Comedian Francesca Martinez
When: 1st November – 8th December 2018
Where: At venues across Liverpool, Merseyside
£: Ticket prices vary, depending on the event. Some events are free
What is it?
Over the next five weeks, actors, comedians, dancers and musicians will be challenging disability stereotypes through art and culture, at venues across the Liverpool city region, as part of DaDaFest International 2018.
DaDaFest International will showcase a series of cutting edge works which will also celebrate disability and D/deaf cultures. This year’s line-up features comedian Francesca Martinez; theatre-maker and comedian Jess Thom; Stopgap Dance Company; artists Faith Bebbington, Jonathan Griffith, Simon McKeown and Martin O’Brien; and multi-instrumentalist Sarah Fisher.
The full programme includes more than 50 exhibitions, performances, talks, and workshops from well-known mainstream audience artists, as well as showcasing new talent.
The theme of DaDaFest International 2018 is Passing: What’s your legacy? Artists have been invited to explore the concepts of ageing, death and disability (passing time), and the changing nature of all our journeys and the legacies we leave (passing on).
The festival will also commemorate the end of the First World War as a key moment for modern recognition of disability as a social construct.
Stopgap Dance’s The Enormous Room
Host venues include St George’s Hall, the Royal Court, the Bluecoat, Tate Exchange, Constellations, the Unity Theatre, the World Museum, and Storyhouse in Chester.
Visual art is represented by Gina Czarnecki, whose special exhibition of eco-friendly coffins, designed by local and national artists, will be staged in the Oratory in the grounds of Liverpool Cathedral, between Thursday 1st and Sunday 18th November.
DaDaFest will be expanding its geographical reach this year, with a performance of The Enormous Room by the acclaimed Stop Gap Dance Company at Storyhouse in Chester on Tuesday 6th November.
The Unity will host Jonathan Griffith’s Retrospective throughout the festival period, and the artist will take part in special talks at the theatre on Tuesday 20th November and in Chester Lane Library, St Helens, on Thursday 22nd November.
Award-winning artist Simon McKeown’s interactive installation of vintage disability cars, No Passengers, can be seen at St George’s Hall Liverpool between 21st November and 8th December. Martin O’Brien’s video installation Until The Last Breath is Breathed also heads to St George’s Hall on the same dates. O’Brien will also be doing a performance lecture at the same venue on Thursday 29th November.
Multi-instrumentalist Sarah Fisher
Jess Thom showcases Samuel Beckett’s Not I, the story of a woman’s life told at top speed by a disembodied character, ‘Mouth’, at the Bluecoat on Friday 23rd and Saturday 24th November. The Touretteshero and Battersea Arts Centre production sees performer Thom reclaiming Mouth as a disabled character.
Finally, DaDaFest will be teaming up with Action Transport and Unity Theatre for a seasonal show collaboration, for the highly theatrical and bold retelling of the classic family tale, Beauty and the Beast. Beauty and the Beast shows that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder and that everyone’s attitude can, at times, be beastly! The show will run from Friday 30th November to Saturday 5th January 2019.
More info: www.dadafest.co.uk/events
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