“To keep you safe” becomes a haunting mantra over the course of A Machine They’re Secretly Building – and with good cause.
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Scorch
‘Gender fraud’ has become a buzzword amongst UK tabloids in recent years. A high-profile example is Kyran Lee: a transgender man convincted in 2014 of one count of sexual assault by penetration on the basis of “gender fraud”. Scorch, by Prime Cut Productions, follows a story in a similar vein.
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The Vagina Dialogues
It is difficult to think of the new play The Vagina Dialogues without associating it with Eve Ensler’s famous The Vagina Monologues in 1996. But that is not to say that this production piggybacks off Eve Ensler – instead, it gives us a well-needed update on feminist dialogue.
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Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Medicine
We all know and love Roald Dahl. If you’ve read George’s Marvellous Medicine, or any of his books for that matter, you’ll know that Dahl wrote from his own experiences. In fact, he created some marvellous medicine of his own.
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Education, Education, Education
It’s May 1997. Tony Blair has won the general election and Katrina and the Waves have won Eurovision. We become witness to a typical day at Wordsworth Comprehensive. Things are about to get so much better, right?
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Siri
Siri by La Messe Basse is a one-woman show that isn’t a one woman show. Canadian actress Laurence Dauphinais is assisted by Siri, in the default female voice (for Canadian English, in Scotland the male voice is default).
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Arm – Mireille and Mathieu
Mireille and Mathieu bill themselves as puppeteers – but what they do is closer to two large, enthusiastic kids playing with action figures than it is to any puppetry you may have seen before. No traditional puppets are used in Arm – the duo instead favour a plethora of kids’ toys and flea-market objects. It seems as…
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Escape For Dummies
“Store closing in fifteen minutes. All security to level one.” A standard shop floor…except the mannequins come alive.
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Whalebone
Whalebone begins with a simple visual metaphor: a bright red folding umbrella is tightly secured round its middle by a Velcro strip. It pushes against the fastening, but ultimately is constrained. It’s a simple yet striking motif that will underpin the rest of the play – a play about bodies, and the space that they…
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Boris and Sergey’s One Man Extravaganza
Boris and Sergey are one of the top comedy double acts of the festival. They’re a classic combination: Sergey the older, smarter, scheming brother; Boris the younger, hot-headed, and eager one.
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