Theatre in the Park is back for 2023! Welcome to another sizzling season of outdoor theatre and performance. This year we'll be heading to both Rougemont and Northernhay Gardens.
Join us for an epic seaside tale gig-theatre show, Shakespeare aplenty, a Spork! Summer Special and an interactive promenade with dance, movement and a giant puppet.
Make the most of being outdoors this summer and head to the Gardens for some al fresco fun!
SUN & MOON THEATRE
ROMEO & JULIET
THU 27 - SAT 29 JUL
Sun & Moon Theatre are delighted to be returning to Rougemont Gardens with a vibrant open-air production of Shakespeare’s most popular drama of star-crossed lovers and warring families.
HERO & LEANDER, OR, I LOVE YOU, BUT EVERYTHING'S UNDER WATER
THU 10 AUG
Sing, dance and cry with us in this bittersweet outdoor gig theatre show. Six multi-instrumentalists tell an epic seaside tale through songs encompassing folk, indie, sea shanties and choral music.
Whack the factor 50 on and join Spork! for a glorious Summer Special in Northernhay Gardens for a sun-drenched hour of sumptuous spoken-word, poetry, comedy & live music.
Autin Dance Theatre’s sensational outdoor show is an interactive promenade and a physical theatre duet which transports its audiences into another world, to tell a story about our own.
Comments Off on Introducing our Autumn Performance Programme for 2022!
Welcome to a brand new season of Theatre & Performance at Exeter Phoenix!
Our autumn programme of Theatre is full to the brim with cutting-edge dance, poetry and family fun from award-winning directors, writers and theatre companies. There really is something for everyone in our theatre programme and we can’t wait for you to come and join us for another season at Exeter Phoenix.
There’ll be metamorphic soundscapes, explorations of the knife-edge of hoarding witchcraft that’s helping to dismantle the patriarchy and even dancing dinosaurs fuelled by rock’n’roll.
We’ve got scratch nights and work-in progress performances to come too, a chance for you to test your ideas and help to shape the future of theatre in Exeter!
Keep reading to discover what’s on in our Autumn performance programme.
THE LESSON | TUE 27 SEP
Icarus’ blistering, magical and award-winning production of Eugene Ionesco’s classic dark comedy returns to the stage.
SAME ROOM SAME TIME | THU 29 SEP
A new collaboration between Jane Mason and Grace Surman who have made work for 25 years in contemporary performance, but have only just met.
BREATHLESS | SUN 2 OCT
Breathless is a funny, honest and stylish exploration of the knife-edge of hoarding, from the joy to the addiction and suffocating shame.
Set against a backdrop of a nation that continues to bask in the light of its colonial legacy, hooked on profits despite the costs, White Sun collides with the past in the here and now of a human nervous system.
TEATER DICTAT | FRI 7 OCT
Johan Svensson and Magdi Saleh, theatre practitioners from Sweden, map their own queer histories as they talk about Teater Dictat, working in the Swedish theatre industry, retelling the British canon abroad and exporting the Swedish canon internationally.
One small step for man, one giant pile of rubbish left behind! Man’s dream to reach the stars leaves the world in ruins and disturbs the sleeping dinosaurs. Will they wake up and save planet Earth?
DROWNTOWN | TUE 8 NOV
Gritty dance theatre, with autobiographical testimonials and text, this timely performance gives voice to the vulnerable and unheard. With tenderness and honesty, DROWNTOWN holds up a mirror to a society at tipping point.
DAYTIME DEEWANE | THU 1 DEC
Daytime Deewane, by Azan Ahmed, is the latest production from Half Moon, the UK’s leading small-scale young people’s venue and touring company, winner of two Off West End Theatre awards for Best Production for Young People Age 13+ (Crowded and What Once Was Ours).
Comments Off on Spork! Artist Drop in Sessions for Spoken Word Artist’s & Poets
Are you a spoken-word artist or poet living in Devon? Are you looking to develop your career and creative practice? Want to talk about funding, or how to get more gigs?
Spork! are holding a free artist drop-in session at Exeter Phoenix with Lead Producer Chris White. Open to all, regardless of age or experience. Whether you have a particular idea in development, a funding bid you want to improve, or want some general advice, come and have a chat & a cuppa, in person or on Zoom.
Comments Off on Behind the Scenes: the making of Constellations
On Sun 29 May, interdisciplinary performance maker and practice-based researcher Sian Goldby brings Constellations to Exeter Phoenix, an intimate performance exploring landscapes of memory and humanity’s relationship with the earth. Through a re-imagining of the performance space in miniature, it investigates themes of nostalgia and memory in relation to the multiple scales of environmental crisis.
In this blog piece, Sian talks about the making of Constellations and how her personal experiences and memories have formed the foundations for the performance.
"Constellations is designed to bring about the sensation that history is repeating itself. The work is a constant manipulation, extraction and destruction of world, earth and planet, and asks – how do we construct our worlds?" - Sian Goldby, Writer
When I was a child, I used to go with my parents on trips to Bekonscot Model Village every year. It was my absolute favourite place to go. I remember having an overwhelming urge to get into the tiny scenes; not just to climb inside and touch the tiny houses and trains and market stalls with my hands, but to somehow embody how it felt to live in these tiny spaces. I wanted to be immersed in this world, not just stand by at a distance all giant and ungainly in my wrongscale body. I wanted to shrink myself down, get closer to it all.
Constellations is a performance which aims to capture this curious visceral sensation by inviting audiences to immerse themselves into a micro-world of the performance and experience a different sensation of scale. The piece taps into childhood nostalgia and explores the concept of memory as a kind of ever-shifting landscape, and remembering as a form of drawing and re-drawing of mental maps.
I made the work in 2019, the year that I turned 30. My birthday is at the end of August and I had planned a celebration in a pub in my hometown of Bristol with the hope that we might be able to use the lovely suntrap of a roof terrace. This was before I remembered that it always rained on my birthday now, and has done since I turned 18.
I remember every birthday until the day I turned 18 being in beautiful sunshine; picnics, garden parties, outdoor swimming, were always on the list of activities for birthday parties during my childhood without the need to be too optimistic about the weather. A hot, sunny, summer birthday was a good payoff for being the youngest out of my peers and being teased about having to ‘wait’ to be ‘finally’ the next age.
How could it be that the UK seasons have changed so much within such a short time-frame? How can it be that just 30 years out of billions is all it has taken to shift the weather? Was it really sunny on every birthday or did I just imagine it?
As I reached this milestone, I began to reflect on other changes to the climate that I have noticed within my short time on this earth. I also found out that 30 years is the time period which is used as a reference point by the World Meteorological Organisation to calculate climate normals, and therefore fluctuations. I started to build the piece using my stories and memories, and I wanted to invite audiences to reflect on their own timescales too.
Constellations is designed to bring about the sensation that history is repeating itself. The work is a constant manipulation, extraction and destruction of world, earth and planet, and asks – how do we construct our worlds?
CONSTELLATIONS comes to Exeter Phoenix on Sun 29 May. The performance is designed for small audiences of up to 6 people. For tickets and timings, tap here >>
With Summer behind us and those cooler Autumn evenings sweeping in, we have some treats in store for you in our Autumn performance programme – and an offer to make sure you don’t miss a moment.
Over the next two weeks, three women share their stories in three very different autobiographical pieces. Different in style, but each with moving and empowering human stories at their hearts, and creative theatre makers at their helms.
OFFER: Book 3x Shows @£12 each* and save £2 per ticket.
Concession rate of £10* is also available on all shows.
*Subject to a £1.50 ticketing system charge. We don’t charge this to make a profit. Find out more >>
Part performance, part installation, part collective act of resistance – Cutting Out tells Viv’s one in eleven-million story. The story of Viv’s hands (from abuse to activism) happens in a co-created installation of paper dolls holding hands in solidarity bearing witness to 11 million adult UK survivors of Child Sex Abuse.
“It really bothers me that there’s no cultural space for survivors or any sort of public witnessing. And then I was thinking, ‘I want to cut out chains of paper dolls, one for each survivor.’ Then I got the calculator out and realised that that would take me several lifetimes to do. And that was my starting point to involve audiences in a campaign to make 11 million paper dolls.” – Creator and Performer Viv Gordon
Audiences will be given the opportunity to help Viv cut out paper dolls before and after the show. This is your opportunity to bear witness and to contribute to an installation that is growing bigger with every tour venue.
Artistic Director, Viv Gordon has a strong track record as a theatre maker, arts/mental health campaigner & survivor-activist grounded in her lived experience of Child Sexual Abuse.
Emma Baskeyfied’s (Theatre Maker & Puppeteer of The Goat Show) new autobiographical show Cut Out is inspired by classic westerns using visual storytelling, multi-operator puppetry and cowboy stories to examine the complexity of family life & explore what happens when resolution is not as easy as a shootout and riding off into the sunset. Yee-Haw.
There’s trouble out on the ranch… The wild west is a hostile, lonely place – rife with injustice and driven by the need to control.
What do you do when someone tries to build a railroad through your family?
Can you slam a saloon door in your dad’s face?
Can a cowboy save you from self destruction?
And why can’t it be as simple as a good ol’ line dance?
Written and Performed by Florence Espeut-Nickless and directed by Jesse Jones.
This semi-autobiographical monologue follows the story of a teenage girl growing up on a rural Wiltshire council estate. After a big night out takes a turn for the worst, Destiny’s life spirals out of control as she desperately tries to learn how to love and be loved.Born below the breadline, she’s desperate to see beyond the neighbourhood and find hope in hopelessness.
“They’re sayin I brought it on myself. Oh yeah, they’ve heard about me. Basically it must’ve been my fault cause I’m me, Destiny”
DESTINYis a recipient of The Pleasance’s Edinburgh National Partnerships Award (in partnership with Bristol Old Vic Ferment) and was shortlisted for Theatre West’s Write On Women Award.
It has been developed with support from Tobacco Factory Theatres, Bristol Old Vic Ferment, Pound Arts, Strike a Light, Wiltshire Creative, Natural Theatre, Paper Arts, Theatre Bristol, Hawkwood College, Arts Council England and Gane Trust.
Florence Espeut-Nickless is the Writer in Residence at Pentabus Theatre, an Open Session Writer at the Bristol Old Vic and an associate artist at Strike a Light, as part of the Let Artists Be Artists programme.
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