Hey everyone!
It’s full on festival season now which means access to some great stuff from aorund the world. 3 shows this week are from seperate festivals and over the coming weeks I’ll be including more and more!
Below is this weeks selections and I hope you find somehting you love!
The Wake by The Living Dead Ensemble
from Friday 21st May
from €5
The Wake is a performance reflecting a fragmented geography, a broken mirror of the complexity of the world. It is made of intimate stories and fables, songs and cries of revolt, demands and delirium. It is an assembly trying to make itself heard: is there a possible future beyond the repetition of catastrophes of all kinds? Is there a common fire to be shared with those who have lost their voice or never had it? The Living and The Dead Ensemble is a group of artists, performers and poets from Haiti, France and the UK. While writing this uncertain journey through space and time, they also read fragments of the play Melovivi or Le Piège (“The Trap”) of the Haitian writer Frankétienne, a work anticipating the earthquake that would devastate Haiti ten years ago. By referencing this work, The Wake becomes today a space that anticipates a new future. The Wake is also presented online, in a video of the performance that combines physical presence and fragments of scenes shot in Clichy-Montfermeil and Haiti.
Saturday 22nd May
Free
In a ritualised, musical and collaged form, Nia Farrell and Talia Paulette Oliveras wrote the manifest “Dreams in Blk Major” as a “celebration in five movements”. Starting from the concept of a space as a place of testimony, they consider the BPoC movement in the USA as an Afro-futuristic movement. The text opens up a space for solidary discourse that radically questions classism and racism.
This American Wife by Fake Friends
from Friday May 21st
from $5
Double taps, lip syncs, GIFs: To be online is, in many ways, to be a fan. But “fan,” derived from “fanaticus” meaning “insanely but divinely inspired,” does not begin to describe the obsessive compulsions of the most devoted followers of The Real Housewives.
This American Wife is the newest experiment in live internet theater from Fake Friends (Circle Jerk). Chasing their not-so-guilty pleasure, Jakeem, Patrick, and Michael fall down a rabbit hole into a hauntingly glamorous mansion, where they binge on fake lemons, alligator purses, and crocodile tears. Much more than a tribute to the television franchise, this absurd fantasia on national memes blends improvisation and multi-camera cinematography in a site-specific (and self-specific) live stream.
Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran by The Javaad Alipoor Company
from Thursday 20th May
Pay what you feel
As the global gap between rich and poor grows and humanity’s destructive impact on the earth rampages on, so does the allure to watch the carnage unfold on social media. From the company behind the award-winning play The Believers Are But Brothers comes a darkly comedic virtual experience about entitlement, consumption, and digital technology through the lens of Iran’s elite.
Another Goodybe by Adie Mueller
from 20th May
Pay what you can
When Adie’s mum decided it was time to stop intensive medical treatment, Adie promised herself that she would get to Germany and visit her regularly. Then the pandemic happened.
In a year when so many of us lost those we hold dear, Adie lost her Mum to illness and age. This is the story of a letting go, a passing on, another goodbye. A story told to see if we can find a way to talk about death and grief and about coming to terms.
How do we accompany someone who is dying? What is a good death? How can we hold each other in grief? And can anything good come out of loss?
Another Goodbye is an audio performance for an audience of one in your own home, combining spoken word and soundscapes. Another Goodbye is a gentle caress.
The Making of Pinocchio by CADE & MacASKILL
Friday 21st May
from £10
Welcome to The Making of Pinocchio! - an up-close behind the scenes look at the quest to make Pinocchio the perfectly imperfect trans masc narrative of our times.
In a forest of real wood and fake wood, and real fake wood, and fake real wood, join the cast, crew and creators as they construct Pinocchio over and over again, shaking the boundaries between possible and impossible, reality and fantasy. Turning wood into flesh, boys into donkeys, and making that nose grow... the tricks of the trade will be revealed before your very eyes.
Artists and lovers Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill have been making The Making of Pinocchio since 2018, alongside and in response to Ivor’s gender transition. Glimpsed through a fictionalised making process, the artists’ real autobiographical experience meets the magical story of the little lying puppet who wants to be a real boy.
Enter a world of wildly queer utopic imaginings, conjured in a click and lock landscape where everything can change and everything can connect.
This week consider donating to the phone top ups and legal support for members of the No Evections Network in Glasgow.
“No Evictions Network is a grassroots campaign who is run by people with experience of the asylum system and their allies in Glasgow. We have no admin costs and all money donated will go directly to supporting members of our network with phone top-ups, internet access, legal and arrestee support and other essential costs to continue organising and withstanding the brutal violence of the UK immigration system.
Contributing to funding phone top-ups will allow friends to:
Connect with friends, community and family in an isolated time when most communication is happening virtually.
Contact lawyers, doctors, interpreters for day-to-day needs and in the case of emergency.
Access online education.
Participate in online grassroots organising meetings.
We also need to raise money to support legal costs of those arrested while resisting brutal dawn raids.”
Thanks again everyone. It’s been a tough month so far but it’s nice that every Sunday I get to type up etude and spend some time getting excited about theatre.
Please do share to your friends and have a nice week!
Josh xx