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Lit Up 2006 featured an array of performances across the whole spectrum of live literature, provoking debate and discussion around the art form and often dividing audiences. To read reviews of some of the shows, click on the 'Read the review' button or download the review as a word document.
Many of the performances are available for touring.
For more information contact the individual shows or email info@litup.org
and we’ll put you in touch with the right people.
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?
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Contact, Manchester
I Hear Voices
Director Shabina Aslam
Co-Director/ Choreographer Leo Kay
Three voices, three bodies, one mind.
Thoughts travel through a maze in my mind.
What do they sound like?
What do they look like?
Working with composer Jason Singh, sound designer San Steele and lighting designer Mark Distin, three young spoken word artists from Contact's extensive programme of new writing and performance development, Samira Arhin-Acquaah, Ben Mellor and Martin Stannage, will create a visual, moveable feast of spoken word, poetry
and rap.
Download review as word document (28K) 
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.
Download review as word document (28K)
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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.
Download review as word document (28K) |
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Wig
A short story written and performed by Patrick Gale.
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.'
Download review as word document (28K) |
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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.
Download review as word document (28K) |
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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.
SECURITY
Written and performed by Zena Edwards.
THE KING OF HAIKU
Written and performed by Charlie Dark
Directed by Mervyn Millar
GROWING UP AN ALIEN
Written and performed by Aoife Mannix
Download review as word document (28K)
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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).
Download review as word document (28K) |
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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.
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.
Download review as word document (28K) |
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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.
Download review as word document (28K)
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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.
Download review as word document (28K)
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