New Perspectives Presents THE FESTIVAL OF SMALL THINGS

Theatre innovators New Perspectives are launching a new festival that shuns the digital world and places emphasis wholly on the tangible and the tactile. Taking place all around Nottingham over one weekend, this new festival will expand the idea of 'theatre' to encompass any live experience that unearths a sense of drama.

Audiences will experience new work via limited edition cassette tape, a rag and bone horse and cart, an official town crier, curated sandwich boards, a private magic show under a tree, a poet stationed at a typewriter, a box of polaroids and even a curated natter over a cup of tea. The Festival of Small Things takes theatre off stage and off-line to create moments of living art in homes, schools, streets, market places and parks.

The festival takes place at locations ranging from schools to market squares to town centres to the audience members home. Artists contributing work, many of which live and work locally, include Selina Thompson, Mufaro Makubika, Vincent Gambini, Robert MacFarlane, Sophia Hatfield, Daniel Hoffman-Gil, David 'Stickman' Higgins, Panya Banjoko, Unanima, Annabel Dover, Ravelle-Sadé Fairman and many more.

Each piece of work is joyful and innovative with a quietly political edge. Selina Thompson curates a natter over a cup of tea to stoke revolutionary thinking, Annabel Dover posts audiences seeds from the homes of radical women, Derrick Barnes' empowering poems for young black boys become badges for school children, Robert MacFarlane's words invite families on a visionary walk across their green spaces and Dan Hoffman-Gil's pays the homage to his father's dementia via cassette tape posted directly to your home.

Since the start of the pandemic, East Midlands theatre company New Perspectives have been playing with form, finding different ways to define 'theatre'. Projects have included a WhatsApp drama, a podcast, and a postcard drama. Their second postcard drama Dare to Look Down! is available until July, and they have recently released an audiobook of Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire with an all-star cast taking on the different chapters.

Artistic director Jack McNamara said, "The Festival of Small Things stands in joyous defiance of the digital world and its recent attempts to monopolise our lives. It is a celebration of all the many ways we can connect without needing a good signal or broadband. A celebration of rare and ancient forms, a gesture that creative communication should be there for all people and places, not guarded by glass doors or passcodes. Each piece of work is a radical creative act in miniature, intended to promote joy but also encourage subversive thinking. Putting this programme of work together has been a true dream; provoking brave artists to think differently, to work against the market, to celebrate the unique power of forgotten forms and the beauty of face to face encounters."

New Perspectives is an East Midlands based company with over 47 years' experience of touring high-quality productions to venues of all sizes across the UK, from mid-scale theatres to village halls. With a strong rural core, they create productions to fit spaces of any size in order to bring new work that is unexpected and thought-provoking to a wide range of audiences. New Perspectives has been under the artistic leadership of Jack McNamara since 2012. Other recent productions have included WhatsApp drama Stay Safe, a series of Christmas cards, their internationally successful postcard drama Love From Cleethorpes which has reached over 2,000 letterboxes in 26 countries, and a radio adaptation of their Stage Award winning The Fishermen by Gbolohan Obisesan. Their series PlacePrints, ranked the UK's 25th most popular fiction podcast (2020), is currently available and Soho On Demand is hosting their Zoom adaptation of The Boss of It All starring Josie Lawrence.

Running 17 - 18 July 2021, various locations in Nottingham. For full details of where each event is taking place, please visit the New Perspectives website www.newperspectives.co.uk.

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