by Zahid Fayyaz
Fresh from a month’s run at the Edinburgh Fringe and then Soho Theatre, Fanboy is a one-man show written and acted by Joe Sellman-Leava. It is seemingly autobiographical, looking at changes in society through the lens of the Star Wars fandom. Using videos and props to develop the story of the piece, it’s certainly not static, which can often be an issue with one-person shows.
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by Luisa De la Concha Montes
Theatre of Gulags tells a story of art and resistance within USSR labour camps. Panning across five detached, yet narratively linked stages, this theatrical installation follows the story of four artists: theatre director Les Kurbas, director Natalya Sats, musician Vadim Kozin and writer and puppeteer Hava Volovich.
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by Laura Kressly
As elder Gen Zs approach their mid-20s, it makes sense that they turn to comedy to cope with what seems like the never-ending apocalyptic disasters plaguing their brief adulthood. Writer/comedian Rosalie Minnitt has tapped into her generation’s resulting anxiety by condensing what seems like all early-20-somethings’ tropes into an unhinged character piece set “sometime in the past”. Utterly bizarre and nonsensical, the title character is on an absurd quest to marry as soon as possible so that she avoids her parents disappearing her, but this is a thin narrative that’s really just a vehicle for Minnitt’s jokes.
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by Zahid Fayyaz
This a one-man show, with the aid of props and sound design, ostensibly tells the story of ABC Merriman-Labor, an African satirist who wrote a scathing story of a Black man living in London after coming from Sierra Leone. This particular production, however, jumps around in time to tell the story of the production of the play from the perspective of the actor as well, and how the play’s subject of ABC’s forbidden love for his friend John Roberts mirrors the actor’s own relationship with Alfred, the shows own writer.
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by Zahid Fayyaz
Billed as a work-in-progress, this is a four-person play set in 17th century France, based on the true story of ‘La Voisin’, otherwise known as Catherine Montvoisin, a female poisoner who was said to have murdered thousands of people in Paris. The play centres around the concept of a police recreation of what happened when one of King Louis’s mistresses hires Montvoisin to make the king first fall in love with her, and then when that doesn’t work, to attempt to poison him. The four actors both act out the events of what was purported to happen during the time frame of the events in question, and in a metatheatrical twist, question the nature of the story being written and its validity.
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by Laura Kressly
Saint Hildegard von Bingen was a prolific polymath – a theologian who advised many religious higher-ups in the Catholic church, a composer, a writer of scientific and rhetorical works, a linguist, an abbess and a religious visionary. Though she lived over a millenium ago in the late 1000s and early 1100s and was – of course – largely at the whims of the men around her, she strove for more independence for herself and her nuns so they could worship how they best saw fit. A multigenerational ensemble use text, music and physical theatre to focus on this part of her life, positioning her as a liberating protofeminist in a strikingly beautiful, highly sensory piece.
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by Laura Kressly
George Floyd’s murder in 2020 was the catalyst for worldwide Black Lives Matter protests against systemic racism. Though at the time white governments, institutions and individuals made loud commitments to fight racial injustice, there has been a lack of meaningful change since then. By drawing on numerous recent and historical acts of violence against Black people, theatremaker Christopher Tajah’s solo performance reinforces just how deeply racism runs in white supremacist societies.
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by Luisa De la Concha Montes
Die Hexenhammer is a treatise on witchcraft written and published in 1486 by Catholic clergymen Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger. The key argument of the book is the following: Chaos is female and women corrupt men, therefore women must be destroyed. Using this historical event as the backbone of the play, Suzy Kohane (as Heinrich) and Sidsel Rostrup (as Jacob, Heinrich’s faithful companion) mix comedy and verbatim theatre (taken from incel forums) to create a hilarious, yet extremely poignant play that explores the roots of misogyny.
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by Laura Kressly
Ildiko is half German and half Hungarian. Rosie is half English and half Irish. The two women explore what this might mean, along with how culture, ancestry and migration, make us who we are. Their journey takes the form of an elegant cabaret similar to vintage variety TV shows. Traditional music and folk songs intersperse poignant extracts of personal narrative to make this moving patchwork of stories and anecdotes that make them who they are.
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by Zahid Fayyaz
This experiential, bilingual, gig-theatre show shares the experience of being a Welsh woman. A five-strong cast recite poetry and spoken word, and perform some songs, in both Welsh and English.
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