Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal
Till Death Do Us Part
Directed and devised by Kevin Dyer

What happens when a writer’s words are taken away from them and new creative levels are added by directors and performers?

Will the writer allow their words the freedom to find their own voice or will they keep them close and exclusively to themselves – till death do us part?

Gulbenkian Theatre, Canterbury

sean burn in speaksong
sean burn is a writer, artist & performer with a growing international reputation. Commissioned theatre works include in an age ov double glazing (Paines Plough, 1999), red voice (The Door, Birmingham Rep, 2004) & cutter (Half Moon Theatre, also 2004 & Time Out's play of the year for young people that same year).  New plays for 2006 are voices (Pegasus Theatre), ghost-tag (Courtyard & Pleasance (Edinburgh) theatres) & taking the blood ov butterflies (Weaver-Hughes Ensemble).  His most recent short films - stealing brecht (created thanks to a pva medialab residency), the terror we create  and chekhov are receiving screenings around europe. 
 
Recent text-art projects include dream horizon for disability arts organisation - dada-south, re:word for Fold Gallery, Cumbria & válkaovocekristusvodadít? (warfruitchristwaterchild) for Cesta, Czech Republic.  Skrev press (www.skrev-press.com) have just published two full length prose collections – edgecities and @ the edge.  Wrecking Bball press (www.wreckingballpress.com) will publish his first full length poetry collection - never sleep with anyone whose got more scars than yu, late 2006.

Leicester Phoenix present ...

Spinning A Yarn
Birmingham-based poet and social animator Jo Skelt weaves a sparkling new spoken word performance out of the diverse landscapes inhabited and imagined by children from Leicester.

Threading past into present, elsewhere into England, and the magical into the everyday, this new work will entertain and engage primary-aged audiences.

mac Birmingham present ...

The Journey
Xanthe Gresham and Zirak Hamad

A devised storytelling piece with live music.

The Journey explores the paths of refugees and asylum seekers through the telling of traditional and more contemporary stories, presented within a theatrical context.

With additional support from mac New Work Trust.

Wig
A short story written and performed by Patrick Gale.
Contains material of an adult nature.

A live reading of Wig, a black comedy about a housewife in suburban hell and a hairpiece with a will of its own, set to a specially commissioned soundscape designed by sound artist Jon Nicholls.

When downtrodden mother and wife Wanda impulsively buys a blonde wig, it's just a bit of morale-boosting fun. She has no idea that the wig will tempt her into breaking all her careful suburban rules, drawing out a dangerous side to her personality... Patrick Gale is the author of eleven novels, including Rough Music and Friendly Fire.

Wig is taken from his collection of short stories, Dangerous Pleasures. Jon Nicholls is a composer and sound artist whose work includes frequent collaborations with the BBC, Channel 4, Radio 4 and national theatre companies. He is currently writing an opera, Falling Across, due to be staged in Birmingham in 2008.'

Aisle16: Poetry Boyband
Aisle16 (creators of Powerpoint V2.0, Time Out Critics Choice) are back to Make Poetry History, putting this noble art back where it belongs – on stage, in a white suit, with girls snatching at its ankles.

Taking the form of a spoof lecture with breath-taking graphics, the four poet boy-wonders simultaneously deride the traditions of the empty pop format and bring verse to the unversed. Sell-out audiences Edinburgh & London.

TIME OUT CRITICS’ CHOICE OF THE YEAR 2005

“Highlight of the spoken word scene” The Sunday Times

“As much a lesson in laughter as rhyme, the Poetry Boyband deserves a Top Ten hit.” Metro **** (Critic’s Choice)

"Go on, be a poetry groupie" The Scotsman ****

More info/press quotes available onwww.aisle16.co.uk

andWWW.POETRYBOYBAND.COM (spoof information site)

Apples & Snakes presents four scratch performances

Following the success of Lemn Sissay’s Something Dark and Francesca Beard’s Chinese Whispers  Apples & Snakes offers you a taste of four new work in progress pieces that explore the theatricality of performance poetry.

UNPLANNED
Written and performed by Malika Booker.

Planned or unplanned? Childbirth affects us all in some way or another. Using storytelling, film and poems, Malika Booker explores fertility and its place in the 21st century. This is a thought-provoking one-woman show that takes in everything from designer babies to jelly babies. Join Malika as she lifts the lid off some old wives’ tales.  Directed by Rachel Mars.

SECURITY
Written and performed by Zena Edwards.

Zena Edwards explores the boundaries of verse in urban theatre and the connections between the written and spoken word with multi-media, music and dance.   

A very first scratch of a new show from  this lyrical and mellifluous performer.

THE KING OF HAIKU
Written and performed by Charlie Dark
Directed by Mervyn Millar

Poet & DJ Charlie Dark.

A king and a kid from the wrong side of town

Haiku’s, and dusty books

some mysterious birds on the roof of the library

...and possibly some puppets!

Charlie shares his ideas for a poetry show for audiences aged 6+.

GROWING UP AN ALIEN
Written and performed by Aoife Mannix

“Born in Stockholm in a snow storm on the stroke of midnight,
I feel like a changeling, a cuckoo,
maybe the tags got mixed up in the hospital
and they took the wrong child home. “

Giving voice to all the things she forgot to say, poet Aoife Mannix blends poetry and music, as she turns the page to find she’s not in the story she thought she was?

Being Alive:
Contemporary Poetry Theatre

Inspired by the Bloodaxe Books anthology of the same name, Being Alive is a performance piece that presents poetry with wit, clarity and verve. Using three performers, still and moving images, and original music, it brings a new vitality to the performance of poetry.

Poems used include pieces by U A Fanthorpe, Helen Dunmore, W H Auden and Julia Darling.

It is directed by Steve Byrne (of Interplay Theatre), with music, images and design from Derek Nisbet
and Janet Vaughan (of Talking Birds).

Four Fathers
Ray French, James Nash, Tom Palmer, John Siddique

Fresh from what was heralded as the most engaging reading tour of 2005, the Four Fathers are back with a new show and a new set of stories.

With four authors talking candidly about their relationship with their fathers and their roles as fathers and father figures, this event is a moving experience for readers and audience alike.

Seewww.route-online.comfor more information.

'A fascinating double-take on the experience of being fathered and then becoming a father yourself - full of wit, pathos and insight.' – Blake Morrison

Psychicbread

Mark Gwynne Jones and the Psychicbread offer a fresh and original show that inspires and entertains. Here is an intertwining of voice, rhythm, world music and vivid poetry; a powerful act capable of transforming the mundane into magical landscapes.

This award winning show mixes contemporary narratives with world beats, piano, kora and flute, providing music that works to underscore, and empower the spoken word.

Mark Gwynne Jones is one of the UKs leading performance poets and a favourite in venues where most poets can only dream of surviving, let alone subduing the crowd to an attentive hush.

Seewww.psychicbread.orgfor more details.

Tell Tales

Devised by author Courttia Newland and poet/writer Nii Parkes, Tell Tales fuses music with storytelling, and brings together the most exciting British talent from the literary and spoken word scene.

The range of writers cuts across cultural borders and highlights the diversity of contemporary British writing. The charm of Tell Tales derives from the range of contributors, whose heritage spans the globe, from Pakistan to The Gambia, St Lucia to Sri Lanka, South Africa to the Rhondda Valley.

The stories reflect a diversity of experience and origins, as well as the influences of languages from patois to Afrikaans. The ensemble is enlivened by soundtracks created by DJ Zak Akhimien.

Tell Tales – “live to tell the tale; tell the tale to live”

The Brighter Side
Rob Gee

An upbeat performance poetry show reflecting the wealth of talent which exists within users and survivors of Leicester's mental health system.

Earlier this year, fourteen performance poets, all who've experienced some kind of mental health problem in their lives, performed to a packed house of over 200 people at The Phoenix Arts in Leicester.

Compered by performance poet and reformed psychiatric nurse Rob Gee, five performers from the show will offer different perspectives on their experiences and provide a much needed antidote to the social exclusion, stereotyping and stigmatisation that comes with a diagnosis of mental ill health.

Rob Gee is a performance poet and comedian. A former psychiatric nurse, he has been working with people within the mental health service writing performance poetry and developing performance skills. Rob comperes a fast paced performance with a handful of selected poets.

When to Run
Sophie Woolley

When to Run is about the growing phenomenon of women running, why they run in the first place and the highs and lows of running as a sport and as a means to health and happiness.

This is a show about escape and the lessons to be learned from winning, losing and moving ones feet quickly.

Presented by

World Poets' Tour Showcase
Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi with Sarah Maguire; Katherine Pierpoint with Tom Boll

The Poetry Translation Centre's World Poets' Tour of 2005 introduced poets from six countries, paired with their UK poet-translators, to enthusiastic new audiences. The PTC Showcase features two of those poets.

Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, who comes from Sudan, is one of the most exciting African poets writing in Arabic today; a mesmerising performer, he reads his poetry alongside his translator, the distinguished British poet, Sarah Maguire.

Prize-winning poet, Coral Bracho, is highly regarded in her native Mexico; her sensuous, lyrical poems will be read in Spanish and English by her translators, the leading UK poet, Katherine Pierpoint, and Tom Boll.