The Words Weekend festival comes to Sage Gateshead from 6 to 8 December 2019. It will feature authors such as Grayson Perry, Marian Keyes, Ben Okri, Stacey Dooley, Nadiya Hussain, Candice Carty-Williams, Cash Carraway, Tracy Chevalier, Elizabeth Day, Bernardine Evaristo, Salena Godden, Kerry Hudson, Val McDermid, Michael Morpurgo, Philippa Perry, Jay Rayner and Elif Shafak.
Open Clasp Theatre Company, New Writing North and City of Dreams are partners with Fane Productions in this inaugural festival at which all events are fully accessible and BSL interpreted and 25% are free.
The festival will host a screening of Open Clasp's filmed play Rattle Snake based on real-life stories of women who have faced and survived domestic abuse. The event will feature a Q&A with the writer, director and cast, as a culmination event to the UN’S 16 days of action tackling domestic abuse and coercive control.
Catrina McHugh MBE, Artistic Director of Open Clasp, said, “we're so excited to be part of the incredible line-up at the first ever Words Weekend and it's a real honour to be a charitable partner for the festival—we're both so passionate about sharing real life stories and it's a fantastic opportunity to share Rattle Snake with a wider audience and raise awareness of coercive control.”
Performance Poetry promoter Apples and Snakes has curated Born Lippy, which features a line-up of Zambian-born Newcastle-raised actor, rapper, singer Kema Kay (I, Daniel Blake and one-man show Shine at Live Theatre and The Traverse in Edinburgh), one of Britain’s foremost poets Salena Godden and record-breaking beatboxer, hip-hop MC, poet and theatre maker Testament.
Full details of the festival can be found on the Words Weekend web site.