Prototype: A Festival of New Work

Friday 14th – Sunday 16th February

Tickets: £6 per evening
Ticket price includes a free drink upon arrival

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Friday 14th February

5.45pm – Music from ‘Water Borders’ by Hazel Monaghan
6 until 6.30pm – ‘Decay’ by Kieran Spiers
6.45 until 7.45pm – ‘A Story About Time Travel’ by Ryan Leder


Saturday 15th February

From 5.45pm – ‘Presence on Test’ by Louise White
6 until 6.45pm – ‘Scrimping’ by Gloria Lowe
7 until 7.45pm – ‘Water Borders’ by Hazel Monaghan


Sunday 16th February

6pm – ‘y.O.u’ by Fuelled Dance Theatre
6.30 until 7pm – ‘Amazon’ by Christina Tsoutsi
7.15 until 7.45pm – ‘Adversity, Understanding and Enlightenment’ by Ravelle-Sadé Fairman


This event is suitable for those 15+.

Box Office:

0115 837 1950

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Experience exciting new work coming out of the East Midlands in a three-day festival of work-in-progress at Nonsuch Studios.

From cutting-edge theatre and LGBTQ+ dance, to spoken word and performance art, this is an opportunity to experience a feast of upcoming talent at the start of their creative journeys and to shape the future of these performances.

Each day sees a different programme of performances and a chance to eat, drink and be merry in the buzzing environment of Nonsuch Studios.

Come and immerse yourself in three days of exciting live performance…

Music from Water Borders

Hazel Monaghan
Friday 14th February, 5.45pm

Kicking off the weekend are traditional fiddle tunes inspired by new play Water Borders which premiers on Saturday, as we turn the Nonsuch foyer into a folk session.

Decay

By Kieran Spiers
Friday 14th February, 6pm
It’s autumn and Jess and Aaron, two estranged siblings reunite in peculiar circumstances; with the memories of what family life was like before, and the possibility of what life can be.

Kieran Spiers – Writer & Theatre-Maker
Kieran is an independent theatre-maker and playwright based in Lincoln and is ¼ of theatre company Chameleon 53. As an independent artist he is interested in devised, small-scale theatre which is playful, energetic and interactive. His work has been presented as part of Derelict LIVE, Camden People’s Theatre and has recently had work on as part of the 10X10 New Writing Festival. He has also been short-listed for the HERE WE GO Festival in New York.

A Story About Time Travel

By Ryan Leder
Friday 14th February, 6.45pm
Based on audio drama A Short Story About Time Travel originally commissioned by BBC Arts & Arts Council England, the play adaption A Story About Time Travel is a story about graduating, growing up, the quarter-life crisis and the aimlessness we struggle with post-education. The play follows Jess and Finn, two new graduates who meet, fall in love and discover they can time travel in an inappropriately short amount of time. With Finn unable to afford living away from home, and Jess’ Mum slowly forgetting who she is, the two escape into the last three years of friends, freedom, and financial stability and do everything they can to change the present.

Ryan Leder – Writer
Ryan Leder is a playwright based in Northamptonshire who writes stories about recovery – both intimate and expansive. His practice is socially engaged and often inspired by his generation (Gen Z/Millennial). He is an associate artist with Made In Corby. Credits include: A Short Story About Time Travel (Commissioned by BBC Arts and Arts Council England, 2020), Numbered Days (Winner of the Dame Janet Suzman Playwriting Prize, Theatre In Black), Loop (Theatre In Black), 60 Miles By Road Or Rail (co-written with Joshua Val Martin, Royal & Derngate), and Still Here (runner-up for Nottingham Playhouse’s Fifth Word Award for Most Promising Playwright, runner-up for Park Theatre’s Script Accelerator ‘18).

Presence on Test

By Louise White
Saturday 15th February, From 5.45pm
Presence on Test is a live art/performance art durational show exploring the notion of presence and present-ness. Audience members can come and go as they wish. There will be audience interaction, invitation to spectators to interfere, interrupt, or add to the performer’s tasks, prompting ‘in the moment’; responses to these provocations.

Louise White – Theatre-Maker
Louise makes contemporary devised theatre spanning live art, studio theatre, and street performance. She is a Big House supported artist and has been an associate artist with the In Good Company artist development programme (Derby Theatre) and the Leicester Curve Breakthrough Artist programmes 2016-19. In 2017-18, she developed and toured original show Washed Up …With A Turtle Named Reggie, a family show in partnership with The Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust and supported by Arts Council England. Other works include Debris (2016), Pandemoni-CON! (2014) and upcoming show Touching The Sky. Louise is currently studying a Masters in Performance at Leeds Beckett University.

Scrimping

By Gloria Lowe in collaboration with Grace Cordell
Saturday 15th February, 6pm
Atty may not be changing the world, but she is changing her world, one bigbag at a time. In a world where scrimping is better than the alternative, how can she build a better future for herself and her baby? This is a story about re-connection and re-generation in the face of difficulty. It is a story about Atty.

Grace Cordell, Actor and Director
Grace is a Nottingham-based actor and director. As a director, Grace has worked with The Royal Exchange’s CoLab festival, Blackpool and What A Shit Place To Die (Theatre 503), The Conditioning (Edinburgh Fringe), and as an assistant director on Yank! (Hope Mill Theatre), Fairy Tales ReTold (Southbank Centre), Frankenstein In Baghdad (National Theatre), The Merchant Of Venice (Nottingham Playhouse) and Love And Money (RADA). Grace’s acting credits include The Crucible, Into The Woods and Minus Touch (The Royal Exchange), Alcatraz (New Diorama), and was nominated for best actress at Buxton Fringe for Soapbox Racer. Grace also runs non-profit companies Actors Academy MCR and ThatOpportunities.

Gloria Lowe, Writer and Director
Gloria is a Nottingham-based writer, producer and director. Since being awarded an early-careers grant from the Fenton Arts Trust, Gloria has developed shows including Story Stew (Shop Front Theatre, Coventry) and Letters from the Front; (Belgrade Theatre & UK tour). She has also enjoyed participatory work in educational, rural and care settings, including work as a storyteller for both Snail Tales and FrontlineDance. Her work in education both for her own organisation Glow and as a lecturer at Coventry University has seen her delivering workshops and teaching in schools, colleges and universities in the UK, India and Singapore. She is currently undertaking a practice-based AHRC-funded PhD with Royal Holloway, University of London.

Water Borders

By Hazel Monaghan
Saturday 15th February, 7pm
Water Borders is a a dramatisation of the true story of the Anglo/Icelandic cod wars. Set between 1968 and 2016, the piece uses live music and archive recordings to explore one of the UK’s most significant but forgotten geopolitical struggles, and Iceland’s only war. The play was developed on an artist’s residency at The Freezer Theatre in Iceland, as part of a research trip in 2018 to learn directly from communities affected by the cod wars, meeting some of the politicians and scientists still addressing issues of territorial fishing and meeting the people and ships on the front line of the conflict.

Hazel Monaghan, Writer and Actor/Musician
Hazel is an actor/musician from Nottinghamshire and trained at The Television Workshop. She is in the process of transforming herself into a playwright; as a New Associate of New Perspectives Theatre Company she is developing her first play, as well as two adaptations for children’s theatre. She began writing as a spoken word artist with Mouthy Poets and developed her writing with Dizraeli, Malika Booker and R. A. Villanueva at the Arvon Foundation. She also works as a stage manager.

y.O.u

By Fuelled Dance Theatre
Sunday 16th February, 6pm
Inspired by the first experiences of being in a same sex relationship, dealing with the crippling reality of homophobia and the fear of coming out, y.O.u confronts the romanticized stereotypes of lesbians that the media and society portrays. y.O.u is unapologetically raw, a representation of love and the suffering that comes with it.

Scarlett Turner, Artistic Director of Fuelled Dance Theatre
Scarlett is a non-binary independent dance artist who works across disciplines of contemporary dance, improvisation, live art, physical theatre and spoken word. They are also Associate artist of Attenborough Arts Center and Curve Theatre. Their practice stems from personal experiences that are shaped and structured into interdisciplinary task based collaboration. They are also artistic director of Fuelled Dance Theatre.

Amazon

By Christina Tsoutsi
Sunday 16th February, 6.30pm
A climate fiction (CLi-Fi) anticipating the loss of the Lungs of the Earth, Amazon explores life after an ecological disaster. In the not so distant future, two friends are trying to figure out if there is still time to save the Earth. On the edge of extinction, who would you trust to deliver tomorrow?

Christina Tsoutsi, Writer and Actor
Christina is a theatre-maker and Writer from Greece, where she studied at Iasmos Drama School under a scholarship. She moved to the UK to further her studies in theatre and graduated in 2018 with a Degree in Theatre Arts from NCN. Christina is passionate about creating original work inspired by current social issues. She has showcased work for Primary Gallery as an actress and artistic director with Demetra, a short film/installation. At Emerge festival she presented Sonnets in Action, a solo devised performance, Refugees Welcome (Nottingham Playhouse) a devised performance directed by Rebecca Winfield. She is also a founding member of Spyridon Theatre Company where she co-devised Hold Up and The Point is to Change it.

Adversity, Understanding and Enlightenment

By Ravelle-Sadé Fairman
Sunday 16th February, 7.15pm
Adversity, Understanding and Enlightenment uses unconventional narrative structures to take the audience on a journey of self-actualisation and invites them to question the relationship that they have with themselves. The work combines music with spoken word to tell the story of a woman’s adversity, understanding and ascension.

Ravelle-Sadé Fairman, Poet and Spoken-Word Artist
Ravelle-Sadé is a performance poet and spoken word artist who attempts to break down the stigma formed from taboo topics within our society. These range from mental health issues to some of the effects of corporate greed. She has shared her work in a range of spaces including theatres, libraries, universities and schools, as well as for events including Poets Against Racism and New Perspectives’ recent performance of debbie tucker green’s Trade at the Nottingham Playhouse.