the value of theatre as an archive which tells stories without censure. Sometimes there is no point and maybe that’s what’s so horrifying about it all.
A moving and daring piece of feminist theatre by New Earth Theatre Company which tackles issues of diplomacy, war crimes, sexual slavery, and generational trauma. Not a second of theatre was wasted with a narrative so neat, so precise that I kept abandoning my notebook in fear of missing a second of it. Kyo Choi is without a doubt a gifted storyteller that had this audience at the palm of her hands. Post lockdown the Arcola continues to disrupt the theatre scene at a time when we need dissenting voices most.
