Battersea Arts Centre Launches its Autumn 2024 Season

Battersea Arts Centre is launching its autumn 2024 season as part of celebrating 50 years as a home for the extraordinary. 

Autumn 24 season includes the UK Premiere of Soliloquio (I woke up and hit my head against the wall) by Tiziano Cruz, from Juyjuy, Argentina.  

Fuel return celebrating 20 years of pioneering creative innovation with the world premiere of Nowhere by Khalid Abdalla, directed by Omar Elerian. 

Long-time collaborators Forced Entertainment bring performances from Bert & Nasi and Seke Chimutengwende & Cathy Naden as part of their Forced Entertainment at 40 season. 

In a BAC commission, Ocean Hester Stefan Chillingworth presents a gripping cycle of destruction and creation in Blood Show. 

Priority booking opens from 12noon on Monday 24th June with public booking open from 12noon on Wednesday 26th June via bac.org.uk  

Pelin Basaran, Head of Programming says, “This autumn, we're thrilled to bring a season featuring some of the most pioneering artists in the UK and international theatre. The season will present profound perspectives on some of the most pressing topics of our time, concerning marginalised identities and geographies, and explore the possibility of justice and solidarity. We are also excited to welcome back our long-term collaborators Fuel and Forced Entertainment, as they reach significant milestones in their journeys. We invite audiences to join us for these extraordinary performances that challenge and transform the way we see the world”. 

Nowhere  

World premiere 
Fuel 

Written and performed by Khalid Abdalla
Directed by Omar Elerian  
Commissioned and produced by Fuel. Funded by Arts Council England and CVC. Supported by Battersea Arts Centre.  

1 - 19 Oct
 
“Welcome to Nowhere. 

I’m going to share with you how I got here 

And what ‘here’ actually means to me”. 

In this intricate and playful solo show, inspired by his involvement in the Egyptian revolution of 2011, and his experience of the counter-revolution that followed, actor and activist Khalid Abdalla (United 93, The Kite Runner, The Crown) takes us on a surprising journey into his own history, set against a cartography of seismic world events.  

From the histories of colonialism and decolonisation; friendship and loss; protests and uprising against regimes across the world; to the violence in Gaza, Khalid brings together the personal and the political in an act of anti-biography that asks how we got here and how we find agency amidst the mazes of history. 

BEAT-FLYS 

BLINK Dance Theatre and BAC Beatbox Academy 
22 – 23 Oct 

BEAT-FLYS is a new sensory and immersive show developed in collaboration between BLINK Dance Theatre and BAC Beatbox Academy.  

Written, devised and co-directed by neurodivergent BLINK artist Sabir Abdul, in collaboration with BLINK Co-Director Rachel Gildea, the show invites adults with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities (PMLD) into the audience to go on a fantastical journey told through music, costume and props from Designer Hazel McIntosh and magical lighting from Carly Altberg. 

BEAT-FLYS invites the audience to take on the main character role on a fantastical journey. Pushed out of Bow, East London, audiences meet an angry, Evil Butterfly, determined to trap them in their cocoons. Fortunately, An Angel Old Woman comes to the rescue and leads the audience on their way to meet the Love Dragon in their safe refuge. And before it’s time to head home, the Party Panda is there to celebrate (possibly a bit too hard).

Soliloquio (I woke up and hit my head against the wall) 

UK premiere 
Tiziano Cruz 
30 Oct & 1 –2 Nov 
 

An invitation to build the future instead of simply waiting for it... Soliloquio is a festive procession followed by a powerful performance exorcising centuries of injustice and shining a light on Indigenous cultures. 

Inspired by childhood memories and the 58 letters he wrote to his mother during lockdown, artist Tiziano Cruz deploys poetics and poignant imagery to spotlight the defolklorised cultures of the Indigenous communities of northern Argentina, where Cruz was born and raised. 

Using the power of theatre and the precision of language, Soliloquio is a scathing critique of those in positions of authority who perpetuate discrimination, exclusion, and injustice. 

L’Addition 

London premiere 

Forced Entertainment 

Tim Etchells with Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas 

5 - 16 Nov 
 
Two performers armed with (or trapped in) a single scene – a customer orders a drink from a waiter. And then things go awry.  

Played again and again, the events of this stock-situation roll repeatedly with nonstop dialogue or absolute silence and the scene starts spinning out of control. Nightmarish spiral or grotesque farce? Roles and relationships of power flip back and forth, to the point that we no longer know who’s the target and who’s the aggressor, who’s serving and who is being served. 

Directed by Forced Entertainment artistic director Tim Etchells and created with the brilliant performance duo Bert and Nasi, orchestrates a complex hilarious and explosive performance from simple materials. Together, the three of them play with the mechanisms of theatre as much as with power relationships — but in the end, someone has to pay the bill. 

Blood Show  

London premiere 

Commissioned by Battersea Arts Centre 

Ocean Hester Stefan Chillingworth 
12 – 23 Nov 
 
In a room somewhere, two people are locked in an endless gory fight. 

Blood Show is a trans celebration of destroying things, including ourselves, in order to create something new. It’s a call to action to put what’s inside on the outside, to allow the mess, and defend against a violent gaze. 

Circling around questions of how we all rebirth ourselves and carry our ghosts with us, Blood Show is part of artist Ocean Hester Stefan Chillingworth's The Extinction Trilogy. Three works (Monster Show, Blood Show and Nature Show) present a slow experiment in totally masking performers and trying to delete humans from the stage, to make us think more about why we might want to know what people 'really' look like. 

If All Else Fails 

Forced Entertainment 

Seke Chimutengwende & Cathy Naden  

19 - 23 Nov 

Comical and tangled, If All Else Fails is a dialogue of speech and movement, questions and answers. An absurd test that fails to find the answers. 

Two performers engage in an absurd test that seems to shift and change as they work their way through it. Fragments of a language lesson. Questions from a personality quiz. Slogans from some future society. The performers laugh, hesitate, ask for more time. The test continues. As the clock ticks it’s not even certain if the subjects of the test are the audience or the performers. 

Drawing on the artists’ mutual interest in improvisation, and in setting up complex, comical and unstable performance situations, the piece brings together two powerful forces in the contemporary theatre scene to create a perplexing and original exploration of new territory. 

Comical and tangled If All Else Fails is a new collaboration between Sheffield’s Forced Entertainment and dancer/maker/choreographer Seke Chimutengwende. Performed by Chimutengwende and Cathy Naden, one of the founder members of the group, the piece is a dialogue of speech and movement, questions and answers. 

Outrageous Behaviour: 4 x 4 Dance Championship Final 

Impact Dance in Collaboration with Battersea Arts Centre

2 Aug 
 
Hosted by the highly esteemed CEO & Artistic Director of Impact Dance, Hakeem Onibudo, BAC is delighted to be welcoming Outrageous Behaviour to the Grand Hall for the 4 x 4 Dance Championship Final.  

The successful teams made their way from the preliminary round in June, where they performed in a unique 4 X 4 metre squared space responding to a music theme. The teams (comprising two age categories 13-17yrs and 18-25yrs) were judged by top industry professionals and will now compete in two further rounds with the winner of each age category taking home cash prizes. 

Get ready for a night of full-on competition, vibes and incredible teamwork featuring some of the country’s brightest dance talent. 
 
Judging panel will include Danielle Rhimes Lecointe, Kenrick ‘H2O’ Sandy, MBE and Mr Mukhtar O.S Mukhtar. 

Open Research Week | Revisiting Roger Casement in the Amazon  

Mark Maughan 
Commissioned by Battersea Arts Centre 
28 Oct – 1 Nov 

Through a week-long programme of talks and discussions with thinkers and activists, artist Mark Maughan invites audiences into the making process for new performance piece Revisiting Roger Casement in the Amazon. 
 
With a background as a translator for NGOs in Colombia, theatre maker Mark Maughan has spent the last three years working with the four nations of La Chorrera: the Uitoto, Okaina, Muinane and Bora, on a theatre project that starts with the unheard perspectives of this history, exploring the tension between the desire for objective truth and the inescapable subjectivity of theatrical retelling. 

Open Research is a new strand of support for artists to explore projects creatively with a public audience as part of their making process.  It is inspired by Reena Kalsi’s Process programme at Roundhouse London (2022). 

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