A rain poncho. Earplugs. Hand in your belongings. Are you ready to experience what can only be described as Takeshi’s Castle on ecstasy, absurd, frenetic, intense but such a laugh. Presented in collaboration with LIFT Festival, the Barbican Pit hosts Extreme Voices’ Miss Revolutionary Idol Berserker. This show is something ‘I have never seen before’, an immersive production that you will either love or hate.
David Mercatali’s star seems to forever shine even brighter with every production he works on. 5 years ago, Mecatali was nominated for an Evening Standard Award for Outstanding Newcomer and has gone on to fulfil the Award’s championing of his work to stage pieces that get audiences talking. In 2013, he went on to win a Fringe First Award for his staging of Dark Vanilla Jungle and subsequently went on to be nominated for Off West End Awards in 2011 and 2014. Having also worked with theatre’s most exciting talents, Mercatali shows no signs of slowing down. Ahead of his staging of Tess Berry-Hart’s Cargo soon to show at the Arcola Theatre, Theatrefullstop were luck enough to speak with the award winning director about the show!
Described as being a 4D experience, Crystal Me promises to offer a theatrical experience unlike any other. A walking, talking piece of art, this multidisciplinary performance has drawn figures influential in their fields to help shape it into something truly great. Written by East 15 Alumni Livia Rita, Crystal Me is the proud winner of development time at the Barbican. Read on to find out more about this exciting show.
Your show Crystal Me will be performed at the Hackney Showroom from 29th June to 1st July. How are you feeling ahead of the event?
Six dancers lost in a continuous cycle of choreography, holding on to past stories and times since vanished. Late Night by the Blitz Theatre Group, in association with LIFT 2016, is an abstract piece delivered in the Greek language set in a dark wasteland of furniture and rubble.
In 1970, the possibilities of Shakespeare in performance were changed forever by a radical staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the RSC. The set consisted of a brilliantly-lit white box and the actors performed circus skills and trapeze-swinging, inspired by Chinese acrobats. The British Library in their programming of 400 years of Shakespeare, invite legendary theatre director and practitioner Peter Brook, to discuss his visionary direction of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In this evening of reflection, associates and cast members of the original production including Ben Kingsley, Frances De La Tour and Barry Stanton, offer an in-depth analysis and thought provoking discussion led by Shakespeare scholar Peter Holland.
Time works alongside us. It’s so engrained in us we even have our own body clocks dictating when certain processes happen. They say time is a healer, yet time waits for no man. Are you someone that lives for the now? The tomorrow or ponders on the past? YOUARENOWHERE is a considered exploration of time through the eyes of award winning performance artist Andrew Schneider.
Where do babies come from? How are they made? These are all questions I’m sure we’ve all asked in our formative years and they are all very valid, however, and this is fair enough, we are greeted with a series of well rehearsed mythical answers. Education-wise, being taught about the birds and the bees is a cringe-inducing rite of passage that can’t be avaoided. Les Femme Ridicule‘s In the Gut intends to lighten up an otherwise very reserved society and intends to lift the lid on a series of misconceptions.
LOD muziektheater presents Without Blood By Inne Goris and Dominique Pauwels, part of LIFT Festival 2016. A thrilling production of spine tingling sound effects, chilling story and dynamic visual effects, Without Blood presents an aesthetic of theatre that is utterly sublime.
Image courtesy of Koen Broos
An afternoon of sublime storytelling mixed with expertly positioned background noises makes Debs Newbold’s piece quite something to remember. It is obvious from the get go that Newbold is very likeable as a performer and has a large fan base that regularly attends her shows, cheering manically as she enters the space. After losing her voice a couple of days before this particular performance she begins by apologising, then moves swiftly on by cracking a couple of jokes (drinking plenty of water) and managing to channel her energy, taking the whole audience on an adventure through one of her latest stories.
Overshadowed and rarely discussed historically, Minefield examines the personal lives of some Falkland War veterans and their willingness to reflect and share some rather visual events of their past to a viewing audience. One can only imagine the journey these young men (at the time of war) must have had to deal with, digging into the psychological and even haunting effects of the battlefield.
