ARCHIVE JUNE 2024 | New Plymperf

Festival Line Up

Plymouth Performance Festival

Sat 1st June - Sunday 2nd June 2024, 6pm -10pm
Venue: The House, Plymouth PL4 8AA

Thursday 6th, Friday 7th & Sat 8th June, from 6.30pm
Venue: Theatre Royal Plymouth, PL1 2TR

Saturday 1st June 2024

UPDATE:
WONDERZOO
is no longer able to host the Saturday Breakfast Event (10-12)
@ the House

6pm-7pm
Everything But Theatre,
Close Enough

BY CRISTINA VARGA

CLOSE ENOUGH, EVERYTHING BUT THEATRE

'Believe me, no English teacher can ever prepare you for that: a British white man talking in his native accent!'

Close Enough is an autobiographical solo performance about belonging that challenges stereotypes around immigrant women from Eastern Europe.

The piece is based on real-life experiences of actress Cristina Varga, who moved to the UK 3 months before Brexit. With a comedic approach, Cristina shines light on the diversity and different dynamics between the two cultures that she is now part of: Romania and UK.

With the use of original live music, Close Enough tackles subjects and stereotypes from both cultures such as the world-famous British politeness and the infamous stigma of being a morally-questionable Eastern European immigrant.

Cristina Varga is a Romanian theatre maker, performance artist and comedian based in Plymouth. She pursued a master's degree in Performance Training at University of Plymouth, during which she began experimenting with interdisciplinary art that blends physical theatre and new media art often featuring nature as a visual element. Through her work, Cristina wants to forge a connection with the audience by intertwining autobiographical narratives with mixed media art, music and physical theatre. This year, alongside Danni Watmore, Cristina co-founded Everything but Theatre, a theatre company based in Plymouth that celebrates the complexities of human life through absurdity and stupidity. In April 2023 Cristina performed Close Enough at Theatre Royal Plymouth as part of The Lab Programme with two sold-out shows.

CONTENT WARNING

Flashing lights, loud music, strong language, discussions around immigration

Image credit: Sarah de Wat

7pm-8pm
The Decolonial Salon,
Perception Gap

PERCEPTION GAP BY THE DECOLONIAL SALON created and performed by Patrice Naiambana (Damsel, Criminal Record, Barbershop Chronicles) with Live Sound Design Artist and Saxophonist, Ric White.

African Diaspora Performance exploring the psychological pressures of an outsider refugee in exile. - who am i? what am i becoming, what do i stand for? he asks. Can he survive by putting flesh on silences?

Patrice Naiambana is an African Performing Artist and Animateur from Sierra Leone. A professional actor and community arts worker, he has been developing informal ensembles and facilitating diaspora creativity labs nationally and internationally since 1995. He initiated and produces The Decolonial Salon.

Ric White's musical experience covers playing saxes and flute in rock and jazz bands as well as various experimental ensembles since the 1970s. Alongside this he has composed and performed electronic music for theatre, dance and poetry events and film.

Image credit: Naiambana

8pm-9pm
Fynn Roberts,
The Roaming Librarian

BY FYNN ROBERTSThe wandering librarian is celebration of stories.We meet the eponymous wandering librarian, a being tasked with the mission of walking the earth and giving those who need a story, the story they need.Fairytales, picture books and more! This will be a lovely evening for anyone 8-88 (as long as the 8-year old can handle a sprinkling of magical cannibalism.)I am a writer and performer who often focuses on funny and surreal storytelling.My first show 'Happy: Never! Laughter' was a stand-up theatre hybrid that explored a sad funny person. I also co-wrote and performed in Contraband Sandwich, which told the chaotic true story of an astronaut who smuggled a sandwich into space.Image credit: Kelly Oakley

9-10pm
Lauren Soper,
Double Ds

DOUBLE Ds BY LAUREN SOPER

Get your dancing shoes on and your gin and lemo in hand. .. Join Lauren as she navigates opening night of the new 2000s club ‘Double D’s.

This raw and realistic performance highlights the battles plus-size women face trying to enjoy having a boogie on the dance floor. Full of laughs, awkward dancing, and tears. Lauren releases her trapped inner feminist and what it’s like to have abnormally large boobs from a young age follow her into her early twenties.

With a mixture of comedy, spoken word and physical theatre, Lauren invites you along as her new bestie and dancing partner in this feel-good feminist piece.

After chasing the dream of becoming an actress I’ve ended up in Plymouth, which I’ve called home for 6 years now. With my B.A in acting and countless notebooks filled with endless play ideas, I’ve always centred my work and craft around intersectional woman’s rights and highlighting voices (including my own) that get overlooked in society today. It’s not all doom and gloom though as I love incorporating a comedic stand-up style to my work and making sure at the end of the day my audience leave with belly aches from laughing and tears in their eyes from questioning anything and everything!

CONTENT WARNING Flashing lights, Loud Music, Strong language, Adult scenes, Partial NudityContains scenes of domestic abuse, sexual harassment, body issues and eating disorders.

Image credit: Dom Moore

Sunday 2nd June 2024

6pm-7pm
Gocha Dance,
The NET

GOCHA DANCE

The NET is an interactive show by Gocha Dance which promotes new awareness and appreciation of the marvelous world of our Nervous System, which codifies the stimulus via sensorial organs and transforms them into messages to connect us with our external world. This incredible system of messaging, and its sophisticated operations of circular and cyclic actions and reactions within our bodies, can be seen as an analogy of the invisible net that interconnects us with everything in nature. The NET therefore offers a dynamic and stimulating opportunity to engage the audience to react to these intercommunications alongside the dancers and to feel and experience this invisible net in a playful way.

The NET is a very intimate piece which requires audience engagement; therefore, the audience must be seated on the stage.

The NET invites the audience to explore their senses, so, the first line of the audience will be invited to taste a small ball made under molecular gastronomy food process; the ingredients included are jelly, lime, shortbread, yoghurt and honey. The audience participants are invited to fill out a form before the performance to acknowledge any food intolerance or allergy.

Image credit: Luisa Gonzalez

7pm-8pm
Beneath the Tracksuit,
I Don't Like Poetry

BY BENEATH THE TRACKSUIT

Robert Gillett aka Beneath The Tracksuit, brings you his creatively unique journey through poetry with poetry. There may be laughs, maybe tears and maybe some poetry.

Robbie is a poet-Spoken word artist. He was diagnosed with MS in 2015. He took up poetry after his diagnosis to help deal with the emotional effects of his condition. He writes under the name ‘Beneath the Tracksuit’. He’s published a book, and released the album, Beneath, with Recording artist, Ruinarte. Robbie is currently working on a collaboration with the artist Atom St. George, who also lives with MS.

Image credit: Donna Hughes

8pm-9pm
Claudia Jefferies,
Work

BY CLAUDIA JEFFERIES

WORK is a piece of experimental performance art that comments on the workforce as an entity, the things we say, and do, and the parts of ourselves we abandon in order to become and remain employed. Inspired by many years of being an artist working various day jobs, Work uses text from old CVs, application forms, and interview-speak to shed light on the absurd nature and necessity of employment as we know it.

Claudia Jefferies is a Plymouth-based Theatre Maker, Writer and Performer. Her work cross-references multiple genres and performance styles to highlight and critique everyday social injustices. She works across a variety of performance styles from naturalistic acting to clowning, drag, spoken word, and performance lecture.

CONTENT WARNING

Contains references to diet and may also make reference to stress, mental ill health, toxic work environments, violence and features loud noises.

Image credit: Kevin Watt

9pm-10pm
Cat Rose and
Jon Fazal

Music performance by Musicians, Cat Rose and Jon Fazal

Cat and Jon’s musical style has been described as 'dreamy catchy melodies that paint pictures in your mind' and 'John Lennon meets Laura Marling’. Since summer 2023 they have released a double A-side (Firestone Bay & Summer Rain) inspired by our wonderful city Plymouth and the sea, a Christmas fundraising single (Other Side of Christmas) and a collaboration with the Scribes (Edge of Somewhere, Part 2).

These songs were all featured on BBC Introducing and are available to stream by searching ‘Cat Rose and Jon Fazal’. This summer they are excited to release their debut EP together, a full EP with the Scribes later in the year and their own solo debut releases!

Image credit: Jon Fazal