Here’s Sef Townsend, Shamim Azad and Paul Burgess in the Family Tent. It’s such an amazing festival, we had a great time, and we feel privileged to be a part of it!
We’ve just seen some lovely photos from Day Two of the Festival of Communities at Queen Mary… Here’s one:
And you can see the rest here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/festivalofcommunities/albums/72157694312686732/page2
Yes, it’s tomorrow, May 6th at the lovely Poplar Union! For best results (and free entry) come to the tea party first, hang out with the team, and maybe create some new material for the show. But of course you can just come to the show too.
The E5 Roasthouse cafe, which is part of the venue, is great by the way. And naturally there’ll be time for a spot of luncheon between the workshop and the show.
“OK”, you say, “that all sounds lovely but, in this uncertain and ever-changing world, I need facts and detail.” Well, here you go:
More info and booking (no need to book for the tea party)
How to get to the venue (it’s easy)
Facebook event (because nothing is real unless it’s on Facebook, right?)
The E5 Roasthouse (great food and drink and supporting refugees)
Unsure about about what you’re letting yourself in for? Read about how we work with our audiences.
And if you have any more questions, you can of course just ask!
After an amazing few months, with a commission from Ovalhouse, followed by performances at Brixton City Festival, and then a residency at Queen Mary uni to develop ways to work with locals to create a bespoke version of the show in each place we visit, here we are, running the whole thing, tea party and all, for the public, for the first time, on our home ground of Tower Hamlets.
And breathe.
Frankly, we couldn’t be more excited.
Booking and info here: https://poplarunion.com/event/gerrard-winstanleys-true-and-righteous-mobile-incitement/
Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/2094865110749439/
Our official Mobile Incitement residency at Queen Mary uni is over, though we’ll be working with Ali Campbell and some of his students again after Easter as we share the work at Poplar Union and possibly also back on campus. We had a great time, and the student ‘think tank’ has given us loads of great ideas, which we’ll be digesting and testing over the coming months, as we and The Black Smock Band plot how to take our revolution nationwide!
Big thanks to Ali and his students, to everyone at QMUL that helped make it happen, to our lovely audience yesterday, to the various organisations who’ve supported us so far, not least Ovalhouse, and all the generous community members who came to our tea parties and shared their stories and their wisdom!
Photos from the final sharing: credit Ali Getz
In the pics: Rhiannon Kelly, Sarah Jeanpierre, Dan Cox, Andy Bannister and Paul Burgess
Following our residency at Queen Mary University of London, we’ll be sharing our Tower-Hamlets-specific version of Gerrard Winstanley’s True and Righteous Mobile Incitement Unit both on campus (22nd March) and at Poplar Union (6th May), a great new venue in the borough.
Supported by Queen Mary and produced in partnership with Rua Arts, Mobile Incitement brings together songs and texts from 600 years of English rebelliousness, along with new material from the band, new writing by Alex Swift and the cast, material from East London residents, and the Mobile Incitement Unit itself – a portable installation by Andrew Bannister.
This is part of an ongoing project, initially a commission from Ovalhouse, in which we and The Black Smock Band join forces with local people (and of course the C17th radical Gerrard Winstanley) to create a series of uniquely local gig-theatre performances, retelling England’s neglected history of protest and dissent, and, in each place we visit, asking what it all means to people today.
We’ve been working at Queen Mary with theatre-maker Ali Campbell and some of his students to develop democratic, open ways to shape the piece so it reflects their concerns of local people, and their sense of history, as well giving us a chance to hear their stories. Since we imagine there can be no revolution without tea – at least not in England – we’re doing this through a series of tea parties. (Big thanks to Magic Me for helping us connect with people in the Tower Hamlets area!) If you’re coming to the Poplar Union performance, we’d like to invite you to come to the last of the current series of parties and share your thoughts on East London life, along with optional placard-making and protest-song writing.
22nd March, 3pm at Arts One, on Queen Mary’s Mile End campus. There’s a Facebook event here. It’s free but you need to reserve your place in advance via Ticketsource here.
6th May, at Poplar Union. Info and booking here. There’s a tea party at 1pm and a performance at 3pm. There’s a small fee for the performance, but it’s free if you come for the tea party and help us create a bespoke, local version of the performance. There’s also a Facebook event here.
We hope to see you there! We’re especially excited to be doing this piece in our home borough of Tower Hamlets, surely one of the most rebellious and dissenting areas of the country. It’s going to be special!
We’re so pleased to have been a part of this year’s A Season of Bangla Drama. It was a fantastic month and, as ever, proved that art can be open and inclusive at the same time as being ambitious.
Here are some photos by Rehan Jamil of our East storytelling performance at Rich Mix London, which we produced in association with BSK.
You can see the whole album of photos from the rest of the season here.
As Kinetika’s incredible Silk River project moves on to Greenwich, here’s a blog about yesterday’s events, for which we advised on music and facilitated the involvement of The Black Smock Band. The band supported young people from A Team Arts in their street performances as the Silk River walk passed through Tower Hamlets.
Here’s a photo of the band in action (credit Payam Torabi).
We’re excited to be part of Kinetica’s Silk River Project, linking the Thames with the Hooghly River in India in an international celebration of the silk trade. We’ll working with our regular collaborators The Black Smock Band to support young people from Tower Hamlets’ A Team Arts with street performances as the project passes through the borough tomorrow.
More info below…