UK Premiere

Alessandro Schiattarella (Basel)

Zer-brech-lich

Saturday 19 October 2024Sunday 20 October 2024

Midlands Arts Centre, Cannon Hill Park
Birmingham, B12 9QH United Kingdom
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65 minutes | £15/13

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Zer-brech-lich is a captivating musical dance theatre production suitable for audiences of all ages. In this mesmerizing performance, three talented disabled performers bring to life songs specially composed by Swiss musician Gina ÉTÉ. These songs share a common theme: fragility, explored from both personal and political perspectives. Can fragility be a powerful political statement? Is it possible that fragility possesses a unique power to unite people and act as a catalyst to challenge the false ideals of strength, beauty, and success often perpetuated by ableist societies? How can fragility unite people?

Throughout the performance, the performers answer these questions through a blend of direct, political, and poetic expression, often infused with humour. They dance with their vulnerability, caring for and supporting each other as they playfully construct and deconstruct images and sets. By doing so, they reveal the raw mechanisms behind the creation of ‘illusions,’ aiming to spark the audience’s imagination of a future where diversity replaces the ‘norm.’

Through their dynamic and heartfelt expressions, the performers of Zer-brech-lich invite the audience to rethink societal perceptions of fragility and strength. Their performance is a poignant reminder that true power and beauty lie in embracing and celebrating our differences.

The 2pm performance of Zer-brech-lich on Sunday 20 October is included in our Bear (AKA Full Week) and Otter (Weekend Max) Passes. The 7pm performance on Saturday 19 October is included in our Pup Pass. Click here for more information about our passes.

Credits

Directed and Choreographed: Alessandro Schiattarella
Choreographed and Performed by: Victoria Antonova, Alice Giuliani, Meret Landolt (x Laila White)
Sound: Eugenio Fabiani
Video: Manuel Justo
Voice Off: Linda Wolf
Music Songwriting: Gina ÉTÉ
Musical Director: Richard Schwennicke
Stage Design: Margarete Albinger
Costume Design: Giulia Marcotullio
Light Design: Uwe Wegner
Dramaturgy: Martin Mutschler
Props: Stella Kuprat, Ingmar Mühlich


Zer-brech-lich is the inaugural production of the Jupiter project, co-produced by the Opera and Schauspielhaus Hannover, together with the Theaterformen Festival, in cooperation with the Hamburg Theatre Academy. It is now part of the association cinquantatré based in Basel, Switzerland, and supported by the Fachausschuss Theater und Tanz.

Access

This show has integrated audio description and subtitles in English.

Fierce Says

Zer-brech-lich (German for fragile) is a disability pop concert with strong dashes of DIY theatrical magic and banger after banger. It’s sweet, charming, and just a bit addictive (and yes, you might hear us humming the songs all festival).

Details

Saturday 19 October 2024

7.00pm

Sunday 20 October 2024

2.00pm

UK Premiere

Joshua Serafin (Brussels)

PEARLS

Saturday 19 October 2024, 9.00pm10.10pm

Birmingham Hippodrome, Thorp Street
Birmingham, B5 4TB United Kingdom
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Presented with FABRIC

70 minutes | £15/13 | 16+

This performance contains nudity.

Three people with long black hair are dancing with their backs to each other in a close circle. The lighting highlights parts of their faces and bodies.

Michiel Devijver

3 people are in a dimly light space look up at a yellow cocoon-like object hanging from the ceiling.

Michiel Devijver

A person is dancing centre stage, we can only see the whites of their eyes. They are wearing a light translucent dress.

Michiel Devijver

3 people face one another to create a triangle shape, their arms are outstretched and they are dancing.

Michiel Devijver

3 people in black embellished leotards are dancing together in a tight circle. The image is blurred, suggesting movement.

Maryan Sayd

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In their artistic exploration, Joshua Serafin wrestles with the fractures & wounds imprinted by empire on the body, soul, and community. For the work PEARLS, the multi-media artist draws inspiration from nonnormative genders celebrated in the precolonial Philippines. Together with fellow artists Lukresia Quismundo, and Bunny Cadag, Serafin abandons the binary they have inherited from colonial culture and returns to the ancient past in search of the spiritual roots of Filipino society. With a gaze toward & away from imperial history, the three performers advance gender-diverse existence as an alternative blueprint for the future. PEARLS thus becomes an exercise of healing that offers an opportunity for queer & trans people of color to transfigure dark and traumatic histories into something beautiful, similar to pearls formed from foreign particles which irritate the oyster’s mantle. PEARLS is the last part of the trilogy “Cosmological Gangbang”.

PEARLS is included in our Bear (AKA Full Week), Otter (Weekend Max), and Pup (Weekend Lite) Passes. Click here for more information about our passes.

Credits

Concept: Joshua Serafin
Performance: Joshua Serafin, Lukresia Quismundo & Bunny Cadag
Sound: Pablo Lilienfeld
Scenography: RV
Light: Ryoya Fudetani
Costumes: Katrien Baetslé
Video: Federico Vladimir Strate Pezdirc
Artistic Assistance: Rasa Alksnyte
Theory & Poetry: Jaya Jacobo
Outside Eye: Arco Renz

Coproduction: VIERNULVIER (BE), BIT Teatergarasjen (NO), HAU Hebbel Am Ufer (DE), beursschouwburg (BE), STUK (BE), WpZimmer & C-TAKT (BE), Theater Rotterdam (NL) 

Supported by: Vlaamse Gemeenschap, Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie

Residencies: Emerging Islands

Acknowledgement: Talaandig-Manobo community and Kulahi in Bukidnon

The text includes translations by Christian Jil Benitez, Rica Paras & Macky Torrechilla

Access

This performance contains strobe light and haze effects.

Fierce Says

Combining dance, song, and text, PEARLS is a ritual of healing. Fresh off their installation at this year’s Venice Biennale, Joshua Serafin and their collaborators conjure something ferocious, virtuosic, tender, messy, and playful. PEARLS is a feast and it is divine.

Details

Saturday 19 October 2024

9.00pm

Birmingham Hippodrome, Patrick Studio

UK Premiere

Ramona Nagabczyńska (Warsaw)

Silenzio!

Friday 18 October 2024, 5.30pm6.30pm

Berkley St
Birmingham, B1 2LF United Kingdom
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Supported by Centrala

60 minutes | £15/13

This performance contains explicit language.

Two people are wearing baroque style dresses, one person has their back to us, the other is holding a fan and we can see their face in profile.

Maurycy Stankiewicz

There is a spotlight on the back wall to the right. Four people are doing shoulder stands with their legs splayed. Their skirts rest on the floor and we can see their bare legs and underwear.

Maurycy Stankiewicz

Two people in baroque dresses look down at a third person also in a baroque dress who is lying on the floor looking downwards. Two people hold closed fans.

Maurycy Stankiewicz

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Opera is the centre-point for this performance by Ramona Nagabczyńska. In order to tell us about female voices, she reaches for opera – a performative arts form which has remained almost completely unchanged for centuries.

We tend to associate voices with the symbolic sphere; with meanings assigned to sounds. We forget that it is the manifestation of complex physical attributes. The voices which evade the symbolic order are moved beyond conventions: which does not mean that they do not exist – only that we have lost the ability to hear them. Traditional female song practices have found their dominant equivalent in the virtuoso operatic arias created by male opera composers. This is where the original voice ecstasy mixes with the refined propaganda of a harmful order. 

The ancient Greek practice of aischyrology, based on the use of obscene language, emerged from feminine rituals. No contemporary equivalent of this practice exists – quite the opposite: vulgarisms and references to the abject side of the body are disturbing when they come from the mouths of women.

The political aspect of the human voice is defined not only by the meanings of the words which are uttered, but in equal terms by marking the physical presence of specific bodies.

Silenzio! is included in our Bear (AKA Full Week), Otter (Weekend Max), and Pup (Weekend Lite) Passes. Click here for more information about our passes.

Credits

Choreography: Ramona Nagabczyńska
Performers and Co-Creators: Katarzyna Szugajew, Karolina Kraczkowska, Barbara Kinga Majewska, Ramona Nagabczyńska / Anna Steller
Dramaturg: Agata Siniarska
Music: Lubomir Grzelak
Vocal Parts Production: Barbara Kinga Majewska
Scenography and Costumes: Dominika Olszowy
Assistance with Costumes and Scenography: Dominika Święcicka
Lights Direction: Jędrzej Jęcikowski
Tailor: Emil Wysocki
Baroque Dance Teacher: Marta Baranowska (Cracovia Danza)
Partners: Zachęta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, Centrum w Ruchu

This performance was created as part of the Poszerzanie Pola project, in association with the Art Stations Foundation in Poznan.

Co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Cultural Promotion Fund

Access

There is a set design model available for touch tours. To book one please email contact@wearefierce.org.

   

Fierce Says

You’re probably wondering: Opera? At Fierce? Just hold tight because what begins in the traditional form blasts off into something raucous, riotous, and deeply pleasurable.

Details

Friday 18 October 2024

5.30pm

CBSO Centre

Selina Thompson (Birmingham)

Twine

Wednesday 16 October 2024Saturday 19 October 2024

144 Potters Ln
Birmingham, B6 4UU United Kingdom
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Presented with Roots Festival

120 minutes | £15/13 | 14+

Twine contains strong themes & language which some people may find difficult. The work explores the long term impact of social care systems, including adoption, foster care, prison and judicial systems and the circumstances that lead to people being caught up in those systems, and the harm they can inflict. This includes but is not limited to physical abuse and neglect, miscarriage, the death of an infant, and of a sibling; and family separation and breakdown.

The show looks at the long term impact of traumatic events, grief, poor mental health, and the impact of discrimination and oppression are grappled with head on.

There is an invitation during the show for some audience members to join the company on stage as part of a long table sequence, that is facilitated by the actors with no pressure on any audience member to join in, or contribute anything they are not comfortable sharing.

A person stares directly to camera, we see her head and shoulders. She is holding a baby wrapped in white swaddling and wearing an outfit that has giant leaves printed in brown onto beige fabric. The backdrop are trees and greenery.

Myah Jeffers

A person is sitting in a forest clearing with a large tree and lots of greenery behind her. She is wearing a beige floor length outfit with giant brown leaves printed on it. She holds a baby swaddled in white material in her left arm. Her right arm is outstretched.

Myah Jeffers

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‘No adoption show! Too private, too personal, too intimate, too triggering, too scary, and too many ramifications you can’t control!’

Writer has broken a promise: this show is the consequence(s).

Set in a forest of bloody eggs, ghost family members, vaudeville politicians and broken TVs, Twine is the story of how Seed, Sapling and Bark liberated themselves and each other from a legacy of shame, violence and silence.  Irreverent and full of yearning, Twine offers a unique odyssey into all that our families are, and all that they could be.

Fall into a forest of family trees haunted by Stuart Hall and bell hooks, Kat Slater (yes, that one) and Medea, where taboos are broken, and yearnings and desires grow deeper, richer and riskier than they could ever have imagined.

‘Abolish Adoption! Even if yours went well. Abolish the family! Even though we love them’

Twine is a story about love and loneliness, families and ghosts, and the way in which one shattering moment can transform multiple family trees for generations to come.

The 7pm performance of Twine on Saturday 19 October is included in our Bear (AKA Full Week) and Otter (Weekend Max) Passes. The 7pm performance of Twine on Friday 18 October is included in our Pup (Weekend Lite) Passes. Click here for more information about our passes.

Following the 2pm performance of Twine on Saturday 19 October will be a free Open Discussion + Q&A from 4pm to 5:30pm. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Credits

Written by: Selina Thompson
In Collaboration with: Jennifer Tang (Director) & Naomi Kuyck-Cohen (Designer) 

Commissioned by Yard Theatre, Nottingham Playhouse, Live Theatre, Theatre in the Mill & Cambridge Junction with support from the Stobbs New Ideas Fund

With support from ‘Support Not Separation’ & the Foster Parents, Adopters, Social Workers, Academics, Artists & Activists that have shared their stories. 

Twine R&D was originally supported by an Arts Council of England (ACE) Project Grant; Selina Thompson Ltd is an ACE ‘National Portfolio Company’

Access

Please check back closer to the performance date for further access information.

Fierce Says

Birmingham’s own Selina Thompson was last seen at Fierce in 2015 with Race Cards. She returns with a dizzyingly ambitious, open-hearted and intelligent work that we’ll be sitting with and talking about for months (years??) after we see it.

Details

Wednesday 16 October 2024

7.00pm

Thursday 17 October 2024

7.00pm

Friday 18 October 2024

7.00pm

Saturday 19 October 2024

2.00pm

Saturday 19 October 2024

6.30pm

UK Premiere

Dana Michel (Montreal)

MIKE

Saturday 19 October 2024, 2.00pm5.00pm

Building 170, Ground Floor, Lambournes, 174 Great Hampton Row
Birmingham, B19 3JP United Kingdom
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3 hours | £15/13

This performance contains nudity.

A person in a blue shirt sits on the floor of a sparsely furnished, stark white room, holding a vacuum cleaner. Their arms are outstretched.

Carla Schleiffer

A person sitting on the floor with crossed legs is wearing sunglasses and holding tongs in their left hand and a long cord connected to a vacuum cleaner in their right hand. Various items are scattered around on the floor.

Françoise Robert

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Dana Michel specializes in creating situations governed by their own logic. She lives in a world of objects to which she gives new meaning and purposes, away from binary and linear thinking and doing. She breaches social norms from a position of curiosity rather than provocation, gently ushering supposed “marginal figures” to the centre of the conversation. With humour and sensitivity, she questions our very modes of existence.

MIKE asserts the nomadic aesthetic that has become Michel’s calling card over the course of her career. In an open space, during three hours, MIKE invites the audience to spend time inside its universe. It revolves around work culture and self-respect, and puts forward a burning question: is it possible to live public lives that reflect our inner selves? Put your faith in Michel’s hands, one yes at a time. (Enora Rivière)

MIKE is included in our Bear (AKA Full Week) and Otter (Weekend Max) Passes. Click here for more information about our passes.

Credits

Created and performed by: Dana Michel
Artistic activators: Viva Delorme, Ellen Furey, Peter James, Heidi Louis, Tracy Maurice, Roscoe Michel, Karlyn Percil, Yoan Sorin
Scenographic consultant – Technical direction: Romain Guillet
Sound consultant: David Drury
Production: SCORP CORPS – Viva Delorme, Dana Michel
Distribution: neon lobster – Giulia Messia & Katharina Wallisch
Coproduction: ARSENIC – Centre d’art scénique contemporain (Lausanne, Switzerland / Suisse), National Arts Centre (Ottawa, Canada), Festival TransAmériques (Montréal, Canada), Julidans Amsterdam (Netherlands), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels, Belgium), MDT (Stockholm, Sweden), Montpellier Danse (France), Moving in November, (Helsinki, Finland), Wexner Center for the Arts of The Ohio State University in Colombus (United States of America).

Creative residencies / Résidences de création: Alkantara (Lisbon, Portugal), ANTI Festival (Kuopio, Finland), National Arts Centre (Ottawa, Canada), Kinosaki International Arts Center and Kyoto Experiment (Japan), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels, Belgium), Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt, Germany), Montpellier Danse (France) creation residency at Agora, cité internationale de la danse, with support from BNP Paribas Foundation, RIMI/IMIR SceneKunst (Stavanger, Norway), Shedhalle (Zürich, Switzerland) with the kind support of Tanzhaus Zürich and the Embassy of Canada to Switzerland, The Chocolate Factory (NYC, United States of America)

The creation of this work is being made possible thanks to the financial support of Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie and Conseil des Arts de Montréal.

Access

This durational performance invites audiences to move around the space, and come and go as they need to. Soft seating and blankets will be available for people to ensure they can sit comfortably. There is one small step or a ramp into the space, and a wheelchair accessible toilet is available.

  Conseil des arts de Montréal Logo   

Fierce Says

Dana-fucking-Michel. We presented the UK premiere of the now iconic Yellow Towel in 2014 and last saw her at the festival in 2019 as part of Andrew Tay and Stephen Thompson’s Make Banana Cry. We’re thrilled to welcome her back to Fierce because, simply put, no one is doing it like Dana. Whether we read it as dance, performance art or live art, it’s inexplicable, singular, magical. (And, please: stay for all three hours.)

Details

Saturday 19 October 2024

2.00pm

Iron House