As the future of European citizens living and working in the UK hangs in the balance, The Actors Centre and Voila! Europe present A Piece of the Continent, a brand-new festival celebrating cultural links and theatre from our neighbours across Europe.
The festival is designed to offer a platform for artists from across Europe as well as extending a welcome to EU citizens who may feel isolated or disenfranchised following the passing of Article 50.
The festival will showcase theatre from Italian, French, Polish, Greek, German, Dutch, Lithuanian, Austrian and Spanish artists based in the UK or overseas.
The nine works, each an hour-long, will be staged over the three weeks of the festival, exploring themes including gender equality, freedom of expression and the laborious process of becoming a British citizen. Each will offer a taste of the rich variety of theatre and live performance being made by European artists today.
In the first week, Panta Rei Theatre will present Don’t You Dare! a multilingual political satire about a famous actress accused of witchcraft. Set in 1601, the production draws on Commedia dell’arte to interrogate the way propaganda has been used against women across the centuries.
On a similar theme, A Voice is a one-woman musical from Anglo-French company Yosis Theatre exploring the exploitation of women at the hands of powerful men.
Exploring the final moments of the life of a dementia sufferer, Dark Matter dives into the world of Alfie, an elderly astrophysicist nearing the end of his life. Using Bunraku Puppetry, a form of traditional Japanese puppet theatre, live microcinema and physical storytelling, Dark Matter is a puppetry performance about star constellations, black holes and a race against the clock to discover meaning.
In week two, audiences will be transported back to the era of the Spanish civil war for The Copla Musical, to unearth the story of drag artist La Gitana. The Copla Musical takes audiences from her rescue from prison to becoming a drag cabaret sensation in the US, all the while struggling to merge her Spanish past with her American future. Placing traditional Spanish Copla (folk) songs into the context of a contemporary musical, English/Spanish company HisPanic Breakdown shares a story of love, freedom and identity.
Mortgage, a horror farce collaboration from Created a Monster and David Glass Ensemble, tells the story of Beatrice Gunta Mortgage, a murderess and failed stage manager suffering at the hands of two demonic drag doctors in a corrupt asylum. Infused with Theatre of Cruelty, slapstick and Film Noir, Mortgage is a haunting take on Dante’s Divine Comedy.
From Exchange Theatre, Noor is a story of Liberté based on the true-life story of Princess Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan, a British secret agent of Indian and American descent who fought tirelessly to overcome the tyranny of the Nazis during WWII.
The third and final week of the festival opens with Berlin-based COSmino Productions. Drawing parallels between London during the Blitz and Brexit Britain, Dreams Die Hard brings the diaries of actor and director Rachel Karafistan’s grandmother to the stage. Combining projection and live shadow puppetry, and spanning more than 40 years across London, Liverpool, Cyprus and beyond, it asks questions of national identity and borders prevalent both then and today.
To close the festival, Diary of an Expat confronts questions of national identity and citizenship, bringing to the stage theatre maker’s Cecilia Gragnani’s autobiographical experience of being an expat in Britain in the age of Brexit.
When: 8th – 27th April 2019
Where: Tristan Bates Theatre, 1A Tower St, London WC2H 9NP
£: Tickets for each show cost £13 or £11 for concessions
More info: www.tristanbatestheatre.co.uk
Leave a comment