Autumn at Alphabetti

Newcastle fringe venue Alphabetti has announced its season from September to December 2018, a season which comprises regular features—and one new one!—as well as visiting shows.

The ever-popular Alphabetti Soup—new poetry, music and theatre—returns on 1 September which includes a new play #MeToo written by Richard Stockwell and directed by Rachael Walsh; 27 October which includes a new play by Wendy Errington which is as yet untitled, and 1 December (details to be announced later). And it has a new logo.

Open Heart Theatre returns with their improv evening Let Us Make It Up To You on 11 September, 20 October, 20 November and 14 December.

Write Faster, in which three writers create a play—before your very eyes!—for actors to perform immediately, is on 13 October and 10 November, while the Write Something Showcase, 14 new plays in an evening of rehearsed readings from plays developed over the Write Something Workshops for the previous six weeks, has its season’s outing on 10 October.

New this season is Showaoke!, hosted by Tim Jasper on piano and Ali Pritchard providing backing vocals. Tim will play any song you put in front of him—From Eminem to The Lion King, from Sweeney Todd to The Fresh Prince of Bell Air. Showaoke! will be in the bar from 9:00 on 19 October and 23 November.

The season features theatre, music and comedy. Theatre productions include:

• 4 – 7 September
  Burning Books
  Jess Green

  A powerful and humorous look at an education system buckling under government cuts and targets. A story of protest and the teachers who choose to fight back.

• 7 September
  The Art of Cuddling and Other Things
  Circ Motif

  The show explores topics such as human touch, connection, loneliness and isolation using high level acrobatics, dance and theatre, combining art-forms to produce images that allow us to look into ourselves and each other.

  Circ Motif is a North East based contemporary circus theatre company.

  The Art of… starts at 6:30 in the upstairs rehearsal room which is, unfortunately, not accessible.

• 12 September
  Shakespeare's Speakeasy
  Steven Arran

  Can a group of strangers successfully stage a Shakespearean play in a day? Come walk the tightrope with some brave performers who will try to entertain you in a truly rough and ready Elizabethan fashion.

• 13 – 15 September (at 6:30, with 2:30 matinee on Saturday)
  Wild Wilma
  Moth Physical Theatre

  The story of a young girl who is sold to the circus after the death of her parents. Wilma struggles to fit in and meet the strict expectations of the Circus Mistress. On a quest to find her identity, Wilma finds the courage and bravery to be wild and free through the friendship of others. Told through physical storytelling, object manipulation, puppetry and an original soundtrack.

  For age 3+

• 26 and 27 September
  Word
  Jamal Harewood

  Words give a person the opportunity to express themselves. They can be read. They can be heard. They can be spoken. They allow us to communicate. I was always told that it’s not what you say, but how you say it—is this true?

  Become the contestant or host in an audience led game show that put the words we use under a magnifying glass.

• 29 September
  Rat Race
  The Suggestibles School of Improv

  Two teams of improvisers scramble to win your laughter, applause and votes in a relentless series of hilarious games, sketches and songs. It's going to be fundamentally improvised and for folk who like their fringe theatre fifty shades of dangerous.

  The Suggestibles’ School of Improv is the longest established training ground for improvisers in the UK. They run improv courses three nights a week in Newcastle for actors and non-actors, beginners to advanced, and deliver workshops internationally. Their shows at Alphabetti involve members of the Suggestibles and improvisers from School of Improv.

• 2 and 3 October at 6:30
  Tuesday’s performance is in English, Wednesday’s in French
  A Frog Called Woânda / Une Grenouille qui s’appelle Woânda
  Théâtre Sans Frontières and Théâtre À L’Envers

  Laura's mother is ill and she is being looked after by her grandfather. One day, whilst washing her paint brushes in the bathroom, Laura drops her mother's special ring down the sink. Up pops Woânda the frog who tries to help Laura find it.

  For age 5 – 10

• 4 – 6 October
  The Important Man
  Cap-a-Pie

  A play about belief being tested, set at a time when the advances in scientific discoveries, like electricity, seemed as otherworldly as the supernatural.

  Set in the First World War, the play follows a fortune teller and his clients. Although the brutal battles of the trenches are ever present this is a story that focuses on the people who aren’t at war, who are left behind, who are preparing to go or have returned.

• 11 October
  Heartspur
  Northumberland Theatre Company (NTC)
  By Bob Shannon

  An evening of hippy hippy Shakespeare! We follow the story of Harry Hotspur set in gangland Newcastle in 1963. Think Henry IV Part 1 meets Get Carter meets Six-Five Special, a jukebox tragedy! The show uses the very best of Shakespeare’s words alongside modern dialogue and memorable songs from the girl bands of the sixties.

• 16 – 19 October
  The Economy of Ecology
  Manic Chord Theatre

  A story about human relationships, communications and our impact on the natural world.

  Travelling on a crowded plane, Steve feels dislocated and alone. In a world of touch screens and social robots, he has lost the ability to make meaningful bonds with other people, while in a forest thousands of miles away a sapling pokes its head through the leafy forest floor. Beneath the soil its roots begin to scramble for the one thing that guarantees its survival: a connection.

• 23 October
  MBOLO
  Hal Branson

  Most people go to Africa to do charity work to find themselves and get some purpose and meaning in their lives. Fifteen years ago, Hal went for these reasons too but also to try and stop smoking weed and get over a self-induced nervous breakdown. Instead he came back having built a fifth of a school and learned the Ugandan words for both sets of genitals.

• 31 October
  Halloween Special with Charlie Dearnley
  Alphabetti production

  acharacter is Charlie Dearnley. acharacter is sometimes human, sometimes not, and is experiencing being all-things / no-thing / anything. acharacter is not an alter-ego. acharacter is a creature, journeying through death, dream, loss, love and fear, with spirits and energies viewed as ghosts, angels, demons, aliens, objects, people and places.

  This show—performed by acharacter—will be a woven mix of music, dance, spoken word, storytelling, and magic (because everything is), at the summer's end on Hallowe'en, when the veil between worlds is thin.

• 13 – 17 November
  Five Years
  By Neal Pike & Matt Miller

  From 1998-2002, Neal Pike attended a special educational needs school in Nottinghamshire. Five Years is about trying to hold on to a sense of who you are during those messy, brutal and mundane years of adolescence. He explores identity, community and the parts of him that were shaped by Foxwood.

• 21 November
  Shakespeare’s Speakeasy

• 24 November
  Rat Race