The Brighton Festival and its Fringe run from 3rd to 26th May and the
town's Nightingale Theatre, above the Grand Central Bar in Surrey Street,
has announced its programme:
Short Cuts
By: Sonja Jokiniemi (Finland), Drunken Masks (UK), Augusto Corrieri
(UK/Italy) and Matt Jackson (USA) - Developed with the Nightingale
Theatre
3rd & 20th May 2008
An evening of four new performances by emerging artists. A dance performance
of intimate portraits and plastic-like forms. A physical theatre piece
looking at what happens when our masks break down. Short performance
interludes that tease the audience's expectations and a puppet's abstract
attempt at overcoming his regrets and finding resolution. Experimental
dance and physical theatre come together in the work of four companies,
exploring what lingers in the ruins: fragments, failures, what we
would rather forget. Every ending contains infinite beginnings. The
end. OK, let's begin….
The Forgotten
Badac - Developed with the Nightingale Theatre
4th & 5th May 2008
By 1945 six million Jewish people had been destroyed by the Nazi policy
of extermination. The Forgotten is the story of one of those
people. An anonymous man, at the moment of his liberation, retells
his nightmare journey to his watching saviours. Beginning with the
invasion of his city and ending in his imprisonment within the death
camp Auschwitz, he leads us through each stage of his and his family's
humiliation, degradation and ultimate destruction at the hands of
the Nazis. The Forgotten is an intense study of a process that
was used to destroy millions of human beings.
Scratch Night
By Northbrook College - Developed with the Nightingale Theatre
Dates: Tues 6th May 2008
An evening of collaborative work by groups of final year students
on the BA (Hons) Theatre Arts at Northbrook College. For this project
the students form their own companies combining different theatre
disciplines and integrating a range of interests and approaches. Each
company finds a starting source as a stimulus to devising the staging
and performance of a short piece of theatre.
This project concludes with performances at Northbrook College Theatre
in the week of the 19th of May.
The Art of Catastrophe
By Still Point - Developed with the Nightingale Theatre
7th & 8th May 2008
A dark, funny and poignant look at the underbelly of love. It begins
on the morning you wake up and realise that you're at the same desk
in the same dull job and somehow 15 years has passed since you last
had sex with your husband. "You know, if you had nice hair, you
could have a boyfriend too".
ON off
By Charlie Morrissey - Developed with The Nightingale Theatre
9th & 10th May 2008
Charlie Morrissey uses the two words of the title to create a unique
and highly physical performance composed live in front of the audience.
The piece reveals a very intimate and human portrait drawn from Morrissey's
own life experience and from twenty years of performance making. Both
immediate and surprising, the piece weaves together a diverse series
of events to produce an extraordinary and compelling performance piece.
The Cabinet of Curiosities
By The Two Wrongies - Developed with the Nightingale Theatre
14th & 15th May 2008
Two wrongs don't make a right, right? Wrong! Like flashers in the
park the Two Wrongies expose their most vulnerable bits of carefully
crafted choreography and poignant patter, revealing memories and aspirations
trapped in a world of chaos and lunacy. The double act that dare to
do the dirty….. Warning: contains wanton dance with gay abandon.
Chaplin
By Pip Utton
16th & 17th May 2008
Charlie Chaplin created The Tramp, the most famous cinema image of
all time, an image he never truly succeeded without. He became the
best-known, best-paid film actor of his age. But he was accused of
sexual perversion by the press and the courts, vilified for his treatment
of his ex-wives and accused of being a communist. In 1952 his American
visa was revoked and he settled in Switzerland. Chaplin created a
public image hiding the darker sides of his personality. Pip Utton
steps in and out of the screen to become Chaplin, stripping away the
myths and revealing the man beneath.
The Quake
A Prodigal Theatre Collaboration with Andrew G Marshall - Developed
with the Nightingale Theatre
18th & 19th May 2008
The famous tenor Caruso was trapped in the San Francisco earthquake
of 1906. In order to return home to the family he loved, he had to
escape his collapsing hotel room, cross a city swept by fire and fight
his way past the military on to the only ferry out of town. Beautiful
story telling and live opera singing combine to reveal the heart behind
a legend
The Death and Life of Sherlock Holmes
Jay Productions & Makin Projects
21st & 22nd May 2008
Roger Llewellyn returns as Holmes (& to the Nightingale) with
a new show directed by Gareth Armstrong.
Arthur Conan Doyle tires of his famous sleuth and uses the arch villain
Moriarty to dispose of him. But as raising the spirits of the dead
becomes an obsession in Doyle's own life, so his fictional creations
return to thrill, intrigue and dazzle us. A wryly humourous tale of
murder, mystery and the occult. Roger Llewellyn returns as the great
detective in this enthralling new play.
The Diminishing Present
bgroup developed with the Nightingale Theatre
24th, 25th & 26th May 2008
Brighton based choreographer Ben Wright is best known for his work
as a performer with the likes of Stan won't dance, Ricochet, Matthew
Bourne's Swan Lake and LCDT. Utilizing the uniquely intimate
quality of the Nightingale Theatre, bgroup's five compelling dancers
perform up close and personal in an especially adapted version of
this powerfully moving triple bill. Due to the nature of this performance,
audience places are limited to 25 per night.
