by Diana Miranda
Painting a raw picture of sex and substance addiction, Bad Sex delves into the challenges of a young man spiralling in a hectic acting career while dealing with the emotional strains of showbiz and family conflict. Written and performed by Theo Hristov, this work-in-progress solo show was presented as part of A Pinch of VAULT Festival, a platform for artists to share their newest work onstage to get audiences’ sweet feedback.
Continue reading
by Diana Miranda
The London-based theatre company that goes by the fitting name Ensemble Not Found is a group of East Asian artists that bend storytelling boundaries and explore unconventional ways to connect with audiences. The company first caught my eye at VAULT Festival 2023 with their debut show Project Atom Boi. The piece is a multi-media insight on existential dread through the perspective of a self-indulgent filmmaker attempting to capture the memories of a young Londoner who grew up in a Chinese nuclear town. It involves audiences through live video and drawing boards, inviting volunteers to doodle words that trigger the protagonist’s memories.
Continue reading
By Luisa De la Concha Montes
My Uncle is Not Pablo Escobar is a dynamic and exuberant play that explores and celebrates what it means to be a Latinx in London. It is a detective story peppered with telenovela-style drama.
Continue reading
By Diana Miranda
As the glorified theatre addict that I am, I’ve caught Akimbo Theatre’s NO ONE multiple times. First, at Brighton Fringe 2022, with a clean slate and wide eyes. Later that year I aimed to relive the experience at Edinburgh Fringe, which I did/n’t. Tweaks had been made. It was like re-reading a book you anticipate enjoying, but finding new chapters that you didn’t expect. This is not surprising since it’s a new piece by a physical theatre company, but it took a tiny while for my stubborn mind to re-adjust. This was a reminder of an obvious yet overlooked truth: theatre is a dynamic and ever-evolving art form that transcends the boundaries of a single performance.
Continue reading
by Laura Kressly
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is one of this country’s great classical composers and conductors. His cantata trilogy The Song of Hiawatha is considered the best adaptation of Longfellow’s epic poem, and he had a celebrated career in the UK and abroad. Despite this, he died in 1912 at the age of 37, exhausted and in poverty. This was the end result of a lifetime spent resisting white supremacy that oppressed him for his Blackness.
Continue reading
by Luisa De la Concha Montes
Written by Louis Cavalier and directed by Noah Mccredie, this a new play that presents the nuances of alcoholism recovery through dialogue. The play starts with Daniel (Louis Cavalier), who reluctantly joins a rehabilitation centre. In the room next door, Alice (Ava Dodsworth) hears his rambles and eventually decides to engage with him, starting a daily interaction that fluctuates between tension and empathy.
Continue reading
by Euan Vincent
Unseen Unheard, a show seeking to improve the representation of Black women with breast cancer, is a co-production between Black Women Rising and Peckham Theatre. The production emerged from the real stories of black women’s struggles after a cancer diagnosis and the myriad problems that the system affords them, based on their race. From the belief that black women don’t feel pain – “they see us as superhuman and subhuman at the same time” – to the absence of prosthetics of an appropriate skin tone, point to health inequities that the statistics sadly bear out. Black women are 28% more likely to die from a triple-negative breast cancer diagnosis than white women with the same diagnosis.
Continue reading
by Luisa De la Concha Montes
This is an innovative play that presents the true history of Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman whose cancer cells were used to create the first immortalised human cell line. It opens with a rhythmic, spoken-word monologue delivered by Henrietta (Aminita Francis). We soon learn that her DNA, nicknamed by herself as “Did Not Ask”, was non-consensually taken from her body in 1951. It has since served as the key basis for medical research, including the development of HIV vaccines, investigation of cancer cells and more recently, the COVID vaccine.
Continue reading
by Luisa De la Concha Montes
Directed by Lisa Millar and choreographed by Christopher Tendai, Wonderland in Alice is an original adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s tale that explores its themes and tropes through contemporary dance and music, trippy visuals and dynamic stage design.
Continue reading
By Luisa De la Concha Montes
RAH is a play written and performed by Laila Latifa. Set in the bedroom of Manal, a half-Moroccan, half-British woman in her early twenties, the play bravely depicts a history of belonging. Structured as a monologue, the script explores Manal’s internal ramblings, exposing the truth about her family, her feelings of inadequacy at university, and her difficulties navigating her sex life within the context of an overtly religious family.
Continue reading
The Play's The Thing UK 