SUIT YOURSELF MAGAZINE ONLINE | SY Meets…Mayfest

SY Meets…Mayfest

Bristol’s Festival of Contemporary Theatre running across the city between Friday 1st and Saturday 16th May 2009

2009 will see Mayfest hit Bristol for its 6th year and the festival is really starting to get comfortable in its shoes as Bristol’s showpiece event in the theatre calendar, as festival co-producer Matthew Austin explains; “Every year it feels more like it’s become a festival rather than just a collection of shows. When Mayfest started it was basically a month of work which you’d just watch and not engage with, whereas now it feels that you can come for a few days and really get involved and hang out at the festival.

“Last year it was a little bit scary because it was the first time we went across the city but the success of it proved that’s what needed to happen with the festival. We were tempted to change, questioning the need for a festival at all, thinking we might achieve more if we just organised and put on shows throughout the year but the reason that festivals work are that they allow people to come together and it really gives people that sense of celebration.”

2009’s festival will continue to be spread across all of the city’s larger theatre venues but this year notably welcomes back Bristol Old Vic to its ranks where the festival will be based along with the Mayfest Market – a space where every theatre company involved has been encouraged to have a stall to promote and show off their work in an open environment to the public, harking back to the days when the building was a fruit-and-veg market!

As usual, this year’s festival has an exciting mix of local, national and international companies performing some fantastic physical, visual and experimental theatre and while the amount of shows and companies is remaining the same, each show will run for 3 or 4 nights rather than in the strings of one-off performances that slightly hindered last year’s atmosphere. So for the first time there will be shows happening simultaneously in different venues, therefore asking a lot more of the general public and making Mayfest feel much more like a proper festival with all the trimmings; “Last year it felt like we didn’t have all the stuff around the outside to really make it a festival, but this year we’re having a big opening party with music and performances, there’s going to be more workshops, more artists meetings, more post-show discussions, regular blogs and more events and spectacles like the Mayfest Market - we want people to be able to go into the Bristol Old Vic at any time of the day and there’ll be something going on and to see inside.”