What's on where at Flare15?

Flare15 takes place from 13-18 July at a number of the city’s arts and theatre – Z-arts, Contact, Royal Exchange Theatre, Martin Harris Centre.

We take a look at what’s on:

Sleepwalk Collective (UK / ES)
As The Flame Rose We Danced To The Sirens, The Sirens
Venue: Contact
Dates: Monday 13 July 19:30
Ticket: FLARE15 Festival Opening (£12 / £8)

In an hour of troubling intimacy, Sleepwalk Collective chop up and replay the iconography of B-movies and early cinema in a joyous and desperate attempt to re-work cinematic and cultural clichés into something heartfelt and profound.

Sleepwalk Collective is an award-winning live-art and experimental theatre group creating fragile, nocturnal performances between the UK and Spain. Winner of First Prize and Best Actress at BE Festival Birmingham 2011, Best Actress at SKENA UP Kosovo 2011, Best Direction at Festival ACT Bilbao 2010.

Mareike Wenzel and the New Collective (GE)
Welcome
Venue: Contact
Dates: Mon 13 July 19:30 – Fri 17 July 21:00 (durational)
Ticket: Mon 13: FLARE15 Festival Opening (£12 / £8) / Tues 14 – Fri 17: FREE

Seven women from a different country stranded in Manchester. How to start a new life once you have left everything behind? Strangers amongst strangers, the audience is invited to join a week-long house warming party. Welcome is part of a performance series based on Chekhov’s ‘Three Sisters’, transferring the story of the female characters into the present and following their lives from the point where Chekhov’s play ends.

New Collective aims to set new benchmarks in the Georgian art scene, working at the intersection of performance, documentary theatre and installation, and dealing with current social and political issues.

Jorge Dutor and Guillem Mont de Palol (ES)
#losmicrófonos
Venue: Royal Exchange Theatre
Dates: Tuesday 14 July 14:30 / Wednesday 15 July 19:30
Ticket: #losmicrófonos (£12 / £8)

Jorge Dutor and Guillem Mont de Palol dive into a familiar and ubiquitous universe, the universe of pop culture. #losmicrofonos offers the audience a choreography of names, song titles and choruses, a strange landscape of deviations, personal memories and wild associations in which to conjecture, make connections and play.

Jorge and Guillem work between Barcelona, Amsterdam and Madrid. Their work revolves around language, semiotics, the body, musicality and rhythm. Their two previous pieces, UUUHHH (2009) and Y POR QUÉ JOHN CAGE? (2011) have been shown in festivals and venues in Spain, across mainland Europe and in South America.

Ashley Williams (UK)
The Circulation Game
Venue: Martin Harris Centre
Dates: Tuesday 14 July 17:00
Ticket: Future Flares – UK Students (£5)

The Circulation Game is a solo performance that uses digital storytelling devices to illustrate its meaning. The piece narrates a journey through a young man’s mind, capturing the problems faced by his now lost generation: from Indiana Jones to the meaning of existence, and back again.

Ashley Williams is a solo performance theatre maker, recently graduated from the University of Chichester. His work focuses on contemporary performance practice, electro-acoustic composition and new-media technologies in and for performance.

Leentje Van de Cruys and University of Salford (BE/UK)
Whoaaa Steady!
Venue: Martin Harris Centre
Dates: Tuesday 14 July 17:00
Ticket: Future Flares – UK Students (£5)

The British are weird. Take, for example, the racecourse: an intriguing world full of unexpected characters: enthusiasts, horseys, addicts, anoraks, socials, pair-bonders, suits and be-seens. Inspired by anthropologist Kate Fox’s book ‘The Racing Tribe’, Whoaaa Steady! watches the horse-watchers.

Belgian actress and theatre-maker Leentje Van de Cruys has been making quirky solo performances about domesticity and women’s identity for the last 8 years. She also performs and tours with Quarantine, Reckless Sleepers and Proto-type Theater, and lectures at MMU and Lancaster University.

Hannah Sullivan (UK)
With Force And Noise
Venue: Contact
Dates: Tuesday 14 July 19:30
Ticket: FLARE15 Triple Bill – Tuesday (£12 / £8)

When were you last angry? Hannah Sullivan’s first attempt at articulating anger, this personal one-woman monologue is delivered from complete stillness in a bespoke costume designed by collaborating costume designer, Annelies Henney. A woven experience taking inspiration from Hannah’s own autobiography, punk, protest and discussions with researchers in international politics and emotional study.

It rises, falls and simmers.

Figs In Wigs (UK)
Dance Peas
Venue: Contact
Dates: Tuesday 14 July 19:30
Ticket: FLARE15 Triple Bill – Tuesday (£12 / £8)

Dance Peas is half dance piece, half world record attempt. One by one, Figs in Wigs try to break the record for eating the most peas with a cocktail stick in three minutes. One pea at a time – no multiple stabs. They don’t have a stopwatch – but they do have a three-minute dance routine.

Figs in Wigs are an all female, five strong performance company who make work that is a unique mix of theatre, dance and comedy. Refreshingly surreal, absurdly comic and always aware of their own theatricality – imagine Kraftwerk meets Chicks on Speed at a fruit stall… and you’re nowhere close.

Sanne Van Rijn/HKU/Johnny’s Horse (NL)

For Thine
Venue: Contact
Dates: Tuesday 14 July 19:30
Ticket: FLARE15 Triple Bill – Tuesday (£12 / £8)

Inspired by The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot, For Thine is a raw search for vigour and authenticity, a piece about breaking out of the system and living as hard as you can.

Johnny’s Horse is a new theatre collective founded on a theatrical style that celebrates the uniqueness of the individual at every stage of the creation of the work. The group characterizes itself through its ferocious energy on stage and its extreme honesty, while director Sanne Van Rijn specialises in theatre that goes beyond existing frameworks – her work is picturesque, musical and acclaimed throughout the Netherlands.

Jamal Harewood (UK)
The Privileged
Venue: Contact
Dates: Wednesday 15 July 13:00; Saturday 18 July 12:00
Ticket: The Privileged (£5)

Have you ever seen a polar bear in the flesh? Been close enough to notice just how white these magnificent mammals are? Remove your shoes, coats and bags, as you are about to encounter the Arctic’s whitest apex predator, with black skin. This is a limited capacity work for up to 40 people that places you at the centre of the action.

Jamal Harewood is a solo artist who creates temporary communities through participatory events.

Antoine Fraval (FR)
When you talk about ‘The Swimmer’ will you talk about yourself?
Venue: Martin Harris Centre
Dates: Wednesday 15 July 17:00
Ticket: Future Flares – Work In Progress (£5)

This new choreographic project takes its cue from the iconic 1968 film The Swimmer, in which Burt Lancaster swims through a series of outdoor pools in an attempt to return home. The performance is part movie re-enactment and part reflection on its motifs of ageing, ambition and the struggle to hold on to what is dear.

Antoine Fraval is an artist and performer, co-founder of Deer Park and collaborator on the Lone Twin Theatre projects. Antoine’s collaborator on this project, Augusto Corrieri, is a London-based artist and writer.

Rachael Clerke (UK)
Cuncrete
Venue: Martin Harris Centre
Dates: Wednesday 15 July, 17:00
Ticket: Future Flares – Work In Progress (£5)

Cuncrete is the stage version of the TV show that might have happened if Chris Morris ever collaborated with Jonathan Ross to make a punk drag show about concrete architecture.

Rachael Clerke is an Edinburgh-born Bristol-based maker working both collaboratively and independently to create performance, websites, drawings, writing and film. She wants to make people swear, in a good way.

Dorian Silec Petek (SI)
You need the glass and you need the milk
Venue: Z-arts
Dates: Wednesday 15 July 19:30
Ticket: FLARE15 Triple Bill – Wednesday (£12 / £8)

Exploring the relationship between a disembodied voice and the audience in a carefully curated visual environment, this performance provides an alienating and calming experience that demands nothing.

Dorian Šilec Petek is a Slovenian based theatre and visual maker. He has worked in the performing arts via artistic collective SLOGAN as well as companies such as Carmina Slovenica, Choregie – New Music Theatre and others. His work has been presented at the Transgenerations Festival in Slovenia, at Tienalle di Milano, and at the Watermill Center in New York, founded by Robert Wilson.

Daan van Bendegem (NL)
Who’s afraid of red, yellow and blue
Venue: Z-arts
Dates: Wednesday 15 July 19:30
Ticket: FLARE15 Triple Bill – Wednesday (£12 / £8)

Who’s afraid… looks at the world famous painting by Barnett Newman – the artist, the painting’s destruction, its restoration, the resulting ruckus, and Daan’s own investigation into the secret reports of the bad restoration by Daniel Goldreyer. On one level a narrative thriller, the piece also questions the status of all art, including this performance, and its value.

Daan van Bendegem graduated in 2014 from the HKU theatre-academy in Utrecht. Previous theatre works include The best show ever, after this show, no one has to make a theatre show again and Dance party for an unhappy boy who can’t dance, a generation sketch from someone who is not the voice of his generation.

Ja Ja Ja Ne Ne Ne (PL)
Fight, fight – that’s all we can do
Venue: Z-arts
Dates: Wednesday 15 July 19:30
Ticket: FLARE15 Triple Bill – Wednesday (£12 / £8)

“Many of you are asking me, why wrestling? Wrestling is my song of love, my song of freedom.”

Two highly trained female performers from Poland drop all technique to make a show about wrestling. This is fighting as spectacle, fighting as metaphor, fighting as choreography, something there should be more of and something there should be less of. Elegant, entertaining and political.

Hof Van Eede (BE)
Where the world is going, that’s where we are going
Venue: Royal Exchange Theatre
Dates Thursday 16 July 14:30; Friday 17 July 19:30
Ticket: Where the world is going, that’s where we are going (£12 / £8)

“We’d love to tell you about Jacques the fatalist and his Master, by Denis Diderot, one of the best books ever written, but we’re having a problem.”

Where the world is going, that’s where we are going is the first, award-winning show by theatre company Hof van Eede. Sisters Louise Van den Eede and Ans Van den Eede took Diderot’s novel as a starting point, and ended up embracing the vulnerability of language in a deliciously whimsical conversation between a man and a woman, “who need to go somewhere else, urgently.”

Christians Schwenk (DE)
J.U.D.I.T.H
Venue: Martin Harris Centre
Dates Thursday 16 July 17:00
Ticket: Future Flares – International Students (£5)

J.U.D.I.T.H. is ‘discourse-theatre with poetic-abstract choreographic elements’. Based on a drama by Friedrich Hebbel, things start to unravel when multiple species of dildosaur, and chickens, both fried and headless, dance through the orgasm landscape… and of course it ain’t over ‘til the opera-singing vulva sings…

A performance of heavy sweating and physical comedy – dangerous, hilarious and wonderful. Created by students at Hildesheim University, J.U.D.I.T.H. has already toured widely across Germany, and won the jury award at the 100° Festival, Berlin 2015.

El Conde de Torrefiel (ES)
Scenes for a conversation after viewing a Michael Hanneke film
Venue: Contact
Dates Thursday 16 July 19:30
Ticket: FLARE15 Double Bill – Thursday (£12 / £8)

Nobody really knows what to do with their life. Because of this, in a city, there are always possibilities for inventing a life. And because everything is possible, nobody really knows what to do. Everyday disasters are imperceptible, almost because of their everydayness.

Playfully deadpan, beautifully staged, shocking and enigmatic in equal measure, Scenes for a conversation after viewing a Michael Haneke film offers 12 stories and multiple images as it oscillates calmly between contemporary literature, art and choreography.

Sleepwalk Collective (UK/ES)
Actress
Venue: Contact
Dates Thursday 16 July 19:30
Ticket: FLARE15 Double Bill – Thursday (£12 / £8)

“Why are you lying to me? Why are you lying to me? Why are you lying to me? Why are you lying to me? Why are you lying to me? Why are you lying to me? Why are you lying to me? Why are you lying to me? Why are you lying to me? Why are you lying to me? Why are you lying to me?”

Actress is a new show about language and voice and slips of the tongue – a reckless, noisy, lovesick plunge into the messy heart of how we speak, and why. Sleepwalk Collective is the award-winning live-art and experimental theatre group creating fragile, nocturnal performances between the UK and Spain.

Andy Smith (UK)
The Preston Bill (work in development)
Venue: Z-Arts / Royal Exchange Theatre
Dates Friday 17 July 14:00 / Saturday 18 July 18:30
Ticket: Future Flares – Work In Development (£5)

Award-winning theatre maker Andy Smith presents a work-in-progress showing of a new piece of theatre telling a story from the North. A story that considers some of the social-political shifts that have taken place over the past 80 years.

His most recent solo works include all that is solid melts into air and commonwealth. Since 2004 he has also collaborated with the writer and actor Tim Crouch, co-directing plays including An Oak Tree and The Author. In 2013 Tim and Andy co-wrote and performed what happens to the hope at the end of the evening together.

Tiana Hemlock-Yensen (AU/NL)
You are kind of like a hairy stranger I know
Venue: Contact
Dates Friday 17 July 19:30
Ticket: FLARE15 Triple Bill – Friday (£12 / £8)

Tiana is an Aussie maker who has been studying at the S.N.D.O. in Amsterdam. She’s curious how to get intimate with the world. And yes, you. What are the raw, honest places we find each other? Can we? What does it all taste like?

In N.Y.C she was dancing / making / curating, and had the pleasure to work with Alexandra Beller, Palissimo and is touring with Giulio D’Anna. Her work has been seen at Judson Church and toured in Spain. Tiana also writes, teaches and makes installations and costumes from recycled materials.

Tamar Blom and Kajetan Uranitsch (NL)
Body On
Venue: Contact
Dates Friday 17 July 19:30
Ticket: FLARE15 Triple Bill – Friday (£12 / £8)

Two performers in an empty space, in search for each other, looking for a way of allowing the other to be close, testing the limits of intimacy and pushing the boundaries of being together. Their bodies struggle with the space around and with each other in their most intimate reality: liquids, weight, smell, skin, touch.

Tamar Blom and Kajetan Uranitsch graduated from the Mime Department of the Amsterdam School of the Arts in 2014, a renowned department whose graduates include Jolika Sudermann and Schwalbe. Body On won the acclaimed ITs Parade Parel 2014, at the ITs Festival in Amsterdam.

Thomas Martin (UK)
Professional Supervision
Venue: Contact
Dates Friday 17 July 19:30
Ticket: FLARE15 Triple Bill – Friday (£12 / £8)

When I turned thirteen I became a completely different person… Not in the way you might think. This is a story about growing up. A story about bodies, and the stuff that’s inside them. It is about knowing that things will end badly, but pretending that they won’t. And, of course, it is a time-travelling coming-of-age spoken word murder mystery starring Johnny Knoxville from Jackass. With songs.

Thomas Martin makes up stories combining humour, visceral detail and cinematic scope. They are concerned with ideas of nostalgia, transgression and genre. Luke Novak is a musician, photographer and composer. Pick of the Week award winner; Nominated for Best Debut and Pick of the Year (VAULT Festival 2015).

Irreverent Sideshows (UK)
Duck and Cover / Reservoir Ducks
Venue: Z-Arts
Dates Sat 18 July, 20:00
Ticket: The Extraordinary Flare Party (£12 / £8)

Celebrate the end of FLARE15 with a party, International entertainment, cabaret, performance, food, drink and the chance to say goodbye to all our artists, volunteers and staff. Artists include Irreverent Sideshows’ Duck and Cover / Reservoir Ducks, as well as live music, DJ’s and guest performers.

Reservoir Ducks ruffles the feathers of Tarantino’s chauvinistic tipping scene (from his film Reservoir Dogs). Duck and Cover was inspired by the 1951 American Civil Defense movie of the same title.

Irreverent Sideshows creates short poetic exposés of socio-political issues, using hyperbolic imagery, popular cultural references, mask and mash-up text marinated in a rip-roaring soundscape.

Tickets available from www.flarefestival.com

What’s on where at Flare15?

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