The first time, as tragedy: 19 August, 1819 – magistrates order the cavalry in to a pro-democracy rally in St Peter’s Fields, Manchester, killing at least fifteen and wounding 700; the protest becomes iconic as the Peterloo Massacre. The second time, as farce: 9 August, 2011 – rioters take over Manchester city centre; nobody, participants […]

Full marks to Manchester International Festival for discovering the Mayfield Depot and arranging for it to be used as a venue during the festival. It’s a huge cavernous space with big sliding doors and big rooms off the central hall. At the far end is a blocked off room which the stewards ask you to […]

Beta Public was a two-pronged thrust at exposing the underbelly of what computer games could mean in the world of theatre. The evening began below stairs with a loosely curated exhibition of video games on various devices, with creators hovering by, and culminated in a short programme of demonstrations and discourse on what gaming could […]

Johnno McCreadie is 15 and lives in Livingston, Scotland. His friend Spanner is a bit of a bad laddie; his mum Alison is worried about those boys, about drugs. The D-man, a techno-head from the south of England, is taking Johnno and Spanner to a rave, Johnno’s first ever. Robert Dunlop is a policeman haunted […]

Sitting in the lotus position on a mat of taped-together tennis towels, Jamie Wood meditated as the audience idled in. Every now and then he opened one eye to spot someone in the audience, picked up one of the tennis balls encircling him, pointed at the person, and threw it at them. Usually they caught […]