Lisa Wolfe dives in to Out There International Festival of Outdoor Arts and Circus 2025 – and emerges refreshed…

It’s disgraceful. Thirty-five years in the industry and this is my first visit to the mighty Out There Festival. Better late than never. The reasons for making it this year are threefold: I’m producing an outdoor theatre piece (Holy Dirt, premiering in July) and need a break from spreadsheets; it’s FRESH Street, Circostrada’s International Conference for the Development of Outdoor Arts, so I can meet and mingle with experts; and as a ‘mature’ emerging artist on a funded programme of creative exploration, it’s a chance to watch, listen and learn.

Having not been to Great Yarmouth since I was a nipper, I first need to get acquainted with this quintessentially English seaside town in the unexpected heat of late May. The strip of arcades, exotically named Caesars Palace and The Flamingo, is just like Southend where I grew up. I immediately feel at home. Time to metaphorically dive in, the sea here being notoriously shallow.

The seafront is one of the key Out There Festival locations, this year home to Beach of Dreams, where 800 colourful silk banners are blowing boldly. The flags have been created as part of a multi-artform project, with Great Yarmouth as one of three East Coast Coastal Heritage sites engaged in an exploration of the role that the shifting coastline plays in shaping our collective dreams. This collaborative story-gathering project, funded by Historic England, invited participants to work with artists to explore the unique coastal histories that have shaped these places. Gathered stories were translated into silk pennant designs, created with Kinetika, expert silk flag-makers and pioneers of community-driven art and design. Great Yarmouth was the final location of Kinetika’s May tour.

The Beach of Dreams also features a performance stage, tents for discussions, a pop-up bar, and a huge bamboo climbing frame to give bold young climbers a taste of circus.

On the stage, Bristol’s Many Hands Circus are just finishing their ambitious new show Obscure Desires. Touring this year mainly to indoor venues, it looks great against the sea and broad expanse of Yarmouth sky. The large troupe with a live three-piece band give athletic performances of gymnastic acrobatics in high wind. Impressive.

It’s also here, on the steps behind Costa, where I gamely join a small group holding dainty umbrellas to meet Jones and Barnard, well-seasoned street performers, merciless in their approbation of late-arriving Fresh Street delegates. Gareth Jones and Matt Barnard are familiar faces to Out There Festival regulars and hotly tipped by my enthusiastic landlady who shares her in depth knowledge of the programme each morning at breakfast. This is only the second outing of their new show Dream Tours, a ‘Made in Great Yarmouth’ Out There Festival Commission.

Eventually assembled, holding small paper bags in which we’ve poured some sand, we set off. Entertainingly led, and learning an umbrella dance, we amble through back streets where dreams come to die (a boarded-up hotel) and dirty dreams get washed (the launderette) before settling on a rather scrubby patch of green with a billowing curtain and a gong. 

Gong duly banged, a cast of actors and local participants welcome us, in roles ranging from Insomnia – Paschale Straiton at her eccentric best – to an Astrologer who reveals dreams’ meanings; and two cloaked figures who will swallow your dreams, provided you can blow up a black balloon. It’s up to the visitor to engage with these individuals one-to-one, hence some standing about or hesitancy from those less keen to engage, and a little more guidance would be useful here. When we do get to meet the Sandman in his tented enclosure for a tale and a task, we’re amply rewarded before the journey recommences.

On the stage of the marvellous Hippodrome, we help fulfil someone’s life-long dream through the power of song and dance, umbrellas whirling in joyful unison, then it’s back into town for the grand finale. 

Interspersed with Jones and Barnard’s site-related patter we’ve been hearing recordings of local peoples’ dreams, real or invented, and it’s on a back street that one of these is realised big-time by the whole cast. The invention and fun of this final set-piece perfectly captures the strangeness of dreams and the joy of the seaside in summer. It’s childishly stupid, and stupidly thrilling. 

The beach is also the starting point for a very different approach to street theatre – Kamchatka by Kamchatka, a company formed in Barcelona that’s been working site-specifically with migrant communities since 2006. 

Suddenly everyone is looking east. On the glimmering sand, a horizontal line of drably-clad people, small suitcases in hand, is moving towards us. Their steps hesitant, equally spaced, slowly paced. We are as silent as they, breath held. It’s a heart-stopping and poignant opening to a work as this beautifully framed image slowly comes into focus. They are six men and two women; they don’t speak but seem to intuit each other’s thoughts as with elegant motion and quizzical glances they approach a flimsy barrier.

With an uncanny mix of curiosity and determination the group coerces the audience to do its bidding; they’re at a border, can we help them cross it? Communication is by look, gesture and physical action choreographic in sweep. Lift the pram over the rope? With the baby in it? Of course. Whilst working seamlessly together they are very much individual characters, Prisca Villa earthy and playful, Andrea Lorenzetti, aloof and business-like. The differences become more notable when the action moves to the street and games begin. Suitcases are piled and tipped, an audience member is lifted and caught in a bravura show of trust. 

Moving like a flash-mob they are eight humans audaciously stopping traffic, hijacking the Dotto train, climbing up a bus, being abused by drivers on the busy road. They are seeking our help, searching for loved ones, for a way in or a way out. You feel that wherever this piece is performed, the themes of difference and integration will impact strongly on its watchers, and the laughter, of which there will be plenty, tinged with melancholy at the mess we’re in.  

Moving in-land to the town centre, a large wrist-banded crowd is gathered at the Market Place. The air thrums with anticipation. Help! Three deranged looking clowns, faces daubed with colour, clothes a mix of battered jackets, shapeless trousers, and one filthy ruff, are upon us, pushing through backpacks, bashing one another and generally causing a ruckus. They are not happy fellows. It seems we may be witnesses to something  – better follow them, and quick!

So starts Catalan circus and street theatre veterans Los Galindos’ extraordinary and unforgettable show MDR – Death From Laughter, a UK Premiere. “No photos! No film,” barks Marcel Escolano’s fierce, wild-haired Rossinyol, self-proclaimed troupe leader, bristling with nervous rage. We’re in a secret, illegal space, there’s been a death and is about to be another, so we need to keep this to ourselves. From uncomfortable perches on upturned buckets, the audience reluctantly conforms.

Yet what a wonderfully visual show this would be to capture, the pure effervescent creativity of it as, on a set that looks thrown together from scaffolding poles and planks, workaday objects transform into weapons, power tools go ape, a portaloo comes alive, and a scene of increasingly messy chaos unfolds.

Poor Melon (Gabriel Agosti) has made a joke so funny that someone died laughing, so in clown logic he must be executed in return. How to kill him is the meat of the story, the set and props creating a perilous playground for director Bet Garrell to exploit in increasingly transgressive ways. 

Mardi, here called Tuesday (a fearless Anicet Leon, or possibly Buster Keaton reincarnated) flip-flops from helping or hindering this murder to happen. The trio has a wickedly insincere dynamic; in love one minute, loathing with vengeance the next. 

With split-second acrobatics, gasp-inducing falls, and seemingly scant concern for audience or their own safety, MDR is an ingenious masterpiece that pushes all your buttons simultaneously: joy, fear, disgust and delight. Tell all your friends – no, don’t!

From an urban site to a park now, St George’s, buzzing with shows and food stalls, Paka The Uncredible’s fire dragon Elsie, side-shows and walkabouts. It’s here I bumped into the delightful oddity Pushmi-Pullyu, by stalwarts of the comedic walkabout scene, Cocoloco, the concept lifted from Dr Doolittle, and here entrancing and baffling passers-by with their existential conversation from both ends of a furry grey lama. Fun is had persuading kids to sit on their rump or join a tug-of-war which would split them in two. The chemistry between Helen Statman and Trevor Stuart and their playful, intelligent banter comes from years of working as a double act; this show connects them even more strongly, right through their fluffy middles.

One of several steel-deck rigs in the park hosts French duo Alta Gama’s ‘minimal circus’ show Mentir Lo Minimo, a UK premiere.

It’s not until half-way through that performer Alejo Gomboa makes the big reveal. We’ll have admired his agility at riding a bicycle in a continuous circle. At how Amanda Delgado climbs his and the bike’s frame in intricate, elegant ways. How the motion of their bodies and the wheels seem in unison with each other, backed by Pere Vilaplana’s French-tinged music and Delgado’s live singing, operatic in range. 

What the audience, sitting up close, some on the stage itself, are not expecting is for Gomboa to out himself as, to quote travel writer Tom Vernon, a ‘Fat Man On A Bicycle’. He’s a man who unabashedly loves to eat.

Alejo Gomboa’s large size, and the childhood physical disability that Amanda Delgado has overcome, add a very human dimension to a work that keeps tightly to its format – a journey of circles and balances, suspension and release. There’s humour too: Gomboa is in his pants after all, and he’s a happy man both within his frame and steering one.

A feast of a show.

Feeling peckish yourself? Pif-Paf’s Toast could be just the show to catch. As portable stage sets go, theirs is a beauty. A gayly painted wagon, all wicker baskets and travelling rugs, doubles as a makeshift kitchen and musical box. This sung and spoken show comprises stories collected by performer and company founder Pete Gunson from his hometown of Sheffield. Folks’ tales cross boundaries and Toast is all embracing, generously serving Cypriot dumplings doused with honey and cinnamon. A lovely sounding, smelling, looking (the costumes have proper attention to period detail) and tasting show –there should be one on every street corner.  

Down from the park on a further expanse of greenery is another ‘Made in Great Yarmouth’ commission. It’s pleasing to see a splatter of contemporary dance in Tony and Ray Find Their Feet by Rudkin and Hicks, Matt Rudkin’s Naïve Dance Masterclass being an all-time favourite. Who wouldn’t rather be dancing than cleaning the stage? Presented in long and short versions at pitches all over town, the pair’s distinctive style – Hicks deadpan, Rudkin expressive – works the crowd as our two luckless caretakers go about their job. With slapstick, magic and visual jokes it’s a lovely, gentle throwback to the best of music-hall double-acts, and sends me dancing home.

Featured image (top) Beach of Dreams at Out There Festival 2025. Photo James Bass

Freelance producer and Total Theatre writer Lisa Wolfe attended Out There Festival and FRESH Street conference in Great Yarmouth, 28–30 May 2025. 

Out There Arts produce the annual Out There International Festival of Street Arts & Circus – now in its 17th year and one of the three largest free Outdoor Arts festivals in the UK – with 30-50+ artistic companies and audiences of 60,000+.

Out There Arts – National Centre for Outdoor Arts & Circus is a registered charity and Arts Council England funded National Portfolio Organisation.

www.outtherearts.org.uk  

FRESH STREET is a flagship conference for the outdoor arts and circus sector, held every two years, bringing together key European and international artists, programmers, and policymakers for three days of dynamic discussions and stimulating exchanges on how we can imagine the outdoor arts of tomorrow.

 FRESH STREET#5 was co-organised by Circostrada Network and Out There Arts in the frame of Out There Festival, in partnership with Outdoor Arts UK. It took place 28–31 May 2025 at The Hippodrome, England’s only surviving dedicated circus building.

https://www.circostrada.org/en/actions/fresh-street-5

Holy Dirt, a new collaboration between Vidya Thirunarayan (Indian dancer and potter) and David Glass (theatre maker and director) premieres at Ensemble Festival, London 26 and 27 July 2025.

A miniature epic dream play embodying the spirits of Parashakti (Vidya) and Draupadi (Sasha Krohn), Holy Dirt brings together street performance traditions of Southern India and European physical theatre. Co-commissioned by Certain Blacks and Art Asia, supported by Arts Council England and 101 Outdoor Arts Creation Centre, co-produced with InKo Centre (India). https://www.vidyathirunarayan.com/holy-dirt

Available for UK booking in 2026. Contact producer Lisa Wolfe on wolfework2@gmail.com 

Hold on to your hats, we have lift-off. The seventeenth edition of the Out There International Festival of Outdoor Arts and Circus runs 28th to 31st May 2025 – and  it is the biggest yet. Dorothy Max Prior previews this year’s bumper edition

‘Out There Festival 2025 is especially significant in terms of international partnership, across Europe and beyond,’ says the Festival’s artistic director Joe Mackintosh, noting that this year’s bumper event will also play host to FRESH street – an international conference on street arts hosted in collaboration with Circostrada. 

‘And that’s why we’ve put our heads on the block and found every penny we can to make it the best programme possible!’ 

In fact, this year’s line-up will make it the biggest outdoor arts programme every seen in the UK, with 60 companies taking part – 17 international companies, 18 world or UK premieres, and more than 150 performances, events and artworks, engaging over 50,000 people. Not bad for a small town in one of the most deprived areas in England…

Like Stockton International Riverside Festival, also set in a deprived working-class town, Out There has proved that you can develop and nurture audiences for inspirational circus and outdoor arts work – and that you can instigate inspirational community-based programmes that are not only inclusive but maintain high artistic standards.

Inclusion and participation have always been crucial elements of Out There Festival in Great Yarmouth. Long, long before Arts Council England came up with their Let’s Create! mandate, Out There were – well, out there, doing it. The Festival programme has always balanced out presenting accessible circus and outdoor arts shows that please the local audience with the best of national and international work on the circuit. And indeed, most of the work presented does both of those things at once! 

Much of the Festival’s success lies in the fact that Out There is far more than a week-long festival: it is a year-round organisation, based at the Drill House in Great Yarmouth, which hosts a rolling programme of residencies, a youth circus school, community classes, and events of all sorts; and engages approximately 110,000 individuals, including 4,000 school children, each year. The relationship with local schools being one reason for last year moving the Festival to May half-term week, allowing for a programme of engagement with schools to take place in the lead-up.

Executive director Veronica Stephens stresses the importance of what she calls ‘place making’, and says that elements of participation are at the heart of much of the work presented – which could mean participation in the moment, in the classic street theatre sense of audience interaction; or could mean engagement before the show, community ‘takeovers’ or communities involved in co-creating the content of the work with artists.

Veronica flags up Kinetika’s Beach of Dreams as an example of a wonderful community project with high artistic standards.

For this multi-artform project, Out There in Great Yarmouth are one of three East Coast Coastal Heritage sites (the others are Harwich and Orford Ness) engaged in an exploration of the role that the shifting coastline plays in shaping our collective dreams. We are invited to ‘embark on a journey through the stories, creativity, and heritage that define the communities of three unique locations’.

This collaborative story-gathering project, funded by Historic England, invites participants to work with artists to explore the unique coastal histories that have shaped these places. The project – developed and directed by writer Belona Greenwood and digital artist and film-maker Mark Hannant – forges connections across generations, amplifying voices that reflect the deep, evolving relationship between people and the ever-changing coast. 

Those stories will be translated into silk pennant designs and digital content – inspiring written work, drawing, and photographs created by a team of artists. The pennants will form part of the Beach of Dreams national commission and will be displayed during events and walks from 28 to 30 May, as part of Out There Festival.

The flags will be created in collaboration with Kinetika, expert silk flag-makers and pioneers of community-driven art and design. There will also be the Kinetika Bloco – an exuberant mix of young brass and woodwind players, drummers, steel pan players, and dancers all in costume – which, on Friday 30th May at at 4pm, will lead a procession from the Drill House down to the Beach of Dreams Village, where over 800 flags will be displayed.

This Beach Village will also host a number of other shows, and a Climate Cafe which will be a hub for talks, meetings and informal discussions. There are three different projects that use bamboo – a highly sustainable material – sited at The Beach Village. NoFit State Circus will present their show – called Bamboo, appropriately enough – on Friday 30th and Saturday 31st – a spectacular high-impact, highly-skilled outdoor circus production using only bamboo and human bodies, revealing the fragility and beauty of our interconnected and interdependent life on this planet.

Then, there are two installations happening throughout the Festival: Bamboology’s Bamboo Playground and  Compagnie Moso’s Morphosis, which they describe as ‘the participatory construction of a climbing archi-structure made of bamboo’. It uses hundreds of selected bamboo canes on legs; the bamboo cut and prepared for maximum resistance, with the addition of reused bicycle inner tubes for assembly.

The Beach Village will also host the Young Out There (YOT) stage for budding musicians; the ever-popular African Choir of Norwich; and Joli Vyann, who present Drop Me If You Dare, an exhilarating dance and acrobatic duet about the connection between two people, exploring the elements of strength and submission, weakness and control, within their relationship.

Another exciting development for this year’s Out There Festival is the first ever show to be presented in the newly renovated Ice House. In Solarte Producciones’ Siku, Swiss/Catalan artist Jessica Arpin Olar will take us on on a journey through the Arctic of yesteryear, inviting us to ‘relive the age of polar exploration through the first woman to reach the North Pole by bicycle’. We are promised aerial and ground acrobatics, featuring a hanging Chinese pole; daring bicycle tricks; and a circus polar bear!

Siku is one of five shows in the Festival that are part of a Catalan focus (Out There have a longstanding relationship with Catalonian artists and companies, many of whom have appeared at the Festival over the years).

Another is Miss Margarita, which like Siku is presented by Solarte Producciones – this time outdoors, in the Market Place area, which was off-limits for the Festival for a year or two due to building works, but now restored.   

Then, here’s the legendary street theatre show Kamchàtka, which gives us eight characters lost in the city, each carrying their own suitcase. Who could they be? The game they play ‘is so subtle it could be mistaken for reality’. It is precisely there on this borderline between everyday life and performance where a space for dialogue opens, as the spectator becomes an active part of the exchange and the experimentation. Kamchàtka eventually turns into a mirror; a mirror of our behaviour towards ‘the Other, the Foreign, the Different’. It is a show that has become ever more relevant with the passing of the years, in these days of obsession with and fear around difference…

Los Galindos give us MDR (Mort de Rire) aka Death from Laughter, described as ‘a farce to disturb and entertain’. From the write-up, I’m presuming elements of Dark Clown or even Bouffon take the upper hand: ‘Melon, Mardi and Rossinyol face an unexpected conflict. Their untamed and clumsy nature and the need to exist take them to an improbable show, where they freely explore any atrocity. This hilarious and terrifying experience transmits the story of a truthful and rough friendship, caused by a sense of responsibility and of guilt. An improbable crime, a suspicious trial and an absurd punishment. As a paradox, they might cause the desire to die from laughter.’

This is presented at St Nicolas’s School and is one of a number of ticketed indoor shows that are part of the programme:

“We’re expanding the ticketed indoor part of the programme,’ says Joe, ‘but the free outdoor programme remains at the heart of the Festival’.

Also indoors, this time at St George’s Theatre, is the fifth Catalan show, La Mecànica – A Teen Odyssey which is described as ‘an immersive theatre experience, blending live physical performance and digital technology to exploring themes of personal identity, intergenerational connection, and how we find our tribes. The innovative Kalliôpé app uses the audience’s mobile phones as the catalyst for interaction’.

Another thread running through this year’s programme is the number of shows by female-led companies.

Big Wolf Company’s Three Sisters is a performance that talks about the great women of the Baltic countries – highlighting their tenderness and strength. The team researched old Baltic traditions about marriage, women’s roles in the home, what type of a woman was desired in olden times and how that has changed (or not!) in modern times. The show uses dance and the aerial disciplines of hammock and hoop, combined with witty comedy and sharp social criticism.

Then, there’s Cia Jimena Cavalletti with B.O.B.A.S. which Joe describes as ‘three very, very good female clowns’.

The title is an acronym for ‘Beneficial Orchestral Band for Sepulchral Acts’; and the theatrical device is that they are a humble musical band that organises burial ceremonies; but on this occasion the priest and the deceased person haven’t arrived. During the wait ‘discomfort and disaster ensues as the three musicians spiral out of control in catastrophic and hilarious ways’. Street theatre shows that incorporate a mock funeral are always a winner, in my experience!

ElevateHer, by Daughters of the Dust, reveals female struggles and strengths, as played out on three multi-height tight-wire rigs. Redefining traditional tight-wire walking, the cast share their stories and experiences through circus, physical theatre and spoken word. We are promised ‘unapologetic joy, defiance, beauty and strength’.

Another all-female company, La Triochka, comprises three artists of different ages. Their show, TopDown, ‘questions roles, the places we take with us and the places we leave behind’ and talks about ‘the relations of domination and submission in the social field, whether at work or in everyday life’.

There is also perennial favourite Dulce Duca with Um Belo Dia: ‘a dreamlike, metaphoric and surrealistic piece’, using physical theatre, dance, live music, and – of course – the every-which-way juggling and balancing of clubs.

It would seem that dreams are another thread running through the programme. Not just Duca, The Beach of Dreams and Jones & Barnard’s Dream Tours, but also Hocus Pocus Theatre and their Dream Machine, a rove-about show featuring a quadracycle. Here’s what they are offering: ‘The Dream Team have been collecting and sorting all kinds of dreams, ready for their rounds. A positive postal service that promises to deliver a smile to your face and some hope to your heart’.

The big evening show of the Festival, presented on Friday 30th and Sat 31st at 9pm, is AIthentic by Gorilla Circus, a British company that has been consistently nurtured and supported over recent years by Out There Arts. Gorilla Circus are one of a number of UK companies who have been consistently commissioned and programmed by the Festival over the years, with others including local favourites Cocoloco who are also returning to Yarmouth for the 2025 line-up.

Talking of AIthentic, Joe says: ‘It’s a co-commission – building on our relationship with the company, in which community participation is a key element.’

The show invites us to explore what we want our relationship with technology to be, and how we could achieve that. It’s a collaboration between Gorilla Circus, When Time was New, and Citrus Arts and merges circus, street dance and technology.

Other British companies featured in the Festival include one of longest established and best in the business, Avanti Display, with a new show called Crow.

Taking the form of a music concert, Crow begins at twilight, with three musicians arriving for a gig. As the light fades, the atmosphere begins to change. An inventive music score is interrupted by ridiculous acts of conjuring – more Tommy Cooper than David Blane. Reality seems to warp. When full darkness falls, sleight of hand and video projection expand this comic and curious world, suggesting ideas both profound and absurd.

The show, conceived by Avanti’s Bill Palmer, was created in collaboration with many legendary names in UK street arts, including Lou Glanfield of IOU and Mark Long from People Show, with performers including Chris Squire and Pascale Straiton.

Another exciting new UK show is CODE, Justice in Motion’s urban odyssey into county lines and knife crime, described as ‘an electrifying blend of physical theatre, parkour, trials bike stunts, and live rap music’. Set on an urban playground, this production thrusts audiences into the raw realities faced by young people exploited by organised drug crime gangs.

Then there is Truth! – a collaboration between Ramshacklicious and Hijinx – a roving outdoor performance by a five-strong ensemble of playful troublemakers. It is, we are told, ‘a Dadaist take on a brighter future; a gentle call to action, a quiet rebellion’.

The British contingent also includes favourites such as The Bureau of Silly Ideas (BOSI) and Matthew Harrison – local boy made good – with his Actual Reality Arcade.

Also raising the flag for Old Blighty comes Jones & Barnard and their Dream Tours – a walking tour of ‘sensation-stocked’ Great Yarmouth that ‘brings local people’s dreams to life’. The tour will feature the famous seaside attractions of the town alongside lesser-known backstreet places and reimagine them with live performance. The show builds on the success of last year’s Golden Tours, also a promenade show.

 ‘Despite their immense experience in the sector, this is the first time ever Jones & Barnard have received Arts Council England funding,’ says Joe, saying that they were commissioned to work with local communities in Yarmouth about their dreams and memories of the town, material which is then incorporated into the show.

‘Community participation is a big emphasis in this edition of the Festival,’ says Joe, pointing out that some of this is in unexpected ways  – Siku, for example, was devised after research with Canadian Inuit communities living in the Arctic.

Closer to home, Veronica adds that a lot of Out There work that has been created with local communities  and through collaborations with the Creative People and Places programme, Freshly Greated.

She cites as an example Up Our Street which will take over St Peter’s Plain, right outside Out There’s headquarters and Festival hub, the  Drill House. 

Veronica tells me that this project is a result of a programme of year-round engagement and consultation with the local community. ‘It’s part of a longer programme of urban transformation of streets, and focuses on community-led pop-up art-making and participation’.

 From midday each day of the Festival, the St Peter’s Plain will be filled with sand, deck chairs, and plants – and decorated by its residents and their neighbours to make it a brighter and livelier place. The street will be jam-packed with workshops, activities and performances for everyone to get involved in.

As for the rest of the programme, Joe tells me that there is no Party in the Park as such this year, with a music stage moved down to the Beach of Dreams Village. Instead, the park will become a mini fire-garden, with Out There’s very own Eyeful Tower and Sonic Weeds  alongside pyrotechnic maestros such as Paka the Uncredible and Eddie Egal giving us fire-dragons, snakes and a giant baboon! 

 As if that all wasn’t enough to be programming and producing, Out There 2025 will also play host to the FRESH international conference, co-created with Circostrada, Europe’s leading outdoor arts and circus organisation.

‘Out There was built on EU project funding, long before we became an Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation,’ says Joe. ‘Now, we are an international gateway: we have around 350 delegates from all over the world coming to FRESH, including most of Europe, Mexico, Senegal, Japan, South Africa, Canada, and India – five continents represented!’

Keynote speakers and contributors include director Vicki Dela Amedume of Upswing and The Albany; Ali Pretty of Kinetika; and musician, artist and activist Brian Eno, wearing his Hard Art (hard) hat.  

Some of the questions the conference will be addressing include:

Is the outdoor arts as a force for alternative ways of living and thinking dead? What does ‘community-led’ and ‘community co-created’ mean? What will the planet look like in the next 25 years? How will we respond to the future as artists, organisations and places? And how do we take back more of the public space for the public?

All of this will be explored in the fabulous environment that is The Hippodrome, the UK’s oldest and only surviving purpose-built circus venue. 

At a point in time when politicians are describing us as an ‘island of strangers’ it feels vital that international events of this sort are taking place – a space for the exchange of ideas and the generation of new relationships across borders.

And it feels important that it is happening in Great Yarmouth, as part of a festival dedicated to free and accessible art for all; rather than in an elite space in a chic metropolitan milieu. 

Out There International Festival of Outdoor Arts & Circus gives us its biggest-ever event this year and is offering something for everyone.

‘Dream on’ is the key message. Together we can be the change we want to see in the world – with artists taking the lead. 

Featured image (top): Circus Piddly featuring Sam Goodburn.

Out There Arts produce the annual Out There International Festival of Street Arts & Circus – now in its 17th year and one of the three largest free Outdoor Arts festivals in the UK – with 30-50+ artistic companies and audiences of 60,000+.

Out There Arts – National Centre for Outdoor Arts & Circus is a registered charity and Arts Council England funded National Portfolio Organisation.

www.outtherearts.org.uk 

FRESH STREET is to be hosted in the UK for the first and only time as part of the 2025 Out There International Festival of Outdoor Arts and Circus. Mark your calendars for May 28-29-30-31, 2025

An important and flagship conference for the outdoor arts and circus sector, FRESH will bring together key European and international artists, programmers, and policymakers for three days of dynamic discussions and stimulating exchanges on how we can imagine the outdoor arts of tomorrow.

FRESH STREET#5 is co-organised by Circostrada Network and Out There Arts in the frame of Out There Festival, in partnership with Outdoor Arts UK.

FRESH Street #5 will springboard a three year international and UK reciprocal exchange network programme. A collaborative and creative opportunity to revitalise the exchange of world-class, tourable, quality outdoor work and innovate the outdoor arts as an effective means to engage with communities.

www.circostrada.org 

At the crossroads of puppetry, dance and theatre, Dimanche is an award-winning co-production by Belgian companies Focus and Chaliwaté. It is set sometime in the near future, when humanity has failed to adapt to the new environmental reality of climate change. Lisa Wolfe witnesses – and wonders: when will we ever learn?

It is Sunday the 2nd of February: Candelmas, the midway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox; called Groundhog Day in the USA, when a ground squirrel popping up from a hole predicts the weather for the coming months. The term has come to mean something that endlessly repeats in the same way.

What a great excuse for a day of celebration to herald the end of winter. Or a plot for a romantic film. It’s become a folkloric truth. And yet…

Having just, the day before, watched Compagnie Focus & Chaliwaté’s subtly devastating Dimanche, I’m having doubts. For haven’t we been here before – building flood defences, planting forests, pushing catalytic converters? As we diligently separate our recycling, or disrupt West-End drama (The Tempest, of course) the planet boils, burns, shrivels and melts (all at once!) and those who could force change do exactly the opposite. What the blazes can art do in the face of such catastrophe?

My wing-woman for today is creator and performer Liz Aggiss, and, once the standing ovation has dampened down, we spend some time attempting to define what it is we have seen. Is there a term for this superbly skilled, multi-media creation that so neatly satirises our denial of climate change? We see shared qualities with the work of Berlin (also Belgium-based) in the integration of film and innate understanding of what makes a strong stage picture. 

The action here centres on two trios; a family trying to live normally amid worsening weather conditions, and three slightly inept but intrepid film-makers attempting to document climactic forces in action.

These parallel stories play out in alternate sequences at a pace that feels comfortably measured. The couple eat their breakfast despite the melting furniture; their Sunday roast amid a typhoon. This is impressive high-wind acting – they’re practically horizontal against the bannisters as the room is torn apart. It would be funny in a cartoon, but we’ve seen the projected footage from the dwindling team of documentarists. This is dangerous. We laugh at our peril.

Puppetry breathes life into materials; you can almost see the twinkle in grandma’s eye as she shoots an ice-cube down her nightie; feel the polar bear’s roar when its floating home splinters. Bodies become landscapes for vehicles to travel across, starting small, coming into life size; a familiar trope beautifully realised here, particularly when one landmass is a pale, vulnerable, naked torso. 

Throughout the piece Brice Cannavo’s thrilling sound design sculpts the space, whether through a record deck or the bill of a shrieking flamingo. The only human voice is that of Paul Simon on the truck radio, his light tone and chirpy lyrics suggestive of a different place and time. 

Dimanche is a bit of a magic trick; calm and amusing on the surface, devilishly menacing below. We chuckle uneasily at the comedy of the situations, the cleverness of the multi-tasking cast  – Julie Tenret (director of Compagnie Focus), Sandrine Heyraud and Sicaire Durieux (Compagnie Chaliwaté’s creators) – then get a sucker punch at film footage of a giant incoming wave. There is destruction and death under the sea too, as backlit fish flit anxiously away from a predatory shark. Guillaume Toussaint Fromentin paints with light, from the simplicity of a hand-held car-light (with dangling deodoriser, nice touch) to dazzling strobe effects. A moth gyrates in front of a headlamp – the insects and the sharks will survive us all. 

Focus & Chaliwaté have made an extraordinary work of visual theatre, cinematic performance, and stage spectacle. Total theatre indeed. If they can keep making such detailed, exquisite, powerful shows, the arts (at least in Belgium) are in safe hands. The planet alas, is in ours.

 Photos: Mihaela Bodlovic

Compagnie Focus & Chaliwaté: Dimanche, presented by Sadler’s Wells at The Peacock, in association with MimeLondon, 29 January to 1 February 2025 www.sadlerswells.com 

MimeLondon is a new curatorial project promoting thought provoking, unusual work, created by Helen Lannaghan and Joseph Seelig, directors of London International Mime Festival (LIMF), which ended in 2023 after five decades of award-winning success www.mimelondon.com 

The 60th performance of Truth to Power Café took place on 3 November 2024 in Vancouver Canada, as part of The Chutzpah! Festival: The Lisa Nemetz Festival of International Jewish Performing Arts. It was presented live with a simultaneous live-stream broadcast across the world. Dorothy Max Prior tuned in from afar, and reports here for Total Theatre Magazine

A stage, with a minimal set: a screen, some rather lovely embroidered banners (made by the UK’s leading banner maker for the trade union movement, Ed Hall), a few stools and a mic stand, soft blue lighting. The audience settle down, and a hush descends as the lighting lowers. 

A man walks onstage. He has photos and other mementoes pinned to his chic dark blue jacket. He looks out to us and speaks. 

The text is not naturalistic – it has a poetic rhythm and metre, and a soft rhyming scheme:

“Don’t let go of what you know

All the bits and pieces that make up you…

And memory’s your only glue”

Then:

“To remember is to pray

Yesterday’s tomorrow is today

Reach inside your head

And resurrect the dead

Whatever made you think they’d gone away?”

Behind him, the video screen kicks in to life. We see images of Cable Street and the infamous 1936 street battle, as local East Enders fought Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. We see Harold Pinter, denouncing the warmongering United States of America. We see former Australian Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard in her famous misogyny speech pointing out to the sexist male conservative Leader of the Opposition that the modern woman has more pressing concerns than how best to do the ironing. And we see images from a demo, a young woman in close-up saying “I’ve waited too long for justice to be handed down”.

The man on the stage stands, strong and still, with his arm raised and fist clenched in the universal gesture of power and resistance.

The mood shifts, he lowers his arm, relaxes and smiles, and says to this west-coast Canadian audience (and those of us watching from further afield): 

“Hello, how are you? I’m Jeremy, and I’ve come all the way from Australia.” 

People in the audience shout “hello” back. 

This is our introduction to the Truth to Power Café, Jeremy Goldstein’s long-term theatre project inspired by Nobel Prize winning playwright Harold Pinter and his inner Jewish circle – The Hackney Gang, who included Jeremy’s late father, Mick Goldstein, and poet/actor Henry Woolf.

And look: there they are on the screen! The Gang!

Jeremy co-created the show with Henry Woolf (who died just a couple of years back); with some of Henry’s poetry incorporated into the text. Mostly, that text is delivered live by Jeremy, but we have the occasional visitation from Henry onscreen. They make a great double act! The show is very ably directed by Jen Heyes, who has weaved together all the disparate elements with great skill. Part theatre, part activism, each iteration of the Truth to Power Café incorporates memoir, monologue, music, film, visual imagery, poetry and compassionate truth-telling from community participants of all ages, experiences and backgrounds. The participants are each invited to present a monologue in response to the question: Who has power over you and what would you like to say to them? So no two shows can ever be alike – the content is (in part, anyway) determined by who is participating.

Truth to Power Café is structured as a two-part piece. The first part is Jeremy’s own story: in essence, the story of his relationship with his now-dead father.

When Jeremy was researching the piece and combing through the archives of the British Library, he discovered the original typescript of Pinter’s one and only novel, The Dwarfs. The novel, which was written in the 1950s and eventually published in the 1990s, was described by Pinter’s biographer, the former Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington, as holding the key to all Pinter’s later plays. The protagonist, Len, is based on Jeremy’s father Mick Goldstein. 

In one scene in the novel Len says, “I’ve never been able to look in the mirror and say, this is who I am”. This line becomes the lynchpin for Jeremy’s account of his relationship with a father who had always made him feel inadequate. With this archive discovery came a shift of perspective: here was the evidence he needed of his father’s insecurities and lack of fulfilment – which played out through the difficult relationship with his son. His father no longer held power over him: “There it was laid bare, the truth of his lived experience captured with pinpoint accuracy by his best friend, Harold Pinter.”

We learn in the show that the Gang were all born and raised within a 100 yard stretch of Clapton. We are taken to a post-war East London at a time when this self-styled Jewish avant-garde discovered artists like Samuel Beckett and Louis Buñuel; and physically fought with fascists as the Holocaust still loomed, whilst those bombs that had eviscerated Nagasaki and Hiroshima seemed as present as if it were yesterday. “Their world was infected” says Jeremy, as images play out on the screen and the words EMPIRE and POWER loom over the stage. “They had poems in their pockets, and the world up their arse.” We switch to Henry speaking: “Oh, oh, oh – there go the fascists and the cops… But we had a subterranean signal we knew we could trust. When we heard each other’s voices we were watered and fed.

At the time that the show was written, Henry was the sole survivor of The Hackney Gang. Given that he is now deceased, his presence onscreen, in dialogue with Jeremy’s live presence, adds another poignant layer to the narrative. As Jeremy says: “Our relationship with our loved ones continues after they die – the dead may be invisible but they are not absent”.

We move forward into Jeremy’s biography, as he lives through a diagnosis of HIV+ and an oppressive fear of AIDS. His father is the first person he tells, in 1999 – the response a raised eyebrow that seems to say “bound to happen sooner or later.” Jeremy is very ill, with kaposi sarcoma lesions (“the kiss of death from AIDS”); he is bankrupt; going through a divorce; unemployable for three years; on chemo, smoking meth to numb the pain. He is estranged from Mick, and “erased by my own father” contemplates suicide. In a rare moment of sobriety, he writes to his father to make peace. The letter (which he has, right here and now, in his pocket – he takes it out to show us) arrives on the day his dad dies…

But Jeremy survives it all and 25 years later, here he is! He now understands that Mick was a frustrated writer ‘dwarfed’ by his friends Henry and – especially – Harold. He couldn’t look in the mirror and say “This is who I am”. He couldn’t risk trying and failing in front of them, so he put his head down, forgot about writing, and worked clearing tables, or as a porter at Euston Station.  

Now, Jeremy can finally make sense of the power his father had over him when he was alive. Now, love and empathy meet truth and reconciliation. Jeremy has made peace with his father, and he’s ready to sit down and hand the mic over to others wishing to explore their need to speak truth to power.

Normally, this second act of the show would be an exclusively live cohort of speakers, but for this special 60th edition of the show, played live and simultaneously live-streamed worldwide, we have six people here in the theatre, and two beaming in from afar.

Playing Truth to Power Café in a Jewish theatre festival at this moment in time could potentially have thrown up challenges, but these are met head-on. The two guests from afar both directly address the question of being Jewish right here and now.

Actor and theatre-maker Gina Shmukler from Johannesburg says: “Right now, I’m Jewish and it hurts.” She speaks of trying to talk about about Israel and Gaza to her young daughter. “War is not a means to peace,” she says repeatedly. She talks of the pain of seeing colleagues posting comments on social media that they seem to have no awareness might be hurtful or antisemitic. Of the fact that the pain and horror of October 7th, and the fate of the hostages, seems to have been wiped off the liberal-left agenda. That Israel has gone way beyond anything that could reasonably be described as defence; but also that Hamas has sacrificed its own people. She poses awkward questions, such as, “Why aren’t the women and children in the tunnels when there is a ground offensive taking place?”

She comes full circle, ending with: “Right now, I’m Jewish, and I’m sad and confused.”

The format of the show is that every person has the space to speak their truth to power; and there is no commentary or questioning from our host or from anyone else. Each speaker’s words are theirs to own and proclaim, unchallenged.

Also onscreen, this time from London, is acclaimed Jewish-British playwright Nick Cassenbaum, whose Revenge: After the Levoyah took the Edinburgh Fringe 2024 by storm, winning a Fringe First amongst other accolades (reviewed by Brian Lobel, here).

Nick takes us on a journey. He talks of the power of stories: a power that can hold you in its thrall. He tells us he’s from Essex; and that as a child the founding of and history of Israel didn’t feature too heavily in his life – although he does think that he knew about the Shoah (Holocaust) almost before he understood what death was. Things shifted when he went on a summer camp run by the Federation of Zionist Youth; and then the following year, a ‘rite of passage’ tour of Israel with visits to the Western Wall, and the awareness that “we are surrounded by people who don’t want us here”. Stories are central to the Jewish tradition, Nick repeats. Stories of exile and resistance. Stories that he is now ready to re-appraise. On a visit to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, he is – for the very first time – embarrassed and ashamed to be Jewish. “These stories and perceived realities had a power over me,” he says, “but now I see it all for what it is…”

Our live guests are a vibrant and diverse bunch. Emet Davis, like Jeremy, needs to address the power their father held over them. This is a tale of “love and loss”. Emet, is not the speaker’s birth name. It is a name chosen as it means truth in Hebrew. There is love and appreciation of the now-dead father, who brought “sight-unseen adoration” into Emet’s life. There was estrangement – it isn’t stated implicitly, but it would seem that Emet coming out (as trans or non-binary, we presume), and rejecting a birth identity of female, is key. After their father’s death, a necklace he gave to Emet – bearing the words ‘daughter’, a description not identified with – is handed on to their brother’s daughter.

Non-binary Kitra Jeanne grew up “not knowing that ‘I’ was possible”. They also have a father that has held power over them – “My father was petty; is petty” – and they speak of redefining and redesigning the self. “Queer Power is beautiful. Trans Power is beautiful”.

For Lisa Webster, it is her son who holds the power. An adult son. She’d like him “to grow the fuck up, move the fuck out, and get your own life”. But that is not going to happen. He has multiple needs as someone with intellectual disabilities, chronic health problems, and behavioural difficulties. And there is very little care out there in the community, with a lack of resources and support – she lives on a small island in off-shore Vancouver – so it all mostly comes down to her. “My life revolves around him,” she says. And her monologue ends with a declaration of acceptance – the power her son holds over her is the power of love.

Patricia L Morris addresses ageism in her talk. “Age magnifies the dirty secret of not mattering into a deformity”. She challenges the people who look through her, or push past her. The drunk girl in an alley who screams out, “you’re old, you’re going to dies soon, so what do you matter?” She riffs on the word ‘matter’. “I’m not matter; I want to fly” she remembers telling her brother when she was little. She wanted angel wings then, and she wants them now. Canada’s national poet Leonard Cohen said “it really doesn’t matter”. But he’s wrong, she says. “You do matter. No matter what.”

Sophie McNeilly is less concerned about being invisible than of “being afraid of being looked at”. And why? Because she wants “to be in charge of how you look at me.” By age three, she was aware that she was fat – a whole lot bigger than any of the other girls in the ballet class. She says “fascists hate fatties,” and that they look at the large body with disgust and fear. “The tiny fascist in my brain hates the shape of me,” she says. She talks of a process of “double-looking”, in which she “watches herself being watched”. But now she needs to move on: “I have to let go. I have to let you look at me.” And she stands, proudly, and we look…

Marsha Lederman takes us back to the theme of  Jewish identity. “The people who have power over me are the ones who have left,” she says, telling us that she is “still defining myself as the child of Holocaust survivors”. She feels her parents’ presence constantly – sad that they didn’t live long enough to see her married and a mother; glad they didn’t witness her divorce and struggles as a single parent. “I’m worrying about dead people worrying about me,” she says, to a big laugh from the audience.

With all the stories told, truth to power addressed nine-fold, Jeremy stands and dons a crown. We can be heroes, just for one day! Henry joins him onscreen. 

“You’ve got to slide between the living and the dead…

What’s that drumbeat? It’s my dad!”

Onscreen, Jeremy is sporting wings: 

“My tattered wings made from the garbage of my heart.”

Now, everyone is standing. “Blow our trumpets, angels,” says the onstage Jeremy – and everyone raises their arms in unison. Amen.

Truth to Power Café has toured across the world to great acclaim, challenging outdated notions of what community-engaged theatre might look like. All aspects of the production have been created and delivered with the utmost care. By placing himself within the show, Jeremy Goldstein models one way that we can tell truth to power, addressing the person who holds the power over us, whilst simultaneously giving permission to all participants to do it their way.

A wonderful piece of contemporary activist-theatre – hard-hitting but tender. Long may the Truth to Power Café thrive and grow.

For more about London Artists Projects and the Truth to Power Café, see https://www.truthtopower.co.uk

All live show images: Chelsey Stuyt for The Chutzpah! Festival: The Lisa Nemetz Festival of International Jewish Performing Arts, Vancouver 2024.

Truth to Power Café was presented at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre in Vancouver, Sunday 3 November 2024, as part of the The Chutzpah! Festival: The Lisa Nemetz Festival of International Jewish Performing Arts. It was simultaneously live-streamed worldwide.

Created, written and performed by Jeremy Goldstein with Henry Woolf. Directed by Jen Heyes. 

Read Speaking Truth to Power, Jeremy Goldstein’s account of researching and creating the show on Total Theatre Magazine, here.

Truth to Power Café Melbourne premiere 5, 6, 7 February 2025 at Theatre Works as part of Midsumma Festival.  

For more about London Artists Projects and the Truth to Power Café, see https://www.truthtopower.co.uk

Live art musical and eco-lutionary experience The Fabulous Unknown is the latest performance piece by New-York based radical performance collective Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir (some of whom have been assembled here in the UK). Lorna Rees was at the Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts in Brighton for Total Theatre Magazine.

In case you are in any doubt as to the politics of this piece, the tall, white-clad Reverend Billy (with excellent hair) gets to the stage and informs us that “the earth presents as non-binary” and immediately, I’m in a church I can get behind. This is a secular gospel choir, but it uses the trappings of Christian church service to create its message and we in the audience are the congregants. 

Billy Talen presents initially as a caricature of a Baptist preacher and yet he is truly sincere: this isn’t a comedy preacher act, he is all conviction and there’s nothing disingenuous going on here. The show starts with a singing procession into the auditorium and almost immediately I burst into tears at the sheer vivid joy of the music. The audience are then invited to declaim “Earth-a-luljah,” although as an audience, this early on, we are a more traditionally reserved British audience and mainly smile enthusiastically at the stage.

This show is billed as being “wildly and unapologetically eco-conscious” and that’s completely true – it has no side, no archness, it’s straight-up, earnest heart and soul – heavy on the soul. It’s honestly rare to watch something so heartfelt and enthusiastic. With the bright colours and array of individual costume styles of the choir, the nostalgic vibe of the music, and the fact that most of ensemble live in New York, I was strangely put in mind of the children’s programme Sesame Street. On Sesame Street things are really simple: people are kind and don’t exploit each other; it is a deeply moral and straightforward universe. And really, where the planet is concerned, things are pretty simple aren’t they? This is a clear, activist message delivered with no irony, and this clarity of purposeful conviction speaks loudly. 

When the choir really let loose they make a truly stunning sound (and props here to the sound team, as choirs are notoriously hard to support technically, and they did a fantastic job). The songs are simple, catchy and joyful, from the stunningly sung ‘What did you do to the Great Outdoors’ (a beautiful alto-voiced husky solo by Francisca Benítez) to the glorious ‘Where do I Go (Mountains) to the rousing finale of ‘I’m Not the Only One’ which resolves into a sort of mantra-style invocation of “We can/Can we change’. The music punctuates and punctures, the choir is a fully committed ensemble and populated by strongly identifiable individuals. It is, as good choirs are, a brilliant metaphor for society. Special mentions must be made here for the statuesque, powerful feminine presence of director Savitri D, and the musicianship of the two keyboard players on stage, and in particular Joshua Nelson’s virtuosic singing. This is the gospel music I love. Not overly polished, it has a looseness, a liveness and an improvised style of delivery which flows into your heart and tingles your spine.

Reverend Billy himself is not nearly as patriarchal alpha-male as I’d initially assumed him to be – he collaborates with the choir, but does not assert himself in front of them. He is supplicant and cheerleader for the music, listening intently and respectfully. His sermon, which takes place towards the end of the performance, starts as a ramble on the erotic properties of traffic cones, equating the “big boxes” of consumerist sweatshop shopping experience to climate change; but eventually finds his way to an impromptu party of redirected vehicles in a liminal space. 

I’m reliably informed that the sermon changes shape and content every night, which makes the Greek chorus of the choir behind even more lovely –  they are responding as new to the words Reverend Billy is declaiming. You can feel a sense of collective relief when the connections are made and a convergence of narrative threads is achieved. We are implored to “stop shopping and start living, start loving… This consumer culture that makes hurricanes and wars – this can be disrupted. There are cones which can be moved and weaknesses all over”. For this eco-activist, it is a brilliant rallying cry and solidarity.

There was a modest-sized audience at the Attenborough Centre on this soggy October evening; but by the end, the initially reserved audience had all got to their feet, dancing, clapping and shouting along in exaltation, all converts.

Earth-a-luljah indeed.

All images: Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir: The Fabulous Unknown.

Photos by Andy Winmill 

Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir: The Fabulous Unknown was seen at The Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts on 21 October 2024. 

UK tour dates 2024:

20 Oct, Hastings, The Stables

21 Oct, Brighton, ACCA

22 Oct,  Canterbury, Gulbenkian

23 Oct, Colchester Arts Centre

25 Oct, Cambridge, The Junction

26 Oct, London, Unitarian Church, Islington

27 Oct, Birmingham, Midlands Arts Centre

For further information, see: https://revbilly.com/