The F-Word stage blog: November 2019

I don’t normally write a blog post in December, so this will be our last one of 2019. There are some January suggestions in here to keep you going! See you next year…

The Witching Way, a DIY rock opera performance, is at Lancaster Arts tomorrow, 15 November, and at Square Chapel Arts Centre in Halifax on 24 January, 2020. Part-coming of age fable, part-gig, it’s a concept album performed live with animated visuals. It follows the story of W. (a teen witch protagonist) as she is transported to a cottage in a strange landscape after struggling with peer pressure and bullying in the contemporary world.

Musician and writer Marianne Dissard is presenting a show adaptation of her book Not Me at Fringe Folkestone Book Festival on 21 November and Margate Bookie Festival on 22 November. The show is a collaboration with Brighton filmmaker Julia Alcamo and includes a performative reading, music and dance videos, an awareness improvisation and a Q&A on the book’s topics of mental health and eating disorders.

Bryony Kimmings’ I’m a Phoenix, Bitch is at HOME Manchester from 26 until 30 November. The show combines personal stories with epic film, soundscapes and ethereal music to create a powerful, dark and joyful work about motherhood, heartbreak and finding inner strength.

Manchester-based poet, playwright, and performer Chanje Kunda debuts her new one-woman show Plant Fetish from 27 until 30 November also at Manchester’s HOME. “I started buying and cultivating lots of plants in a bid to save myself and the planet from impending demise,” Chanje explains. “It changed my life and I decided to make a show about it. The show is a celebration of diversity, and is designed to inspire people to reclaim the right to experience joy, to dance and enjoy exotic plants and nature, outside of the ideologies that make people stressed out in the first place.”

Sh!t Theatre‘s spectacularly festive show Sh!t Actually is at the Camden People’s Theatre from 3 until 21 December. The performance art duo give the Sh!t treatment this Christmas to Love Actually, everyone’s favourite (and least favourite) star studded romcom.

Performance artist Lucy McCormick has two runs of Post Popular at Soho Theatre from 3 until 14 December and then from 10 until 22 February 2020. She’ll also be at Brighton at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts on 22 November. Scavenging for nuggets of inspiration and understanding, Post Popular is a series of historical re-enactments creating spectacular, fantastical and glorified adaptations of key moments in time and Lucy’s own story.

London Hughes brings her standup show To Catch A D*ck to the Bloomsbury Theatre in London on 10 and 11 January, 2020. “London is confused. She’s awesome, successful, sh*t hot and yet, somehow, incredibly single… how on earth has that happened?!” In To Catch A D*ck, London will explore the complete mystery of why the world is full of desirable, brilliant but single women – who definitely don’t need a man but wouldn’t mind the option.

Sophie Duker returns to Soho Theatre with her show Venus running from 13 until 18 January, 2020. “Sophie Duker is your Venus, she’s your fire, your desire. Or is she? Silly, sexy, savage standup from a girl who’s definitely not a goddess.”

Nikita Gill’s Maidens, Myths and Monsters has its world premiere at Omnibus Theatre in Clapham from 13 until 18 January, 2020. Gill is one of the world’s most followed poets and will perform herself in an evening of poetry and projections.

OPIA Collective, a cross-arts collaboration of artists that create multi-disciplinary female and LGBTQIA+ led theatre, debut their show The Girl With Glitter In Her Eye at the Bunker Theatre in London from 12 until 27 January, 2020. Combining spoken word and original live music, they explore what it means to live in a world where rape culture is defaulted into society and where the boundaries of consent lie.

Rose Matafeo is recording a filmed, hour-long special of Horndog over two performances at The Ambassadors Theatre in London on 17 January, 2020. Our reviewer Emily Zinkin loved it, hopefully you will too!

Artist Eirini Kartsaki embarks on a vocal, sonic and verbal experiment with electroacoustic music composer Tasos Stamou in IN A WAY SO BRUTAL. The show is part-gig part-performance and is about women monsters, female desire and being too much. It plays in a double bill with Dadderrs at The Yard Theatre in London from 21 until 25 January, 2020.

And lastly the first shows for 2020’s VAULT Festival have been announced including The LOL Word, Beach Body Ready and and new shows from The Thelmas. It runs from 28 January until 22 March, 2020.


The feature image is from Sh!t Theatre and is by Lizzie Coombes. It shows the two performers side by side from the chest up. They both have white-painted faces, wear beige body suits and have tinsel around their necks. The performer on the left wears a Christmassy sleeveless pullover, has a painted-on green moustache and has her eyes tightly shut behind black-rimmed spectacles. The performer on the right has a painted-on red moustache and has their long curly hair over their face. They stand in front of a beige background.

The image in the text is of London Hughes. Hughes stands in front of a bright yellow background. She holds one hand with bright red nails to her chest and twirls her long hair with the other. She looks up and to the left. She wears a low-cut black and gold top with a zip down the front.