ABOUT
Critically-acclaimed arts innovators Upstart Theatre present the second annual DARE Festival at Shoreditch Town Hall, bringing together artists and audiences from across London and beyond in an explosion of new and in-development performance presented at the earliest possible stage. Inventive, unexpected, challenging and joyous, DARE Festival is a place for people to join together to make, discover, dream and play.
DARE FESTIVAL 2
BIG TEETH
ELIZABETH DEARNLEY
Gripped by the Great Freeze of 1947, with wolf-whistling spivs and other predatory characters skulking round every corner, London could be a dangerous place for an unwary girl. Climb into Elizabeth Dearnley's immersive installation - a bedtime story with bite.
HOW TO COPE WITH EMBARRASSMENT
TWO PALE LADIES
Two Pale Ladies' How to Cope with Embarrassment is almost a cabaret. It is also almost a comedy, and almost a politically and socially engaged performance piece that explores a history of societal blackmail and emotional pressures. But probably it is just a series of questions that we don’t have answers to.
WRESTLELADSWRESTLE
JENNIFER JACKSON, SIMON JONES & TOM HUGHES
Inspired by Eve professional wrestling, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mixed Martial Arts, Judo, dance and clown. We will play fight for you. So you don't have to. WRESTLELADSWRESTLE explores personal risk through the forgotten joy of play fights. Get down to your pants lads and let's f*@£ing wrestle for freedom.
TRIGGER WARNING
MARCELO DOS SANTOS & NATASHA NIXON
In an age of information overload and non-stop media coverage of non-stop international tragedies, Marcelo dos Santos and Natasha Nixon's Trigger Warning is a jet black comedy exploring the politics of ‘trigger warnings’. Can we protect audiences from real life? Should we?
DO YOU LIVE ALONE?
REBECCA PEYTON & REBECCA HILL
What do you do when all hope is gone? Stay in? Go out? Nina’s love life coaching can help YOU out, but can she help herself? A new solo show performed by Rebecca Peyton (Sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister) and directed by award-winning Rebecca Hill.
LIVE POETRY JUKEBOX
MUELLER & MALTEN
In need of food for thought? Or food for the soul? Looking for exhilaration? Or a moment of contemplation? Wanting to recharge your batteries? Or wind down? Craving for a laugh? Or a cry? Or both? Enter Mueller and Malten's Live Poetry Jukebox!
FRESHY
SEGEN YOSIFE
Have you ever had to start again somewhere totally different? There is a new boy called Dawit. He’s a freshy from Eritrea, Simon is pissed off at being in a pair with Dawit just because his parents are Eri. He doesn’t want to look like a freshy too. He’s got a reputation to protect. Anyway he can’t even speak Tigrinya.
METAMORPHOSIS (AFTER KAFKA AND NABOKOV)
SIMON WATT
Gregor Samsa awoke from unquiet dreams to find that in his sleep he had turned into a vile and verminous insect.” Simon Watt's new interpretation of Kafka’s masterpiece stars a live beetle and puts man and insect side by side.
LONG TABLE ON ARTS AND ACTIVISM
Join a conversation between artists, audience and guests about the meeting points between theatre, social justice campaigning and protest performance. With contributions from Richard Howlett, co-founder of Reclaim Shakespeare and BP or not BP collaborator, Zahra Dalilah, writer with Gal-Dem and founding member of Take Back The City and Maa-Yarkor Addo, Resident Director at Company 3. There can be silence. There can be laughing. There will certainly be tea and cake.
PAST DARE FESTIVALS
"I am incredibly grateful to DARE for spring-boarding my show into existence.”
Simon Carroll-Jones, Creator of MARCO
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