Tempting Failure 2013 promised ‘an immersive experience of live art & noise’. It certainly delivered. Curated and produced by Thomas John Bacon, the festival is now in its second year. The setting? The Island, a disused police station situated at the heart of inner city Bristol. The site itself stank of a rich history of […]

This cleverly devised production from the Marlowe Studio’s first resident company seeks to deconstruct and explore memory and inheritance through visual metaphor, direct address and imagined meetings with long-dead relatives. The stimuli is John Berger’s semi-autobiographical book Here is Where We Meet, a disparate narrative which travels across Europe as the elderly protagonist ‘John’ reflects […]

The stage is bordered by the three high walls of a grimy, empty office, cut each side with bright yellow doors. As we settle down a tall bald man in a dark grey suit walks in and out, looking like he’s rehearsing for a speech. He yawns, mumbles to himself. A flipchart stands in the […]

Kitted out in headphones, I am lead through the corridors of The Island, an old police station at the centre of Bristol now used for circus training. I am listening to typical circus music, and feel like I am approaching the ring, like I am about to perform. I am with one other audience member […]

Zilla Part 1 opens the doors to a huge empty warehouse in which an impressive amount of tiny Lego people are lined up in a miniature installation. We have been brought here, to Bristol’s Old Mills Industrial Estate and to the venue Unit 15, to contemplate the movie Godzilla. Casting my eye across the tiny Lego […]