More than 30 artists and arts organisations will showcase new plays, musicals and dance pieces over four days in the annual New Work Festival at Leicester’s Curve theatre.
The festival will include the Midlands première of Katie Arnstein’s Sticky Door, a show with “songs about sex, stigma and cystitis”. It can be seen on Saturday 12 March.
Beccy D’Souza, producer of Sticky Door, said, “Sticky Door premièred at VAULT 2020 and had a short run at Pleasance London in August 2021. This is the first time we'll be performing it in the Midlands.
“We love the East Midlands crowd and we're looking forward to bringing some Katie Arnstein flavour to the New Work Festival which we’re sure will be full of fabulous Midlands talent.”
Shortlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Playwriting, Nicole Acquah’s Sankofa (Saturday 12 March) “weaves together live music, storytelling and traditional pottery in a semi-autobiographical show about legacy, heritage and what it means to belong as part of the African diaspora”.
Leicester-based writer, director and multi-disciplinary artist Carol Leeming MBE will return to Curve with theatre company Dare to Diva’s production The Dreadful Dance of Ms Iniquity on Thursday 10 March, a “choreopoem by a fictional black woman based on real events”.
Curve resident creatives Tina Hofman and Jude Taylor will both feature as part of the line-up. The Notnow Collective’s Pepper and Honey (Thursday 10 March) is a drama about the meaning of home complete with live Croatian biscuit-baking, performed by Tina Hofman. On Friday 11 March audiences can see Jude Taylor’s Is He Musical?, a new musical comedy inspired by the true stories of queer friends in 1930s London.
Curve associate company Nupur Arts will close the festival on Sunday 13 March with Dance Dhamaka 2022, a showcase of Indian dance performed by more than 120 young people from across Leicester and Leicestershire.