A three-day outdoor cultural extravaganza, featuring eclectic circus and clowning performances and puppetry, will be heading to the Lincolnshire coast.
The SO Festival is an annual free event bringing local and international performers to Mablethorpe and Skegness for one vibrant weekend. This year, audiences can enjoy 11 acts, including Italian puppets, French clowns, and a Danish performance of Shakespeare’s King Lear like you’ve never seen it before.
Starting at Sherwood Fields in Mablethorpe on Friday 30th August, acts will fill the venue from 12pm to 5pm, with local community groups also being showcased. Then it’s onto Skegness for the Saturday and Sunday (31st August and 1st September), where activities will be centred in Tower Gardens.
The European flavour of this year’s SO Festival, an expansion of last year’s event, will once again influenced by Danish artistic director Jens Frimann Hansen and his colleagues at theatre company Helsingør Teater (renowned in Nordic Europe for their staging of the Passage Festival).
La Fabiola from Italy, will bring two shows to the festival. Love + Metal and Pay Attention To Those Two both bring puppets to life, to entertain and interact with a family audience. Passepartout Theatre Productions from Denmark, also use puppets in a way the audience will have not witnessed before, presenting King Lear for all ages to enjoy.
Super Super from France, will use silent clowns to entertain the crowds with Splash, a synchronized swimming show in a miniature inflatable pool. Hikapee, a UK-based company, tell stories of the world we live in. Their show Look Up uses puppets and a trapeze show to ask the audience, ‘Why is everyone always looking down?’
From the UK, Max Calaf Sevé will perform the trampoline show dip, with light-hearted, breathing-taking air twisting tricks and funky tunes. The performance explores themes of co-operation, acceptance and serendipity. Also from the UK, Nakupelle will perform two shows, Circus Bardo and The Trap. Nakupelle is Joe Dieffenbacher, an actor, director and teacher whose work has included spells at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, as Circus Skills Director at the Scottish National Opera and six collaborations with British pop stars Take That.
French artist Tout en Vrac, will perform a show called The Cook; probing the ‘breaking point between imagination and reality’, using a kitchen environment. Woest from the Netherlands, promise to bring dance theatre, with a touch of absurdity, into the public space; giving the audience a fresh and new experience of their own environment.
UK’s Humanhood will bring visual outdoor duet, Orbis, to the festival; exploring the relationship between humankind and Earth’s permanent natural satellite: The Moon. It will be performed as a contemporary ritual, revisiting the mystical place the Moon holds in the history of human culture.
Helen Eastman Productions will bring Bicycle Boy to Skegness. Perfect for children aged six to 10 (and their families), the interactive theatre sees Helen Eastman collaborating with designer Anna Bruder and composer Alex Silverman. Bicycle Boy is a story about Sam, who has 24 hours to clear out his grandad’s old bike workshop.
Finally, Albedo will bring two shows – The BIGBRÔZEURS and The Tonys – promising ‘spectacle’, with giant characters who surprise when they mingle with the crowd!
When: 30th August – 1st September 2019
Where: Mablethorpe and Skegness, Lincolnshire
£: Free
More info: www.sofestival.org