This exciting week-long programme of live arts events, fringe activities and happenings around town is an opportunity to showcase creativity and arts in the local area, through unique and exclusive experiences.

What’s on?

There will be interactive street theatre and dance performances in Park Mall, all to interact with the community and provide events and an atmosphere in Ashford town centre. Bootworks Theatre will perform We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat, which is a show for small-town communities, about small-town communities. You’ll see Comedy Cavemen, a posse of Palaeolithic cavemen characters causing mischief and spreading an environmental message.

You’ll be able to see street art created by great local artists. Create your own art with The Open Air Drawing-Room a drawing group offering some landscape painting. Each artist (audience member) also makes a Cyanotype portrait which will be exhibited as a mirror image to the final painting – A Sea of Faces – embracing JMW Turner’s pioneering interest in photography and his desire to find new ways to embrace art. This project invites the public to engage in setting the world record for a painting that has been created by the largest number of artists – which is pretty exciting!

Circus will come to the streets, you can see performance poets in pubs, and there will even be a spoof version of JAWS outside the Picturehouse cinema. Frantic features spectacular acrobatics and dance-theatre, choreographed around a wheel, with a hidden water system for a joyous finale danced in pouring rain. CONFiCo present JOiNT, a playful and curious piece exploring the interplay between individuality, commonality and the body’s facility. Acrobatics, globe walking, dead celebrities, French finesse, trumpeting and mime mayhem make L’Hotel an enchanting show to delight the audience. For kids there’s Tutu Trouble, an exciting original new physical theatre show for children.

At Revelation Ashford, there will be live DJ sets by Huey Morgan from Fun Lovin’ Criminals and BBC 6 Music and Terry Hall of The Specials, warming up festival goers with their music and sounds.

Mr Harper’s Birthday Party

In December 1911 George Harper made an anonymous offer to present the Hubert Fountain to Victoria Park. So as well as all the above, there will be a Victorian-themed Mr. Harper’s Birthday Partyfamily fun day on Sunday 21 July, which acknowledges and celebrates his gift, with games, arts, workshops and music – and the traditional birthday cake races.

Why host Create Platform?

It’s all part of an effort to make Ashford a creative place to be beyond just the Create weekend. “It is really important for the growth of Create, as well as Ashford’s cultural offer, to extend beyond the one big day in the park,” says Chris Dixon, Arts & Cultural Industries Manager at Ashford Borough Council.  “The introduction of Create Platform three years ago has allowed for more opportunities for local artists, as well as generated broader engagement from audiences, venues, and sponsors.”

Originally published on the Create Festival blog.

The five-strong cast (Clare Lawrence Moody, Emma D’arcy, Clare Perkins, Sean Jackson, and Guy Rhys) flit between their array of different characters. Overlapping and shared lines aren’t the characters interrupting one another, but an example of how the book shifts and shakes its way through the consciousness of the characters. The echoes of the mind are made manifest, and the shades of existence delicately shown. At times it gets a little bit confusing, but then so does Woolf’s prose. It’s a story made up of moments, and the amorphous structure that does without traditional scene and act changes beautifully represents this. 

As we’re told in the opening scene, which acts of something of an explainer, Mrs Dalloway is a ‘book about London, and lots of other things.’ This production very much focuses on the other things – relationships, identity, mental health, the self – and London is part of the back drop. The set is sparse – the scenery is a simple blue sky, and we do not once hear Big Ben chime. Instead the focus is on the entry, exit, and exposition of the actors on stage. The Arcola is a simple theatre, and the production would work well in a grander setting. No doubt it will end up doing a tour or run elsewhere. 

Mrs Dalloway is made up of the people and places which complete her. For this reason, the vast array of characters are given just as much presence as Clarissa Dalloway herself. It works, because it’s not just about one person, but ‘life, London, this moment of June.’ This moment is made up of many things, and the play conveys both the inner and outer worlds with elegance and inventiveness. Visually simple, but emotionally exploratory, this version of Mrs Dalloway is well worth getting tickets for.

Which Woolf novel is next?

We move through the shadowed streets through the restless and changing world where religious creeds are changing and tumult raging. But what are ‘the strangers’ who share the new creed doing here? What have they fled? A boy’s fate is sealed as a cold hand of history hauls him down into the darkness. It’s our job to unlock the secrets that that conspired to shape the life and death of Canterbury’s Christopher Marlowe.

We move across and through the city and through its space, visiting iconic heritage sites including Westgate Towers, Eastbridge Hospital, Poor Priests’ Hospital, Conquest House, Old Weavers Cottage and St George’s Tower. The acting is brilliant, with articulate and engaging performances from those playing Marlowe in particular. (Seeing hooding grey friars jump and flip over bridges in front of pubs and drinkers or cars having to wait for parkouring monks to finish their performance means that bringing the show to the modern streets adds some humour as well reality and drama.)

Not a lot is known about Christopher Marlowe, and I can’t say that after Creed of Spies I was much wiser. But I did leave with renewed enthusiasm for storytelling and storyhunting, and a desire to learn more about this intriguing man and the long shadow he has left over the city. It’s a brave and bold undertaking that has paid off.

In a little village outside Ashford, a local group are putting paid to the idea that creativity and village life are dead. The Woodchurch Players, founded in 1980, have performed everything from drama to family panto, musical theatre to revue shows, shorts and epics, and their diverse CV includes Rebecca, Allo Allo, She Stoops to Conquer, A Matter of Life and Death, Treasure Island and the play version of Sweeney Todd.

This spring’s performance, directed by Mark Perrien , is their 99th show, and they’ve picked something that can appeal to all. Dancing at Lughnasa, performed at Woodchurch Village Hall, and from Thursday 18th May until Saturday 20th May, might be familiar to some. Written by Brian Friel over twelve days in 1989, it is a touching and heartfelt play about five sisters in 1930s Ireland. Bittersweet in tone and temper, it explores the relationship between the sisters and is cleverly narrated many years later by Michael, the son of the youngest sister Chris. Michael is to all intents and purposes Friel. Described as a ‘memory play’, it centres around the Mundy girls – Friel’s mother and her four sisters. There’s love interests, dancing, laughter and plenty of Irish charm – but knowing that it’s based on true events of loved ones who have passed away gives it a clear tenderness.

Rehearsals are going well by all accounts. It’s busy of course, but that all part of the fun. In fact, gathering together for rehearsals before it all comes together is just like hanging out with friends in many ways.

There are a myriad of benefits to being part of groups like this. Charlotte Maughan-Jones, who plays Chris explains how before she got involved with the local theatre scene, the stress of her job and changing circumstances had become too much. ‘Having just graduated and moved back home to Ashford to start my job, I found that all of my old school friends were no longer around, and I was, for the first time, very alone. I had a stressful job at the time and had given up all my hobbies to concentrate on my career – this proved disastrous for me and I subsequently spent time on antidepressants and in therapy. I have met some of the most amazing people through my drama exploits and I feel richer for it.’

Charlotte got involved with the Woodchurch Players, whom she describes as one of the most inclusive and supportive groups around. ‘The society were so friendly and welcoming to me as a newcomer and I fell in love with the intimate setting for the shows.’ What this means is that there are always opportunities available. Even those who believe they have no acting skills (something that should always be explored!), or just prefer not to be on stage, can get involved. No production can take place without technicians, lighting, costumes, prompting, direction – and those with existing skills or looking to develop theirs are always welcome.

In fact, it plays a major role in the audience’s engagement with a performance. Here, as Michael recounts the summer in his aunts’ cottage when he was seven years old the green fields of the fictional town of Ballybeg Ireland’s County Donegal play out behind him, whilst the period costumes immediately immerse you in August 1936.

The casts range from new members to existing, young and old, male and female. Every year the pantomime is filled with enthusiastic children taking part and becoming part of their local theatre. For Charlotte Woodchurch Players ‘embodies everything that a local community should be – people of all ages, all backgrounds and all talents coming together to do something they love, and something they’re passionate about.’

Come along and find out more whilst you are entertained with song, dance and drama at Dancing at Lughnasa. Tickets are available here or in person at the Woodchurch Information Centre.

Now on tour around the country, this bold and seductive production is one that will entrance fans of film, theatre and dance alike, just as it did at Canterbury’s Marlowe Theatre.

Opening with dramatic chimes and a flickering curtain, we are immediately drawn into the film through a conductor waving his baton more like a magician and wand through dazzlingly atmospheric lights -courtesy of Paule Constable. It certainly feels enchanting, as well as a bit meta – a window to a screen on the stage observing an audience that we, here tonight, are watching.

Combining the drama of cinema with the theatricality of performance and romance of dance, it’s a ballet that does not feel like a ballet. This is what Bourne does – takes the familiar and twists it, adds his own ideas and challenges the audience’s preconceptions. And so the career of dancer Victoria Page (tonight played by Ashley Shaw), romantic struggles with composer Julian Craster (Dominic North), and a dedication to dance that is exploited by Boris Lermontov (Sam Archer), becomes not just a fairy tale, but a modern and vibrant piece of populist theatre.

The layers of set design shift between silhouettes and shadows, the stars of the night sky, sumptuous red velvet cinema and the interior of a theatre, as well as France and London. Designed by Lez Brotherston the revolving sections make for a seamless and swift movement between scenes that keep the pace moving. The dance styles are equally multifarious – there’s some jazz, ballet, ballroom and modern all coming into the mix. The dancers, as always, astound us with their talent, and even more so upon learning that the cast rotates every night so that no-one individual plays the same role constantly.

It’s a brief piece at just one hundred minutes long, but means that urgency and passion are retained. Ebbing gently at times, whirling with vivacity at others, the pace and passion are carefully managed. Sound is used to devastating effect by designer Paul Groothuis, temporarily throwing the viewer, and orchestrator Terry Davies weaves extracts from Bernard Herrmann’s film scores into the music that swoops as much as the dance itself.

As smoke billows across the stage and lights glare out, the only sounds we hear uttered by the performers are those of the fallen Victoria as she is hit by a huge steam train. The climatic drama here is breath taking and tragic, and the sadness felt testimony to the emotional tugs created in such a short space of time.  Melodrama and glamour mingle with sentiment and romance in a fashion that is rarely seen. Again, Bourne has taken leaps with imagination and confidence, and pulled off a masterpiece. Matthew Powell said that ‘The Red Shoes told us to go and die for art.’ You get the feeling Bourne would too.

Read more here, and go book here.

Bristol’s Creative Youth Network and their seasonal performance of Turkey is a production formed through collaborative workshops with young people participating in their schemes and arts initiatives, all based on true stories . Written by Alice Nicholas, directed by Nick Young and produced by Emily Bull, although very much created by the cast and their peers, this immersive and real life performance at The Station is both tender and gripping – just like the rest of the festive season.

‘T’was the night before Christmas’ begins our narrator Theo (Jake Bartlett), in his dazzling glitzy jacket – and as we hear from the characters it can be everything from borderline hell or most wonderful time of the year.’  Homelessness, poverty, loneliness, broken relationships and illness can all take their toll – and the feeling of being alone and failing is only exacerbated by what looks like the perfect Christmas that everyone else all around is having.  . Often through no fault of their own individuals find themselves unable to produce that perfect day, ‘just like everyone else.’ That’s what Abigail (Cirwen Farrant) wants for her and her unborn baby Biscuit, and she speaks tenderly to her child about the eternal hope of the new year and what it will bring. ‘I should be happy and full of Christmas cheer’ our characters feel – that should weighing them down.

Like most ‘perfect’ things in life, the depiction tends to be a somewhat filtered version of events. Whether it’s the Black Friday consumerist fight, one-upmanship pursuit, the hypocrisy of ‘pretending to believe in Jesus once a year then go back to being c*nts’, the demands of bratty children, finding out Father Christmas isn’t real, or  just the fact that domestic bliss skates on thin smiles that crack by something as simple as not buying ribbon. In the pursuit of the ideal Christmas the endless ‘rush, anxiety, panic and failure’ ring more loudly than any peace and goodwill.

Or so it seems. Because for everyone who walks straight past the homeless, there’s those like Hazel’s (Emily Gilbert) family who invite Alfie (Matt Fleming) and his ‘invisibility cloak’ in for dinner. Or Abigail and her sister Jas hand crafting presents. Or the mother supported through her breakdown.

And people like Creative Youth Network and the participants of Turkey. As well providing a brilliant evening’s entertainment and making the whole audience think, they invited us all to share a meal with them, all donated by FareShare and would have gone to landfill otherwise. Sharing, laughing, and feeling part of a community – that’s what Christmas is about, and that’s what Creative Youth dished up with their Turkey.

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fcreativeyouthnet%2Fvideos%2F1236804986384535%2F&show_text=0&width=560

• A man chases a woman through a wood begging her to love him.
• Five incompetent women try, and fail, to put on a play to impress the royals.
• The king of the fairies falls madly in love with a woman disguised as a donkey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZWRhDcBB5I
If that all sounds a little different to what you’ve come to expect, that’s the idea. The Reversed Shakespeare Company was set up in 2015 by Lindsay Dukes, Cassie Webb and Matthew Maltby, and between them played roles from Romeo to Beatrice, via Miranda, Marina, Iago and Third Lord. Recognising that women make up 16% of Shakespeare’s characters, Women speak as few as 0.67% of the lines in some of Shakespeare’s plays, such as Timon of Athens, yet 68% of the London theatregoing audience is female there might be more for female actors to do than, in Lindsay’s words just be, ‘dragged across the stage as Lavinia or paraded in the brothel as Marina.’
They also wanted to see what would happen if men could see and experience the sort of vulnerability afforded to Shakespeare’s women but not to his male characters and in the process ask some questions. Are women and men all capable of the same actions, feelings and beliefs? How do women woo, and can men be wooed? Is vulnerability reserved only for the physically weak? Can a woman hold the space that men seem to have inherited naturally?
And crucially, can a woman with a donkey’s head and a need to steal the spotlight really win over the fairy king?
The debut production runs at The Pleasance Theatre from March 16^th-27^th, and features a programme of talks and discussions. Tickets are available here.

Opener and bull running story teller, Bill Hillman’s set is dense and colourful with words, but less easily eloquent than other speakers, which is not to take anything away from the quality of his prose.

ImALondoner.com » Book Slam, Bethnal Green.