new writing

Cassie and the Lights, VAULT Festival

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by Becky Lennon

This story, based on real-life events, follows the lives of three sisters – Cassie (Alex Brain), Tin (Michaela Murphy) and Kit (Emily McGlynn) – after their mother disappears at a bowling alley. Although the piece focuses on the teenage perspective of the British care system, it also acknowledges the differences within individual families, the value of these differences, and invites us to ask, what makes a family?

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The Legend of the Holy Drinker, VAULT Festival

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by Euan Vincent

Hunchtheatre have a thing for re-inventing forgotten fiction. Their new production, The Legend of the Holy Drinker, provides a 2020 update to Joseph Roth’s 1939 novella of the same name. It mixes the time-honoured, moral fetishes of the original with the political milieu of our Brexit-addled times.

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Sound Cistem, VAULT Festival

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by Grace Bouchard

Heart-thumping music blaring, performers Ayden Brouwers and Lizzie Morris take the stage. As they dance towards each other, vibrant disco lights hitting their slow moving bodies, they ask “How do we look?” and “How do you look?”. It is at this point that we realise why we are here. We are here to look, and to observe.  Simply through the act of being in the room with them, I am complicit in demonstrating the impact the cis gaze has on transgender bodies.

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Catch of the Day, VAULT Festival

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by Evangeline Cullingworth

Yes, this is my first time in Dingle – no, I’ve not been out on the peninsula yet and yes, I’ll make sure to say hello to Fungie. The next thing I know we’re splitting a bag of Taytos with the row in front and cheering along to a traditional song that has risen up. And the play hasn’t even started yet.

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The Murder of Kuchuk Hanem, VAULT Festival

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by Isabel Becker

For newly formed theatre company Afkar, their debut play is a strong and creative response to Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism in modern-day Britain, but not something extraordinarily fresh or unique. Drawing from duplicate Orientalist accounts by Western men of Kuchuk Hanem – a famous dancer in Egypt in the mid-nineteenth century and subsequent symbol of the male Orientalist gaze – the play draws interesting parallels between Victorian depictions of Middle Eastern women and the lived experience of these women today.

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VOiD, VAULT Festival

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by Isabel Becker

Slick, smart and penetrating: Sophia Capasso’s play provides an incredibly strong performance of psychological terror that leaves hearts racing to the rhythm of her words. The story of young Ali’s cyclical descent into trauma – with the end of the play neatly bringing us back to its opening sequence – is told with not just fervent passion, but striking dramatic professionalism.

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