Contact Theatre from Manchester's autumn and spring listings feature the return of Forced Entertainment a week-long Afrovibes Festival, Queer Contact 2013 and a visit from the great American poet, playwright and civil rights activist Amiri Baraka.
The season kicks off with the Lost and Found Festival, co-produced with Rocket, featuring free performances by emerging artists in unexpected locations throughout Manchester City Centre from 26 to 28 September.
Fields of Grey, written and performed by New York-based actor and MC Mtume Gant and British poet, playwright and performer Avaes Mohammad, shows two people on opposite sides of a war, an American soldier and a British Muslim Mujahid, running from 3 to 13 October. Also on 6 October, Stumble danceCircus will perform circus skills including trick-cycling, hula hoop, rope work and acrobalance in Box of Frogs.
Leading American writer and activist Amiri Baraka—also known as LeRoi Jones—will read from his work and talk to Dr Corinne Fowler about his career and influences on 10 October as part of the Manchester Literature Festival. Also in October, the Afrovibes Festival from 15 to 20 October will feature contemporary theatre, dance, spoken word and music from South Africa and beyond.
Inception and My Exile Is In My Head is a dance double bill from Sonia Radebe and Qudus Onikeku on 16 October, and then Market Theatre Johannesberg will perform And The Girls in their Summer Dresses, which was at this year's Edinburgh Fringe. Thirst is another dance piece drawing on Nguni mythology on 18 October and Mother to Mother from FreeVoice Productions is the tale of two mothers bound together by a senseless act of murder in a Cape Town township on 19 October.
ThickSkin will present The Static by Davey Anderson directed and choregraphed by Neil Bettles on 24 and 25 October, and then Rationale Productions will perform In My Shoes on 27 October. Yellow Earth Theatre will close October with Dim Sum Nights, fresh, bite-sized pieces of theatre from talented British East Asian writers at Sweet Mandarin, Northern Quarter, Manchester on 31 October and 1 November.
Forced Entertainment will bring The Coming Storm to the Contact from 14 to 16 November, and drag fabulist Dickie Beau will return with Blackouts Twilight of the Idols from 15 to 17 November. Xenophobadelica by and starring DawN Crandell runs from 22 to 24 November, and The Paper Cinema brings its unique stories through projected drawings with Odyssey on 29 November.
For more information about these events and the rest of the season or to book, see contactmcr.com