News: Comedian puts on shows to entertain families (who aren’t boring!)

Comedian puts on shows to entertain families (who aren’t boring!)

Every Thursday, comedian Lee Kyle presents a show for families that he records in his own living room to no live audience. Because of, you know, the rules.

'Very funny' - Primary Times

'The leader of the revolution' - The Times

'The Kids Completely Lose it, Parents cover their faces and laughter with their hands; This is genuine fringe comedy' - Deadline News

Cheeky tour-de-force Lee Kyle (“very funny” Primary Times) is helping families around the UK laugh, with an hour of live comedy streamed directly into their homes every Thursday throughout the pandemic. The only catch is, it’s for families who aren’t boring!

Having entertained audiences of all ages up and down the country for the past 10 years, Lee has suddenly found himself performing alone in his own front room because of, you know… The Rules. Each show features a host of guests that look and sound suspiciously like Lee, making for lots of laughs for the kids as well as the adults.

It’s easier to say what it isn’t than what it is, it’s not the show you’d expect a kids comedy show to be if you’ve never seen one.  Lee is silly and rude but never talks down to the young audience, instead allowing them to feel like a grown up comedy crowd rather than some toddlers at a library storytime.

Lee has hosted the kids show at The Stand in Newcastle for 5 years, headlined the family show at The Comedy Store, played various theatres for Comedy Club 4 Kids and done TV warm up for CBBC. He’s worked with both Sweep, Jedward and Basil Brush.

Lee Kyle’s ‘Giant Comedy Shows for Families (Who Aren’t Boring!)’ will be broadcast live online, every Thursday during the lockdown at 2pm.

The show may be daft, silly and even cheeky but it’s suitable for families. 

You can find it on Facebook (www.facebook.com/lee.kyle.9), Youtube (www.youtube.com/user/leekylespresence ) or via his website www.imleekyle.com.

News: Darlington Hippodrome launches support for Darlington Samaritans with online crowdfunding page

Darlington Hippodrome launches support for Darlington Samaritans with online crowdfunding page

Darlington Hippodrome staff have selected Darlington Samaritans as their new annual charity partner with the launch of an online crowdfunding page.

Darlington Samaritans Lillian Howell (left) Gill Osgerby (right)

Darlington Hippodrome has announced that the Hippodrome staff selected Darlington Samaritans as their new annual charity partner.

Samaritans is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with over 200 branches across the UK and Ireland. Every year Samaritans answer more than 5 million calls for help through their unique 24 hour listening service. Demand for the service is growing with Samaritans responding to a call for help every 6 seconds.

Through the partnership, Darlington Hippodrome will help support Darlington Samaritans’ services through various fundraising activities.

Darlington Hippodrome has launched an online crowdfunding page to allow individuals to show their support for Darlington Samaritans and find out more about the services they provide.

The crowdfunding page can be accessed at : https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/DarlingtonHippodrome

For full information on Darlington Hippodrome visit www.darlingtonhippodrome.co.uk

Preview: The Secret Earl of Biddick – Webcast

The Secret Earl of Biddick – Webcast Online Wednesday 8 April 2020, 6pm

Arts Centre Washington’s theatre may be closed at the moment but that doesn’t mean you have to totally miss out on top quality theatre. Settle in for a webcast premiere of The Secret Earl of Biddick which was specially commissioned by Arts Centre Washington for the visit of the Tall Ships to Sunderland in July 2018. The webcast will be premier on Arts Centre Washington’s Youtube channel and on the centre’s Facebook page on Wednesday 8 April at 6pm.

The River Wear becomes the setting for the local legend of James Drummond, a Scottish Earl who made his way to South Biddick after defeat at the Battle of Culloden.    In 1746, a man calling himself ‘James Drummond’ arrived in the little Pit Village of South Biddick, Washington, claiming to be the Sixth Earl of Perth.

His claim that he had just fled the Battle of Culloden whilst fighting for Bonnie Prince Charlie was met with disbelief by some but belief by others. Like, for instance, his wife Elizabeth who he met and married shortly after he arrived here in the North East.

To this day, no-one knows for sure if he was telling the truth – but if he was, then someone around here is due a Castle and a sizeable part of Scotland! Thomas’ story is told by a twenty-five strong cast of young, tough Biddickers, played by the Art Centre’s own Youth Theatre, alongside professional actors Dale Jewitt, Sarah Boulter, Like Maddison and Zoe Thompson.

The Secret Earl of Biddick was generously supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund as part of ‘Harbouring Heritage’, an exciting range of heritage events, activities and performances that took place across Washington and Sunderland as part of Sunderland Tall Ships 2018. It features an original script and music from award-winning playwright, Neil Armstrong, and a cast of professional actors and members of Arts Centre Washington's Youth Theatre. The live recording will be available from Wednesday 8 April on the Arts Centre’s Youtube channel.

Preview: Gateshead International Festival of Theatre Goes Digital in May

Gateshead International Festival of Theatre Goes Digital in May

Gateshead International Festival of Theatre

Online: https://www.giftfestival.co.uk/

Friday 1- Sunday 3 May 2020

Gateshead International Festival of Theatre launches digital, tenth edition programme of performance art and interactive events- to connect artists and audiences to share, and inspire creativity.

This week the Gateshead International Festival of Theatre, (GIFT) announced a fully digital, thought-provoking programme of contemporary theatre, dance, talks and workshops; featuring Jonathan Burrows, Matteo Fargion, Wendy Houstoun,Tania El Khoury, Action Hero, Greg Wohead, Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas, from Friday 1- Sunday 3 May 2020.

Aiming to entertain, inspire and reaffirm the importance of artistic and cultural communities throughout the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s festival features exciting UK premieres and an eclectic programme exploring human connection, surveillance, resilience through crisis and international identity. GIFT creates a vibrant, curated space for self-isolating artists and audiences to harness domestic technology to encounter bold new works, share human stories, build networks and discuss ideas. Over 30 performances and events will be presented in real time, online at giftfestival.co.uk, and tickets are available to book, from Friday 10 April.

GIFT was created to make extraordinary things happen across Gateshead, and this year’s tenth edition will transport global artists and audiences at home on sensory journeys to virtual locations, ranging from a radio studio campervan in Europe and a detention centre, to a rock band escape, a tropical getaway, and a kids catwalk birthday party.

Contemporary artists are once again invited to participate in GIFT by pushing the parameters of their practice and performance genres; showing their work, co-creating new pieces in response to the pandemic and other urgent modern day issues, and meeting other artists at digital social events. Alongside the main programme, a community of North East artists who regularly engage with GIFT, including Unfolding Theatre, Gillie Kleiman and Rosa Postlethwaite, will be offering bite-size online opportunities to welcome new audiences, and facilitate conversations across the festival community. 

GIFT 2020 performance highlights include:

Don't Worry Me By Atresbandes

Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas

Photo: Berta Vicente & Richard Perryman

The UK online premiere of thrilling performance collaboration, IT DON’T WORRY ME, by ATRESBANDES, Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas, interrogating the tension between art and political correctness. Audiences will find themselves at the heart of a supposedly ‘empty space’ analysed by two commentators, but as they become ‘the commented-on’, theories and visual associations spiral the show out of control, meaning, and context. After the show audiences are invited to join the artists in a virtual cocktail lounge for small talk and martinis (Friday 1 May). 

Crack Of Dawn by Greg Wohead. 

Photo: Paul Blakemore

Crack of Dawn: Online premiere of Texan writer, performer and live artist, Greg Wohead’s improvised durational, sunrise to sunset performance featuring four artists simultaneously performing from different UK locations. In January 2009, Greg and his partner found themselves in rural Illinois sitting at the kitchen table of a traditional Amish couple. Secret thoughts, differing perspectives and apple butter recipes are shared over a distance as one afternoon turns into a strange, kaleidoscopic examination of empathy, assumptions, and the possibility or impossibility of ever really understanding one another. Jokes recur, facades slip and there might be Time After Time karaoke (Saturday 2 May).

  

Radioh Europa by Action Hero

Photo JMA Photography

RadiOh Europa- artists Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse of Action 

Hero create a 24 hour international homage to love, in a new digital translation of their continent-spanning work, Oh Europa, where they travel through Europe in a motorhome recording strangers’ love songs. Audiences can tune in live to enjoy all the love songs recorded to date by global performers, and newly recorded songs from North East artists including Ross Millard of The Futureheads and actor Charlie Hardwick. Since 2005, Action Hero have created performances spanning theatre, live art, installation, multimedia and site-specific practice, touring to over 30 countries across five continents (Saturday 2 May, 9pm through to Sunday 3 May, 9pm).  

As Far As Isolation Goes by Tania El Khoury & Basel Zaraa.

Photo: Basel Zaraa

 As Far as Isolation Goes (Online). Lebanese artist Tania El Khoury and Basel Zaraa invite audience members to individually take part in this thought-provoking performance installation, using touch, sound and interactivity, to experience the personal journey of one man’s detention centre inhumanity (Friday 1 May- Sunday 3rd May, performances for one audience member at a time).

World premiere of soundscape, Music For Lectures/ Get lost, written and spoken by Wendy Houstoun with music by Jonathan Burrows, Francesca Fargion and Matteo Fargion. A funny and deeply moving podcast show, a new commission by GIFT, which invites audiences to listen to a short piece on lostness through the medium of a rock band, while walking or running in a moment of escape from the house, colliding travels with a virtual journey that goes nowhere. Music for Lectures: Get Lost is the third of an ongoing series conceived by Burrows and Fargion, inviting artists to deliver a talk, alongside band accompaniment (available across the festival, for download- Friday 1 May- Sunday 3 May).

Elision by Gudrun Soley Sigurdardottir

Elision, by Icelandic artist Gudrun Soley Sigurdardottir - In a climate of division and disconnection, this live performance piece explores national identity through an attempt to stay warm in a fake tropical set. A funny and tender show, which invites the audience to work with materials and objects at home in the same way as planned for a live theatre space, and draws on autobiography, pop culture and ice in its many forms (Saturday 2 May, broadcast live from the artist’s home).

Audiences can enjoy two intimate Scratch performances by UK theatre makers Luca Rutherford and Greg Wohead, over lunch, followed by a facilitated feedback session, in a Scratch n’ Scran. SQUAWK is an ARC Stockton Production co-commissioned by the Albany, Cambridge Junction and Theatre in the Mill, presented by Luca Rutherford. A story of discovering quiet power in a moment of making a lot of noise, SQUAWK is about the stories we tell, the ones that get retold and the ones we hide behind. The ones we have the power to re-make, re-mould and disrupt. Greg Wohead’s In Floods is an early-stage reading of new material outlining the strange things that can happen when you unexpectedly return to where you came from, for two back-to-back funerals. The lump in your throat grows until there is no room for it (Saturday 2 May).

Ships-Ov-Fool by Gobscure.

Photo: Liz Rose Ridley

Intimate live performance installation ships-ov-fool, by writer-performer-artist and former Sage Gateshead summer studio resident, gobscure international, followed by a post-show conversation. In this new playful work, Newcastle-based gobscure (Sean Burn) weaves together storytelling, soundscapes and objects inspired by Hieronymous Bosch’s painting ‘Ship of Fools’, in which the artist once found temporary peace. This playful performance questions those currently shouting their sanity the loudest (Friday 1 May).

GIFT audiences will once again be at the forefront of the action this year, from the comfort of their own homes. They can book to be the sole participant in intimate interactive shows; workshop performance ideas; air and share views in lively talks and debates and enjoy drinks and chats with artists in GIFT’s virtual post show festival bar, from their own kitchens. Families can take a break from entertaining children with a fun-filled, Little GIFT House Party, offering hours of games and activities and the creative use of household items, run by family-focused company Chalk.

Interactive art works, events, talks, debates and workshops include: 

Manifestos From Times Of Crisis  - Scottish Artist Rosanna Irvine poses provocative questions about our responses to the current global pandemic, in a new participatory public art work, where groups of people connect across distances and differences to come up with their own collective future manifesto. Conceived during the current COVID19 outbreak, Manifestos From Times Of Crisis  creates a virtual gathering space to reflect on what is happening, how we are living - and how we want to continue. Lively audience interaction guaranteed (Friday 1 May-Sunday 3 May). 

International Working and Sustainability- GIFT Festival Director, Kate Craddock, joins a panel of guest speakers from arts venues and festivals across the world for a lively debate about working internationally, its environmental impact and how to create artistic projects more sustainably (Sunday 3 May).

The Atresbandes, Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas post-show cocktail lounge- hold on to that Friday night theatre feeling, with a post-show cocktail party in GIFT’s online festival bar, hosted by Bert, Nasi and Atresbandes. Join the makers of It Don”T Worry Me E for a post show cocktail, curated playlists and chat. Audiences are asked to bring their a-game small talk, internet connection, burning questions, sincere and insincere reactions to the show. The place to hang out for discerning theatre goers (Friday 1 May).

Making Intergenerational Stories: Where have I been, where am I now, where am I going?- CINAGE Live Director, Teresa Brayshaw, and performer and facilitator, Hannah Butterfield, host a talk, film screening and accompanying workshop designed to get people reflecting on their own experience of ageing. Based on two innovative and ongoing practice-based research projects, CINAGE: Film & CINAGE: Live, the session will encourage the telling of personal stories by older people through the creative practice of film writing and theatre making. The workshop will involve movement, speech and writing and is open to people of all ages, with priority booking for people in Gateshead (Saturday 2 May).

Exploring Process: A lively workshop led by Atresbandes, Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas, for theatre makers and artists working across performance disciplines, which sees the artists explore their own distinct methods for theatre making and the processes they encountered coming together to create ‘IT DON’T WORRY ME’ (Saturday 2 May).

GIFT Festival Director, Kate Craddock, said: “Amidst the devastating and hugely uncertain times that we face, we’re delighted to still be able to deliver GIFT as a digital experience for artists and audiences this May. Packed with new and experimental shows, sensory installations, practitioner workshops, provocative talks and plenty of fun social events, we aim to make GIFT as powerful as ever, and celebrate our tenth edition in style. 

Little Gift House Party by Chalk

Photo: Dan McCourt for Chalk

“The festival was created to remove barriers between artists and audiences, nurture creative communities and have fun together in the process. It gives a crucial platform to otherwise underrepresented North East contemporary artists and shares big ideas and creative responses to Gateshead, as a site of regeneration and transition.This year, more than ever before, we’re using GIFT’s spirit and energy as a vehicle for artistic communities, and the millions of people impacted by this pandemic, to come together, to inspire and encourage each other, maintain vital artistic conversations and champion our human resilience and creativity. 

“To keep the buzz of an ephemeral real-time festival, events will be presented with their usual scheduled starts, audiences will have digital tickets and can enjoy after-show virtual drinks and chats in the festival bar. We’d love to see you this May for a very special GIFT 2020.”

All events will be hosted on giftfestival.co.uk. Tickets are available to book, from Friday 10 April and audiences can make a Pay What You Decide donation to support this year’s festival here.

GIFT is supported by artists, funders and partners including Arts Council England, Gateshead Council and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art.

News: Darlington Hippodrome to offer free online dance classes for children and young people

OFFSTAGE BUT NOT OFFLINE

Darlington Hippodrome to offer free online dance classes for children and young people

Darlington Hippodrome, in association with the D Project, will run three free interactive online dance classes each week for the next three weeks, prior to the beginning of the summer term when the venue’s regular programme of Youth Theatre and Youth Dance classes will move online.

The first sessions will take place on Thursday 2 and Friday 3 April. The session at 10am on Thursday will be a Contemporary class – a mix of contemporary centre exercises (including floor work). You will learn phrases with restricted space in mind and also get creative with choreographic tasks.

On Friday 3 April there will be two sessions, At 10am, young people of all ages can join a Dance Fitness class –  exercise to music with fun movement , that will keep spirits up and maintain stamina, strength and flexibility. At 2pm Debbie will teach the Mass Dance routine due to be performed at this year’s Darlington Dance Festival.

As well as being aimed at existing members of the Hippodrome’s Youth Dance, April’s free online classes are also open to new participants! If your child would like to give it a go, simply email Hippodrome.BoxOffice@darlington.gov.uk up to an hour before the start of each class and you’ll be sent a link to join the session on Zoom.

NEWS: Newcastle Theatre Royal Delay Search For New Chief Executive

Newcastle Theatre Royal Delay Search For New Chief Executive

Newcastle Theatre Royal Chief Executive Philip Bernays has today announced that he is to postpone his planned retirement.

Newcastle Theatre Royal Chief Executive Philip Bernays

In light of the unprecedented challenges the Theatre Royal is facing, in common with all other theatres, the Board of Newcastle Theatre Royal Trust has taken the decision to postpone the recruitment of their new Chief Executive while they focus on managing this crisis.   The current Chief Executive, Philip Bernays, has kindly agreed to stay on to lead the organisation through this difficult time.  

Whilst it remains their intention to hire a new Chief Executive in due course, the Board recognises that many potential candidates will also be fully engaged on working through these issues with their own organisations for the foreseeable future.

Philip Bernays said: “These are extraordinary times and we face extraordinary challenges. I care deeply about the Theatre Royal and couldn’t not continue to support it and the incredible team of people who make it happen. We will come through this crisis; we look forward to bringing entertainment to many generations of theatregoers to come.”

Newcastle Theatre Royal closed its doors on Mon 16 Mar 2020 and has cancelled a number of upcoming performances as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. Affected customers are being contacted directly and as a registered charity that receives no funding and relies on ticket sales for the majority of its income, it has launched a donations campaign to help support the venue – further information can be found at https://www.theatreroyal.co.uk/support/donate-now.

Preview: Cinderella at Darlington Hippodrome

Tickets Now On Sale For The Fairy Godmother Of All Pantomimes, Darlington’s Cinderella

Tickets for Cinderella, this year’s spectacular festive family pantomime at Darlington Hippodrome, are on sale now!

Scene from the 2019 Panto

You shall go to the ball this Christmas with the spectacular family pantomime Cinderella at Darlington Hippodrome. Packed with all of the traditional pantomime ingredients audiences expect, Cinderella features laugh out loud comedy, stunning scenery, beautiful costumes and plenty of boos and hisses.

Scene from the 2019 Panto

Join Cinders as she goes from rags to riches, outwits her ugly sisters with help from her best friend Buttons and meets her dashing Prince. This Christmas bring your family to the most magical of all pantomimes where you can make festive memories as precious as a glass slipper.

Cinderella will be produced by Qdos Entertainment, the world’s biggest pantomime producer, and the team behind Darlington’s annual pantomime, who guarantee another must-see production packed with audience participation, sensational music and dancing, jaw-dropping special effects and fantastic festive entertainment suitable for all ages.

Star casting to be announced soon!

Cinderella runs at Darlington Hippodrome from Saturday 5 December 2020 to Sunday 3 January 2021. For full details and to book visit www.darlingtonhippodrome.co.uk or call 01325 405405.