China Plate's Bite Size Festival Returns To Warwick Arts Centre This April

China Plate's invigorating one-day festival of theatrical talent from the Midlands returns to the Warwick Arts Centre this April. From family-friendly theatre about a yeti to a full-length evening show about concealing the truth, the festival celebrates the best in new and established theatre-making from across the region. Audiences will be able to see nine 20-minute extracts of fresh new work, including Frankie Thompson's take down of politicians' sexual scandals, The Sex Party; Casey Bailey's exploration of stolen artefacts in British institutions, Please Do Not Touch, and Shane Shambhu's journey into parenting a mixed-race child, Fatherhood.

Proto-type Theatre will close the festival with Dead Cats, the latest instalment in their celebrated Truth to Power Project. The show grasps at the slippery nature of language and how neat phrases like 'extraordinary rendition' cover up the reality of lived experience. Other highlights from the festival's programme of extracts earlier in the day include Keiren Hamilton-Amos's Pulled, a whirlwind depiction of one man's attempt to find love during the global pandemic, and Georgia Kelly's Blood, a fascinating introduction to a group of lesbians in 1980s San Diego who tirelessly campaigned to help the AIDS crisis. Major Labia also bring their eponymous vaginal comedy show to the festival which features Mary Berry as you've never seen her before.

Two shows on the bill delve into the British education system from all angles. No More Mr Nice Guy by Cal-I Jonel in association with Noveau Riché uses spoken word, storytelling, music and movement to tell the story of a secondary school music teacher who is at breaking point. Neal Pike's 5 Years employs the theatre-maker's personal experience of navigating his teenage years at a special educational needs school in Nottinghamshire. Billy Read's Forbidden Identity, meanwhile, looks at what it is like to be a Deaf child growing up in a hearing world without a Deaf community around you.

Families with younger children will also be able to enjoy Crow's Nest's Is That a Yeti, Hetty? and Roti Moon, a bubbly children's show about astrology, mothers and flipping rotis high into the sky.

This year's Bite Size Festival is presented in partnership with Shoot Festival's Performance: In Bloom event on 28 and 29 April. Held at Coventry's Belgrade Theatre, In Bloom features a double-bill of new work from Hannah Walker and Rosa Postlethwaite, and lanaire aderemi. The first, Gamble, is about having a relationship with a recovering online gambling addict and the second, protests, hymns and caskets is about a 1947 feminist protest in Nigeria to remove colonial taxation.

Bite Size Festival producer Rosie Kelly at China Plate said, "After a tough couple of years for everyone, we are so excited to once again be able to celebrate the brilliant, inventive and diverse theatre-making culture of the Midlands in front of a live audience at Bite Size 2022. As always, this is an amazing opportunity to see a huge range of work, all in one place and in one day!"

Established in 2006, China Plate is an independent producer of contemporary theatre that engages around 35,000 live audience members annually. The company's central mission is to 'challenge the way performance is made, who it's made by and who gets to experience it.' China Plate is currently making work with Caroline Horton, Inspector Sands, David Edgar, Chris Thorpe, Rachel Chavkin, Rachel Bagshaw, Urielle Klein-Mekongo, Roy Williams, Chris Haydon and Tim Sutton. They are Resident Producers at Warwick Arts Centre and partners in Derby CAN, Derby Theatre's Arts Council England Producing Hub.

Situated on the campus of the University of Warwick, Warwick Arts Centre is one of the largest multi-artform venues in the UK. Since it opened in 1974, the Arts Centre has been a distinctive and special place, integral to University life, an important resource for the arts and for audiences in the region and a significant force in national and international arts networks.

Saturday 30th April 2022

Warwick Arts Centre, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL
Session ticket: From £5.50 | Day pass: £36

www.warwickartscentre.co.uk | 024 7652 4524

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