Hey everyone!
Hope you have a lovely week planned!
We’re slowly moving into theatre festival time so there’s even more stuff to see.
Here are this weeks suggestions!
Show Me a Good Time by Gob Squad
Friday 14th May
Free
A performer is standing on the stage of an eerily empty theatre, an abandoned auditorium can be seen behind her*him. But she*he is not alone: Other Gob Squad-performers are connected with her*him via video-link. From sunset to sunrise, they travel through the city on foot or by car – or sit in a living-room thousands of miles away … In “Show Me A Good Time”, everyday observations give rise to eminent reflections, condensing the passing time into a celebration of the single moment again and again.
Note: As part of Theatretreffen
Thursday 13th May until Sunday 16th May
from €5
June 1942, shortly before the raffle in Vél d’Hiv in France. Mado is 10 years old; she crosses the dividing line between the occupied zone and the free zone with a group of strangers, without her parents. The group is accompanied by a smuggler, who Mado’s mother previously payed with some expensive textile. She crosses the border at night, and takes a train alone to Vichy, before being welcomed by a peasant family in Auvergne for several years. Starting from the story of Mado, her grandmother, Léa Drouet transports us in her new creation, Violences. In it, rather than representing direct violence, the artist works in showing the conditions that make it legitimate. Alone on stage, inside a sandbox, she builds and undoes architectures made of walls, landscapes, borders, through which the storytelling evolves. With a dramaturgy of resonances, the story of Mado rebounds in recent events – the story of Mawda, a 2-year-old Kurdish girl shot dead by a Belgian police officer in 2018 – that echo what contemporary violence and its forms of resistance can be. If usually sand is what absorbs all traces, often erasing traces of violence too, here it also holds the promises of future configurations, which Léa Drouet, alluding to a child who plays, experiments and presents before our very eyes. At the occasion of these presentations, Violences is also streamed live from the theatre, allowing this investigation to be accessible beyond boundaries and travel possibilities.
Note : As part of Kunstenfestivaldesarts
Until 28th May
£6
A thick mist covers the street and there’s a cold bite in the air. Through the fog you see two red lights approaching, a car you think. Then, before you can close your eyes, you see him. Your fate is sealed.
As a native of East Anglia, Olwen grew up on a healthy diet of weird folklore, and no tale is weirder than that of Black Shuck: the true account of an actual hellhound from actual hell that’s affected the identity of her rural community for hundreds of years.
In Shuck, LaPelle’s Factory turn on a sixpence, from cheeky to chilling, with the agility of this demonic dog. They grapple with folkloric demons as they ask why grisly tales get passed down through generations and how they retain their mysterious power to bring us together.
Black Shuck, the devil’s dog, will torment your dreams and haunt your waking hours. Ollie doesn’t believe. But will you?
Sweatshop Overlord by Kristina Wong
Friday 14th May until Sunday 16th May
$10
Born out of the COVID-19 pandemic, KristinaWong‘s newest performance art piece unfolding during the pandemic details how she went from out-of-work artist to overlord of a homemade face mask empire in just ten days! With her trademark wit, she charts the process of building a sweatshop of hundreds of volunteer “Aunties”—including children and her own mother—to fix the U.S. public health care system while in quarantine. Wong hilariously unpacks the American Dream, America’s pursuit of global empire at the cost of its citizens, and the significance of women of color performing a historically gendered and racialized invisible labor at a time of heightened anti-Asian racism in the U.S.
In the Time Before Everything by Paula Varjack
Available Now
From £30
Since March 2020 we’ve lived through previously unimaginably extraordinary times that have impacted on every aspect of our present and future. Artist, theatre-maker, writer and performer Paula Varjack is also interested in how life with Covid-19, and the resulting restrictions, have affected how we see our recent past.
She invited 20 artists from around the UK and Europe (including three couples) to select a photo on their phones taken in the weeks before the first UK lockdown and to write a short text reflecting on the moment of that photo from the perspective of now.
For the collection, titled In The Time Before Everything… , Paula developed the images onto polaroid film, with a line from the accompanying text. Each was enclosed in a protective handmade vellum paper sleeve on featuring the rest of the accompanying text. The sleeves are translucent making the image visible through them.
This week, consider donating to Trans Mutal Aid Manchester.
The money they raise will be used for things such an healthcare that is not effectively covered by the NHS, e.g. electrolysis, gender-affirmative clothing and makeup, prosthetics, travel costs for appointments, emergency housing, post-surgery recovery costs & legal aid.
Check out their crowdfunding page here!
Thanks again for reading and thanks to everyone who supported me with my landlord issues. I’ll keep you updated with any news. Everything is a bit stressful at the moment so sorry if this weeks etude seems a bit short.
Please do share etude around as it’s getting closer and closer to 200 subsribers!
Enjoy your week!
Josh x