Stage: Bathing Belles
The Nightingale, with Brighton Fringe and The Marlborough Theatre, present Dip Your Toe
For those of us who like our Fringe events served in deliciously tasty small portions The Nightingale, with Brighton Fringe and The Marlborough Theatre, are presenting Dip Your Toe. You can experience an interactive performance adventure in the streets of Brighton, with a series of unique pieces performed in and around six Victorian-style bathing machines across the city.
Throughout May six bespoke Victorian-style bathing machines will appear at some of the city’s iconic landmarks. Each will be the inspiration and the venue for a series of brand new performances by South East artists. See these fascinating replicas brought to life as beautifully customised, mobile mini-theatres, housing astonishing performances every weekend in May.
BATHING MACHINES
The Department of Unreliable Memoirs
Stillpoint Theatre
Make an appointment with two helpful hostesses to retrieve a half-forgotten moment from a past you may have had. Revisit the time you saved your city from a freak flood, invented scientology, or ruined that child’s party! The D.U.M offers a playful encounter for a single audience member. All you have to do is turn up and play along
PG – Children (16 and under) must be accompanied by an adult
Green and Pleasant Land
fanSHEN
Find the castle, solve the riddle, beat the dragon, use the force, change the world? Green And Pleasant Land fuses physical theatre, live music and folk traditions in an epic adventure for audiences aged ten upwards. Join them on a quest powered by bicycle-generators through lands of curious customs and peoples of peculiar habits, to find a happier, greener future.
Family friendly suitable for all ages
Puppet Paramour
Boogaloo Stu gets up close and personal as you step into a surreal world from a bygone era, in a one-to-one session of sock-puppetry, crystal ball gazing and creating your ideal partner. What is their name? What do they look like? How did you meet? Open up and reveal your hopes and dreams for happiness whilst your puppet is created.
PG – Children (16 and under) must be accompanied by an adult
Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter
Grist to the Mill
Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter transforms the interior of the bathing machine into an otherworldly delight, where bathers, sailors, sea monsters and mermaids are exquisitely animated by artist Isobel Smith. Using manipulated light and puppetry along with a specially composed ‘poetic drama’ and soundscape from collaborators Dorothy Max Prior and Daniel Marcus, audiences will witness the machine’s contents come to life.
Family friendly suitable for all ages
A Small Museum of Displaced Sea
The Karavan Ensemble
Between coast and sea, past and present, award-winning Karavan Ensemble carries the sea across Brighton in a reconstructed bathing machine immersed in dance, physical theatre, live music and gathered memories. Working with older people from the South East their migrating performance carries the sea within. A travelling museum of a displaced sea is a site-responsive performance.
Swimming in the Persian Gulf
BandBazi
Take a swim on the exotic side; borrow a human book, learn about the freedom of swimming. BandBazi bring you the woman’s view from East, West and somewhere in between. Swim into the nonsensical, radical and conservative views on freedom and choice. A multi-media installation letting audiences peek behind the veil. Have your preconceptions blown out of the water.
For full details and dates go to www.dipyourtoe.co.uk
HEART: An Angina Monologue
When Doug Devaney lay clutching his heart on a hill in Hollingdean nearly two years ago, little did he think this would be the basis of a one-man show. However, Easter Saturday and Sunday will see him take Heart: An Angina Monologue to the stage of the West Hill Community Hall, near Seven Dials, in preparation for a tour around East Sussex and Kent.
Heart, which has been developed in association with the Arts Council and will raise funds for the British Heart Foundation, sees Doug follow the path from fry-up loving kid to cholesterol clogged adult and beyond with a mixture of observations, routines, confessions and ukulele songs. “It’s only fair,” explains Devaney. “I did drop the uke when I had the attack –and it stayed in tune – so in many ways we both survived the event.”
Heart: An Angina Monologue, West Hill Community Hall, Compton Avenue, Brighton, Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 April, 8pm, £7/£6
