Over the past few weeks, days even, I’ve just started to get press releases through for live events. It’s so exciting! There’s finally actual stuff to tell you about. If you’re ready to (and no worries if you’re not), please do consider buying a ticket for something. The industry needs us.
There is still plenty of digital content however:
If you’re quick you can catch The Motherhood Project on the Battersea Arts Centre website. Writers and contributors including Juno Dawson, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, Athena Stevens and Anya Reiss have created 15 short films exploring the guilt, joy, absurdity, pressure and taboo surrounding motherhood. Available until 25 April.
Katie Arnstein’s play Sexy Lamp which I reviewed (with some reservations) at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2019 is available to stream live this Friday 23 and then on demand from 1 until 5 May from Wolverhampton’s Arena Theatre. It’s a semi-autobiographical piece with original songs about the acting industry, the objectification of women and hope.
Sexquisite have another online show this Saturday featuring sex worker artists performing poetry, theatre, burlesque and more. They say they will be: “showcasing the hottest international sex worker artists in our socially distanced, seductive and stigma defying show.”
With the Old Fire Station in Oxford and the Bare Project you can take part in The People’s Palace of Possibility, an immersive arts project told through the post and through digital and/or telephone interaction. “As a Palace Citizen you will be part of a vital resistance movement, designed to take down ‘The Consensus’ and their tyrannical regime of enforced happiness and unquestioning conformity.” I have no idea how feminist this will be, but it sounds like fun! It lasts for five weeks from 19 May and must be booked by the 14 May.
In the real world:
HERstory is a Brighton-wide audio storytelling experience that uncovers women’s lives and work usually hidden from history. It’s part of the Brighton Festival and can be experienced at 18 different listening posts around the city for the whole of May. It includes writing from Sabrina Mahfouz, Jade Anouka, Kate O’Donnell, Nessah Muthy, Monsay Whitney, Rachael Young and Yolanda Mercy and is created by Stef O’Driscoll. For anyone who can’t access the stories aurally, transcripts will be available on the project’s website.
Also part of the Brighton Festival is Abigail Conway‘s The Candle Project which is commissioned by The Spire in Kemptown. Conway invites participants to make a tapered, beeswax candle, cast their own words inside, then place it amongst a larger candle installation. There is a livestreamed lighting ceremony on the evening of Saturday May 29 as local choirs create a sonic backdrop. “The Candle Project is a timely ritual, a welcome, transformative ode to resilience, a light held up to the dark and an intimate celebration of shadow and light.”
Compass, the interactive live art festival in Leeds has announced some May and June dates for some of its events. Closed Forum’s Anxiety Arcade, taking an ingenious and playful approach to the subject of mental health, is available to play from 24 until 30 May. One In, One Out: Leeds’s Smallest Gay Bar which considers the existence of queer spaces and role of the gay bar in contemporary LGBTQI++ culture takes place from 28 until 30 May. And outdoor sonic artwork The Ballad of Crown Point Bridge takes place from 5 – 27 June.
Soho Theatre is reopening on 17 June with Shedding A Skin, a new play by Amanda Wilkin about finding kindness in unexpected places, moments of connection, intergenerational friendship and joy. It runs until 17 July and has specific audio-described, captioned and BSL-interpreted performances with a relaxed, inclusive environment for all performances.
Until next month!
The feature image is from Shedding A Skin and shows Amanda Wilkin jumping in the air. She wears dark blue jeans, a bright red shirt and has a look of joy on her face. She’s against a mid blue background.
