Having struggled in recent years to find sufficient funding, GIFT (Gateshead International Festival of Theatre), which began in 2011, returns, not only with its first full-scale festival since 2014 but also with a new partner, the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.
Running from 28 to 30 April in five venues—Caedmon Hall at Gateshead Central Library, St Mary’s Heritage Centre, The Central, The Prohibition Bar and The Baltic—it features a variety of performances, workshops and discussions from some of the most exciting theatre makers from across the UK and Europe.
As the North East’s only dedicated contemporary theatre festival, GIFT serves as a creative and cultural response to the on-going redevelopment of Gateshead, with activities connecting the regenerated Gateshead Quayside with the more commercially redeveloped town centre.
With three days of activities spread across the town, GIFT 2017 crosses cultural and interdisciplinary boundaries, with performances spanning gig-theatre, contemporary dance, live art, cabaret, site-specific performance and physical theatre.
There are three strands to GIFT. The main strand—GIFT itself—aims to fill the gap in experimental and international performance programming in the region. Organisers and participants see it as an important opportunity to bring high quality cultural activity from across the UK and Europe to the area and to offer a showcase for North East artists.
GIFTed is the strand of which celebrates the work of students and recent graduates within the main festival programme, and offers networking and professional development opportunities for its participants. This year there will be a special GIFTed late night "lip-synch" cabaret at The Central featuring several new performers from Northumbria University, hosted by Bonnie and the Bonnettes, a theatre company formed by a group of Northumbria University’s MA Theatre and Performance students.
Little GIFT is the strand of GIFT that reaches out to the very youngest of audiences, and this year GIFT has joined forces with North East early years innovators Chalk to create Noise Lab, a pop-up experimental noise making space at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art. At Noise Lab, young children and their grown-ups will play with innovative musical instruments and sound making devices to create soundscapes that will be recorded and mixed by a sound artist.
Performance highlights this year include the UK première of Possibilities that Disappear before a Landscape by El Conde de Torrefiel from Barcelona who are one of the most innovative companies to be emerging from Spain in recent years. Glasgow’s Julia Taudevin, described as “one of the most exciting forces in Scottish theatre” will present her guerilla gig-theatre show Blow Off described by The Guardian as “a dynamite hour of sexual politics.” To close the festival this year, GIFT has teamed up with BE Festival (Birmingham) to host the Best of BE FESTIVAL tour which will feature three award winning shows by artists from Switzerland, Italy and Germany.
“GIFT offers a unique opportunity for artists and audiences to come together in a festival environment, where a real sense of community is formed over the 3 days,” Festival Director Kate Craddock said. “Since GIFT was founded in 2011, I have seen so many new opportunities and networks open up for the participating artists, and I have seen audiences more willing to take risks with the theatre they go and see. It is such a joy being able to bring such amazing contemporary theatre makers from across the UK and Europe and to programme these artists alongside emerging North East theatre makers, and then to see how they come together through the festival.”
The full programme is on the GIFT web site. The festival is running a crowdfunding campaign to raise £2000.