Review by Beth Gaylard of "Collegiate" by Natalie Beech, Brigitte Adela and Written Foundations Theatre Company

Collegiate is a production by Written Foundations Theatre Company, a partnership of director Brigitte Adela with playwright Natalie Beech.  Original music (by Selim Ben Rabha and Matthew Daly) and lighting were elegantly worked out to complement the drama, without distracting from it. I saw it in the Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester.

Set on a campus in freshers’ week, Collegiate is a story about friendship and pseudo-friendship, as well as sexual politics. At the heart of the play is a rape, which is not accepted as such by any of the characters, not even at times, by Tash (played by Rebecca Tubridy) to whom it happens. The brutality of the assault (not portrayed graphically) is matched by the nastiness of Tash’s and Kev’s friends. Tash’s friends scrutinise her behaviour and withdraw their affection in the aftermath of the assault - while Kev (played by Stephen Love) is the butt of more savvy young men, whose laddism contributes to the events. It’s the laddism that is really under scrutiny here – the play effectively challenges assumptions about sexual consent.
  
The portrayal of Tash’s situation (and its consequences) avoids the ‘victim’ stereotypes associated with those who’ve suffered a sexual assault, focussing on the personal horror – the uniqueness of the experience and the isolation it brings in its wake, as onlookers decide for themselves who’s at fault. 

All this is conveyed through a fast-moving script and excellent acting. There is humour in the piece, but like the music, it complements the story and never detracts from the serious subject – and both actors convincingly portrayed the dilemmas of Tash and Kev.

This is a piece of work that deserves a wider audience – particularly of the young people it’s aimed at, so I was pleased to hear from Written Foundations hope to stage Collegiate at the Edinburgh Festival in August. Catch it if you can. And incidentally, if you happen to have any links with sixteen plus education, it would be well worth booking a performance workshop for your students, as they think about heading off for university themselves.                                     

About the reviewer
Beth Gaylard is a teacher, writer and MA  student at the University of Leicester. She lives in Leicestershire in a weird modernist house that will one day feature in a bestselling novel or film, hopefully her own.

Review by Karol Valderrama of the "Reading the Body" event by Lydia Towsey and Scott Brigwood at Attenborough Arts Centre

Everybody’s Reading Festival 2015
26th September – 4th October

Reading the Body:
Attenborough Arts Centre
10am-3:30pm

When I first considered joining this event, I felt attracted by its main topic and the dynamism the programme offered.  However, I must confess I was concerned when I decided to attend, and also when I realised drawing was going to be an alternative but demanding way to interpret and read a female body.

My concern increased when I arrived, as I found out that this was a class with people who have had experience in drawing, even though I could define myself as skilled to do basic traces.  Fortunately, both Lydia Towsey and Scott Brigwood (leading artists of the event) made of the experience something welcoming, simple and significant, even before starting the workshop.  After going into the room, I was invited to grab a drawing board (the first one in my life), some graphite sticks, charcoal, chalk pastels and markers, and so explore a whole new world through white sheets of paper.

Based on Scott’s words, this was an experience of mark-making which aimed to discover the meaning of our drawings and going beyond conventional techniques.  People who attended this event had the opportunity to create a unique signature no matter the background each one of us had.  Several suggestions were given, beginning with the most valuable, I would say: obliterating preconceptions to guarantee the best “babies” ever (which was the name given to our artistic creations by Lydia).

With materials at hand, general recommendations and a naked model in front of us, the main task was simple: look at the model and draw.  It sounds simple, doesn’t it? But again, this experience was not just about conventional drawing; not just because it was NOT focused on developing a common or traditional drawing style, but also because it was NOT just about images: It was about an interesting mixture of words and images at the same time. 

Later on, instructions were given clearly and we were all ready to start.  Nevertheless, every new sheet that was taken on the board was becoming progressively more challenging, aiming to change styles, to break paradigms and to contribute from a new individual perspective.  A white sheet was not just a white sheet; it was an experience that led to feelings of freedom or chaotic emotions at the moment of completing every new drawing.  Again, this was not just drawing, as words were coming up, supplementing graphical expression; they were saying something together, so words were images, and images were sentences.

With regards to the model, her natural shape contrasted with some exaggerated poses she gave us at every stage.  What did they really aim to?  Certainly, the physical and aesthetic analysis of her, moved towards a more subjective and original reading of her movement or inactivity; a reading resulting of what she performed, combining our beliefs, multiple contexts and the way we used the given tools.  For instance, the graphite stick enhanced our drawings and it was there as the magic tool to discover what the woman in front really meant… not necessarily nudity… but multiple features or traits within our realities.  This finally became a process of extreme consciousness regarding the female representation and our unconscious ways of examining female bodies.

As it was mentioned in the information given prior to the event, it was indeed a different way to read, write and draw the female body.  Expected or not, these creations ended up being an additional way to understand ourselves via original images, as a consequence of the willingness everyone had to move further on within the experience.  Indeed, no experience was necessary; the key was to strongly believe what both artists mentioned at the beginning: Starting without preconceptions and allowing the mark-making experience to consequently see transformations at the moment of reading.

Now that the workshop is over, several questions come to my mind.  First, how did we, participants, finally understand the body we read during those hours?  How did we depict it?  Did our backgrounds and beliefs contribute to have a different or similar reading among us?  After this, I also thought and asked myself what “reading the body” means today, based on the experience.  Multiple answers could appear, for sure, and much more when visual memories swim through social networks in the current days. 

“Choose the events that might make a difference,” the festival Coordinator, Juliet Martin, stated in the foreword of the brochure.  Clearly, I did not hesitate in following her invitation and focused my attention on this particular one, identifying this as an opportunity to make a multifaceted reading, writing and representation of the female body in one same moment.  Evidently, this experience allowed us to be all readers and mark-makers with no exclusion of gender or creed, to consequently analyse this type of art freely.  We were not more than ten participants, just a few indeed, but enough people to replicate this alternative way of reading humanity in modern times. 


About the reviewer
Karol Valderrama is an English/Spanish teacher from Colombia who lives in Leicester.  She has worked in an interdisciplinary level, completing an MA in Film and Film Cultures.  Additionally, Karol is a PhD Candidate in Modern Languages at the University of Leicester focusing on Latin American cinema and gender studies.

Review by Jodie Hannis of Commonword’s “Superheroes of Slam - Leicester Heat”

                                             Photos provided by Katy Pitcher


Commonword’s Superheroes of Slam 2015 - Leicester Heat was held on 17th September at Attenborough Arts Centre in collaboration with Dare to Diva, and due to a crippling inability to withstand tension for any significant amount of time, I’m going to tell you now that the winner was Jenny Hibberd. It’s difficult to describe her with words that mere mortals use as she is a poet best experienced in motion. You find yourself skip-hop-tripping over your own feet as you follow her into a dizzying world of cosmic chaos and calm. She writes like a master word slinger and speaks like a mad rhyme flinger... it must be loud inside Jenny’s head. And it’s plain to see that she’s anxious to share, even if it’s just a glimpse, the exuberance with which she moves through this bright world. It’s impossible not to be infected by it.

And so Jenny represents the best of Leicester’s poetry scene. In all, 19 competitors shared their words and the experience was happily embraced by all as one of exceptionally high standard. There’s always something jarring about being snapped out of a literary reverie to blink blindly at the scorecards rudely pushing themselves into the occasion.  As compere Rob Gee tells us, “the point isn’t the point, the point is the poetry.” But a winner there must be and Jenny is she, who goes on to compete in the final held in Manchester on 23rd October. £250 can afford the luxury of many pencils to many poets.

And there are so many poets that deserve those pencils. Honourable mentions go to many, including the five others that went through to the second round and performed for us again. Tony LeTigre is all smooth rhythm, charm and extended metaphors as he tells us about his love of shoes and toast, but he’s anything but pedestrian. Andrew Lee’s words seem to vibrate throughout his whole body and it’s difficult to look away from him as he constantly looks like he’s teetering on the edge of something significant. Shruti Chauhan scores incredibly highly and I’m captured by her startlingly self-deprecating deconstruction of herself. Toby Campion represents Leicester strongly with two regionally-patriotic pieces and we’re all roused to agree with him fiercely in the typically British way of clapping and nodding our heads vigorously. I suspect people would follow him into battle if the occasion called for it. Leanne Moden catches me a little off guard with a barrage of descriptive euphemisms for her “hairy meat pocket” and I curse myself retrospectively for not scribbling them all down. I particularly love her second poem which describes an incredibly important moment for her without stating the obvious. It reminds me that we’re privileged to have poets share secret parts of themselves with us so freely and that every now and again, they should keep something back for themselves.

Details of future Superheroes of Slam 2015 events can be found here: http://www.cultureword.org.uk/sos15/
Jenny’s winning poem can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG0bp9wtZGc

About the reviewer
Jodie Hannis chases after words at every opportunity. If you have some, chances are, she’d like to hear them. She also occasionally runs away from ones she puts out into the world herself: http://notsoftly.tumblr.com/

Review by Nathalie Gannon of Two Destination Language's "Near Gone" at Embrace Arts, Leicester

“This is a difficult story to tell,” Katherina Radeva’s clear voice echoes around the darkened room. The set is bare, but for two long rows of white carnations framing the stage, 400 to be exact. The air is heavy with the scent of cut stems like a strange, stale garden. It is minimalistic, but it has a haunting beauty about it - funeralesque. The story is indeed a difficult one to express; delivered in a fluent and lyrical Bulgarian and juxtaposed with Alister Lownie’s stilted English translation, what is produced is a unique form of storytelling, coloured with mistranslations and pauses that reflect the limitations of language when expressing trauma and soul-wrenching emotion.

A performance that engages all the senses, Radeva and Lownie attempt to transport their audience physically and emotionally to a tragic event in which Radeva’s four-year-old sister was involved. The performance paints a vivid picture of Radeva’s family, their home in Sofia and its garden- the focal setting, through simple dialogue rhythmic with poetic repetition, and passionate yet precise physical choreography that reflects the vibrant and lively Bulgarian culture.

Initially energetic and humorous, Radeva charms the audience by insisting that the translation is rendered physically as well as verbally. She relishes in her partner’s hilariously awkward imitations of her feminine movements - his earnestness bringing a delicate intimacy to the performance and a bubble of laughter amongst the audience. As the narrative progresses it becomes labored when language fails to convey Radeva’s personal trauma as she hears of her sister’s critical condition in hospital, and is unable to do anything but wait for news.

In this performance piece of two languages, it is what is left unsaid, what is unable to be expressed, that which is without words, which Radeva wishes to convey. When words and language fail to perform their task Radeva breaks into a frenzied dance in which the neat rows of carnations are whirled and scattered haphazardly across the performance space, their broken bodies stark against the black floor reflecting emotional, mental and physical fragility.

A refreshing and honest performance that guides its audience through a full range of emotions, with a beautiful conclusion delicately framed by white carnations - the symbol of true love and good luck. An intimate yet casual setting, with the added bonus of meeting the actors after the performance, I look forward to future productions hosted by Attenborough Arts (formerly Embrace Arts).

Two Destination Language will be performing ‘Near Gone’ in Birmingham on 14th March 2015.

About the reviewer
Nathalie Gannon is a 3rd year English student with a passion for the theatre. She spends her time costuming, writing short stories and trying desperately to get noticed.