Wednesday 1st until Sunday 5th December 2010 @ Arnolfini and Other Venues, Bristol

Inbetween Time Festival 2010 is an adventurous, breakneck festival of performative intrigue taking over the streets, sites and arts spaces of Bristol this December. Live, dance, digital, music, architectural and sculptural works by 130 artists from as far a field as Mexico, Australia, Austria, Germany, Kurdistan, Belgium and the US will be pervading all across the city in venues such as The Cube, Circomedia, Wickham Theatre, Bristol Old Vic and Bridewell Island, with the festival’s hub being Arnolfini.

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Thursday 11th until Sunday 21st November 2010 @ Tobacco Factory Theatre, Bristol

In The Wild Party, we have a means to drink throughout the Alcohol Prohibition; it was a place where anything could happen.

Cigarettes alight with vigor, smoke filling the bar. It’s foggy in there with the allure of mystery and romance, accompanied by a smooth soundtrack. 1930s New York is a sultry and cool place to be. People are dry in their wit. Slinky Gatsby overindulgence skips next to Evelyn Waugh’s satirical novels, laughing at frivolity. It was in 1931 that Aldous Huxley wrote of a ruined, emotionless humanity in Brave New World, amongst pioneering architecture, gender politics and Fordism, but it was the stylish young people who were dominating the scene. London called this set; The Bright Young People. The characters in The Wild Party may be more underground than these high profile, elaborate shin-diggers but as The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School beautifully shows, they were no less glamorous, and never far from corruption.
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Tuesday 2nd until Saturday 13th November 2010 @ The Brewery, Tobacco Factory Theatre, Bristol

Crocosmia, a play by theatre company Little Bulb, is lightning fast, hysterically funny, exceptionally charming, superbly inventive and incredibly engrossing. It is also a play fundamentally about death and tragic loss. The Brackenburg children (10-year-old twins Finley and Sophia, and Freya, seven and three quarters) have prematurely lost their parents. As responsibly for their care is handed back and forth out of their control and understanding, the siblings retreat into a world of vivid imagination as they try to grasp who and where they are in the world and fill the hole in their lives left by their parents.

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Thursday 4th November 2010 @ Bristol Old Vic, Bristol

There has been a real buzz around the Bristol Old Vic over the last ten days and it’s all down to the fact that the theatre is currently hosting the second ever Bristol Jam, the UK’s only festival of improvised performance. Browsing the packed festival programme you will see a wealth of improvised performances from musicians, singers and actors but one show that always stood out was when the comedy masterminds of Jessica Hynes and Julia Davies were to put their heads together live on stage. Tonight is the night then and, as befitting two of the UK’s biggest cult stars (they are the brains behind hit offbeat comedy TV shows like Spaced and Nighty Night), the Bristol Old Vic is fit to burst. Everyone is here for some on-the-spot improvised character interaction as the twosome recreate their darkly comic radio show, Peppatits.

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Tuesday 12th until Saturday 23rd October 2010 @ Tobacco Factory Theatre, Bristol

Over the top and rather ridiculous is how some people would describe opera. With its bitter marmite taste, you either love it or hate it but to be honest, I’m rather torn between both sides. During Opera Project’s latest outing at the Tobacco Factory, La Traviata, the score mastered by the great Verdi was absolutely marvellous; a beautiful way of painting a sound-scape of a turbulent romance as the string section plucking their instruments with perfection. Violetta (Linda Richardson) is the leading lady and at the root of a loving yet problematic relationship with Alfredo (Dwayne Jones), a plumpish man who performs fabulously. His father does not condone their relationship due to the fact that Violetta’s sordid past is jeopardising his daughter’s marriage to a rich viscount. The drama prevails with the father’s unannounced interruption and meddling as he splits the couple up but only for a while as the melodrama seeks out in the final scene.
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Friday 1st until Sunday 3rd and Thursday 7th until Sunday 10th October 2010 @ Bridewell Island, Bristol

And so as the last flaming tightrope is extinguished, the final remnants of thick make-up are removed, and the doorway to the crypts are closed and padlocked, Bristol finally waves goodbye to Carny-Ville, the Invisible Circus and Artspace Lifespace at Bridewell Island. It’s been a drawn-out and emotional farewell but now this is surely it. The arts initiative who tour the city inhabiting semi-derelict spaces, rejuvenating and managing them as active creation centres while throwing some of the best god damn parties Bristol has ever seen, even for them time is up.

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Thursday 30th September until Saturday 23rd October 2010 @ Bristol Old Vic, Bristol

After the sell-out success of Uncle Vanya in November 2009, excellent local theatre company Shakespeare At The Tobacco Factory return to the Bristol Old Vic for another Autumn retelling of an old classic. This time around it’s French visionary Molière and his comic masterpiece, The Misanthrope. All the action takes place on the top floor of a Parisian flat owned by Célimène and Alceste. Célimène is the greatest socialite in Paris, throwing constant parties and craving attention while Alceste, a successful writer, is harbouring a general contempt for all the insecure and incredulous people around him and seeks solitude; Alceste is The Misanthrope.
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Tuesday 5th until Saturday 23rd October 2010 @ The Brewery, Tobacco Factory Theatre, Bristol

It’s the early 30s and America is in the throes of the Great Depression. Two chain smoking criminals, Bonnie and Clyde are causing chaos throughout the West. You’ve probably heard of them - so dangerous, so thrilling, so romantic! The media revels in their crimes and fabricates their written portrayals with showers of flamboyance, but what about the actual people and the relationship between Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow?

When one of their many showdowns are over and they’re shooting back in their car to their hiding place, dust spewing from the thick tyres, wind flying all the way through them and their adrenalin singing in their veins, how is it possible to come down to a reality? From chaotic robberies to corn fields and whiskey with just each other for comfort, does the romance and passion push through the brewing resentment and the deep down wish for normality and a traditional life? Bonnie And Clyde by local theatre company Fairground, beautifully depicts a world where violence, humour, passion, frustration and tinned food rules. So alone - it’s a desert out there and no one’s gonna help ya.
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Tuesday 28th September until Saturday 2nd October 2010 @ Bristol Old Vic, Bristol

A society’s culture is defined by its edges, boundaries and borders; where the line is drawn; what is acceptable and what isn’t. How far can these borders be breached and how far can you step over the line before it becomes unacceptable is the uncomfortable question The Author asks its audience.

The staging of this play is very interesting. The audience sit on two banks of seating that dominate the room facing each other with barely a metre between knees at the front. The show’s characters sit amongst us as if they were paying punters themselves - presenting themselves as real people as they explore these very real issues. The characters are part of a theatre company who are talking about a provocative play that they have recently worked on. We explore how they felt being part of a production that dealt with a subject that was very close to the bone and in doing so, we not only explore their tolerance levels, but our own.
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Friday 24th until Sunday 26th September 2010 @ The Amphitheatre, Bristol

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