First Bite Festival to Return with Best of Midlands Theatre in 2017

First Bite Festival returns in 2017 and it's bigger than ever, this time taking place across three events at three venues. For the first time, the theatre festival will visit the East Midlands with dates in Leicester and Derby. Over the course of the festival, 18 local companies will present new ideas and extracts from shows, offering audiences the chance to discover them before anyone else.

All the companies taking part are based in the Midlands and several have taken inspiration from local characters and stories, including Noctium, who draw on the story of pioneering Coventry-born sound designer Delia Derbyshire (composer of the Doctor Who theme) and The Bone Ensemble, whose cabaret about chocolate takes inspiration from the infamous Cadbury-Kraft merger. The companies will have the opportunity to meet each other and regional industry professionals over the course of the day as well as gather feedback on their performances.

First Bite has been showcasing and promoting the best of Midlands theatre talent since 2009 and is programmed by China Plate, an independent theatre studio committed to nurturing original, exciting theatre that plays with form and has narrative at its heart.

Three of the companies performing in First Bite will be chosen to receive a commission of £3,000 to develop the work and present it at its next stage at Bite Size Festival at Warwick Arts Centre in Autumn 2017. Previous shows supported by First Bite Festival include Caroline Horton's award-winning You're Not Like The Other Girls Chrissy, which has toured since 2010 and viewed by over 10,000 people and JOAN, by Milk Presents, which won a number of awards including a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last summer.

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The lineup of performances at each venue is as follows:

Attenborough Arts Centre

Work in Progress - Belonging
We hear the stories of five people brought together by circumstance. Sleeping in a cardboard city of secrets, fears and anxieties which fuel the unquenchable fire they encamp around at night. As reality hits they discover that the fire is not the only thing awake at night.

Anna Poole - Gretel
Told through the eyes of fantasist and musical fanatic, Gretel, this is a heart-wrenching journey which follows two children living below the breadline. Gretel is an incredibly current and radical adaptation of The Brothers Grimm Fairytale, Hansel and Gretel.

Paul O'Donnell - Beautiful
Beautiful takes a sideways look at the pomp and circumstance of modern jukebox musicals via the medium of Bon Jovi, and asks us to question if the art of imagination is being lost to machinery, illusion and extravagance.

Hannah Sullivan - I'll Sing from where I'm Sitting
An exploration of how singing can conjure, chronicle, carry and comfort both the singer and the listener that draws on historical singing forms such as keening, street singing and murder ballads.

The Other Way Works - A Moment of Madness
On the eve of the vote on radical new legislation to combat climate change, the revelation of a politician's clandestine rendezvous threatens to destroy the coalition and scupper the bill. Immersive theatre meets urban gaming in this political espionage thriller.

Derby Theatre

Susie Sillett - The Cost of Money
Is love of money the root of all evil? Does it make the world go round? Is this a rich (wo)man's world? Does it even exist? An exploration of how and why we use money, in an attempt to understand the ways it has become central to human worth and the valuation of all things.

Maison Foo - The Interlude
A new piece of visual theatre that will explore themes of migration, home and sense of place through human body, puppetry and digital projection. Focusing on the heartfelt tale of a man and a bird's journey to find a place they can call home once more.

Mooville Theatre CIC - Suffering
An immersive two-woman show that explores what it means to 'suffer in silence'. The piece explores the mental struggle of a young woman as she suffers broken relationships and battles to find herself. Do you choose suffering or does suffering choose you?

The Bone Ensemble - Chocolate - The Cabaret!
A funny, fast-moving show with a live band, headed by Cocoa, a seductive diva who holds a dark secret. Tearing the shiny wrapper off our passionate yet dark relationship with chocolate, this is a delicious expose of big business, greed and desire.

mac birmingham

Jack AG Britton - MIGHTY
MIGHTY is a documentary declaration, a protest, a rally that often rhymes with one simple goal in mind, to interrogate if we discriminate based on one simple physical trait: height. Bite-sized activist Jack Britton (5ft 4") asks the big question, does size matter?

The Unhidden Collective - Becoming Cicely
Becoming Cicely conjures up the magic that reveals itself when we come to terms with our own mortality.

Noctium - The Woman and the Wobbulator
Inspired by the story of Delia Derbyshire, Noctium explores the story of the BBC's Radiophonic workshop and of its unaccredited pioneer of electronic sound. Through the work of this Coventry-born icon, the champion of modern music and the Doctor Who Theme tune Noctium brings you a tale your ears won't believe.

futuretheatre - 90 days
It is 1972, President Idi Amin announces that all Asians have ninety days to leave Uganda. On the backdrop of prejudice and hostility, loyalties and friendships collide as Uganda attempts to create a new beginning.

Laura Ryder - The Bee Project
Bees are an indicator of a healthy planet and their current decline is a worrying signal of global environmental problems. Through movement and storytelling we dismantle the divisions between nature and humans, finding hope.

Serious Business - We Are Men, Sorry
Three male performers combine contemporary dance with clowning and comedy, in a wry, tender and anarchic exploration of masculinity.

Flickbook Theatre - Casket Case
Casket Case is a show about our fear of death, dying and being dead. Part story, part cabaret, part totally morbid curiosity. After all, none of us are getting out of here alive.

LaPelle's Factory - The Black Cat
An adaptation of an adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's short story The Black Cat which upends the sanctity of the text and is likely to upset a lot of fans of classic gothic literature.

Rebecca Atkinson-Lord - The Class Project
Midlands-born director and writer Rebecca Atkinson-Lord performs her first solo show - about leaving the Black Country behind. It's about the place you belong because you were born there; the places that are in your blood but also the places you adopt; that you pretend are your home and the places you change yourself to try and belong in.

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For more, follow on Twitter #FBBS17 or visit www.chinaplatetheatre.com.

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