Bloomsbury Festival celebrates "Activists and Architects of Change"

Published: 16 September 2018
Reporter: Sandra Giorgetti

Bloomsbury Festival runs from 17 to 21 October

London's Bloomsbury Festival is five days of science, literature, performance, music, and discussion that take place in a variety of venues across the district.

Themed on "Activists and Architects of Change", there are more than 140 events with around 60% of them free.

Included in the theatre performance programme are:

  • Tinted – a partially sighted woman browses the Internet in the wake of #MeToo and stops at her ex-boyfriend’s posts. When you are brought up in giant dark glasses and a gradual discovery about what you can’t do, everything ends up a bit Tinted.​ Tinted is an extended version of Theatre 503 commission To Be My Eyes written by Amy Bethan Evans.

  • A Necessary Woman – set on census night 1911, suffragette Emily Davison hides in a cupboard beneath Parliament planning a daring act. Written and performed by Deborah Clair and Philippa Urquhart. Directed by Dominique Gerrad.

  • Constance and Kelly – Constance is a suffragette and the first woman elected to parliament, imprisoned for her part in the 1916 Easter Rising; at HMP Holloway, she meets Kelly McCoy who got three months for stealing baby milk in 2015. This is a staged reading presented by Waiting in the Dark Theatre which works with women who are at risk of the criminal justice system.

  • Devoted To Mikhail Ugarov And Elena Gremina—Teatr.Doc – a reading of a new play about Mikhail Ugarov and Elena Gremina, the founders of Moscow's Teatr.doc and leading lights of the artistic opposition to the Russian regime, who died earlier this year.

  • Moment of Grace – Bren Gosling's play is set in the 1980s and is inspired by The Princess of Wales' visit to Britain’s first AIDS unit at London’s Middlesex Hospital. It is based on personal testimonies.

Bloomsbury Festival runs from 17 to 21 October.

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