Upstart Theatre Presents DARE Festival 2017

Critically-acclaimed arts innovators UpstArt Theatre present the second annual DARE Festival at Shoreditch Town Hall, bringing together artists and audiences from across London and beyond in an explosion of new and in-development performance presented at the earliest possible stage. Inventive, unexpected, challenging and joyous, DARE Festival is a place for artists and audiences to come together to make, discover, dream and play.

This year's Festival brings together theatre, live art, installations and film from artists and makers from a huge range of backgrounds and art forms. It brings together Shoreditch's largest ever on-stage girl gang, at least three clowns, a life coach, a wolf and a live beetle. All shows presented in the Festival are freshly commissioned by UpstArt Theatre with funding from Arts Council England and the support of Shoreditch Town Hall.

Lineup includes:

Trigger Warning: In an age of information overload and non-stop media coverage of non-stop international tragedies, Marcelo dos Santos (Lionboy, Complicité) and Natasha Nixon's Trigger Warning is a jet black comedy exploring the politics of 'trigger warnings'. Can we protect audiences from real life? Should we? Previously seen at The Young Vic Theatre.

Do You Live Alone: What do you do when all hope is gone? Stay in? Go out? Nina's love life coaching can help YOU out, but can she help herself? A new solo show performed by Rebecca Peyton (Sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister, «««« Daily Telegraph) and directed by award-winning Rebecca Hill.

Metamorphosis (after Kafka and Nabokov): "Gregor Samsa awoke from unquiet dreams to find that in his sleep he had turned into a vile and verminous insect." Simon Watt's new interpretation of Kafka's masterpiece stars a live beetle and puts man and insect side by side.

WRESTLELADSWRESTLE: Inspired by Eve professional wrestling, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mixed Martial Arts, Judo, dance and clown. We will play fight for you. So you don't have to. Get down to your pants lads and let's f*@£ing wrestle for freedom! Created by Jennifer Jackson, Simon Jones and Tom Hughes, it features a chorus of 30 fighting women - the largest girl gang Shoreditch has ever seen.

Big Teeth: Gripped by the Great Freeze of 1947, with wolf-whistling spivs and other predatory characters skulking round every corner, London could be a dangerous place for an unwary girl. Climb into Elizabeth Dearnley's immersive installation - a bedtime story with bite.

Freshy: Simon is pissed off at being in a pair with Dawit just because his parents are Eritrean. He doesn't want to look like a freshy too. He's got a reputation to protect. Anyway he can't even speak Tigrinya. Segen Yosife's (Brainstorm, Company 3 at the National Theatre) new theatre piece combines text written by and with Eritrean performers and contributors, an equal opportunities game and traditional Eritrean hymns and dance.

How to Cope with Embarrassment: How to Cope with Embarrassment from emerging theatre company Two Pale Ladies is almost a cabaret. It is also almost a comedy, and almost a politically and socially engaged performance piece that explores a history of societal blackmail and emotional pressures.

Live Poetry Jukebox: In need of food for thought? Or food for the soul? Looking for exhilaration? Or a moment of contemplation? Wanting to recharge your batteries? Or wind down? Craving for a laugh? Or a cry? Or both? Enter Mueller and Malten's Live Poetry Jukebox and receive a one-on-one gift of a poem.

About UpstArt Theatre

Upstart is a critically acclaimed theatre company which uses the arts as a medium to promote conversations within and between communities. Our productions include the premiere of Eve Leigh's "remarkable debut play" (???? Guardian) SILENT PLANET; Steven Lally's OH WELL NEVER MIND BYE ("Essential viewing" ???? Time Out); the innovative THE SITUATION ROOM ("Immersive theatre at its very best...stirring, involving and highly original" - ???? WhatsOnStage.com) in which audiences were cast as leaders in the Soviet Union and USA during a fictional Cold War flashpoint; and the innovative pan-European live-to-digital theatre project PHONE HOME alongside Pathos München and Athens' Highway Productions, which was developed with refugee participants and explored experiences of and attitudes to the European migration crisis. In 2016 we presented the first annual DARE Festival at Shoreditch Town Hall, bringing together work by Tom Penn, Heather Long, Jennifer Jackson, Simon Jones, Freedom Studios, Write to Life and Bards Without Borders.

In 2017, Upstart has so far co-produced the multiple award nominated THE LAST ONES at Jermyn Street Theatre (???? Independent, nominated for Offie Awards for Best Male Actor and Best Set Design) and a development tour of MARCO by Simon Jones, following its R&D performance at our first DARE Festival in 2016.

About Shoreditch Town Hall

Over the past five years, Shoreditch Town Hall has established itself as a vital, non-traditional arts and live events space on the London cultural map: a unique home for original and adventurous arts and artists from across the world, and a flagship venue for Hackney. With a focus on emerging talent and site-responsive performance, the building has become a vibrant home for original and ambitious theatre and performance, welcoming 30,000 audiences and supporting up to 100 artists and 8 new commissions every year.

Built in 1865 and occupying a huge 46,500 sq ft, Shoreditch Town Hall was for over 100 years one of the grandest Vestry Halls in the city. It ceased to be a home for local government during the 1960s and since 2005 has been a fully independent venue. From the magnificent Victorian grandeur of the Assembly Hall and Council Chamber to the warren of untouched, atmospheric basement spaces the building includes eight performance spaces ranging from 40 to 800 capacity.

Shoreditch Town Hall has never received revenue funding, supporting on average 90% (£350,000) of its arts and community programme annually through earned income, supplemented by smaller project grants. Since 2012 it has also raised and invested £2m to transform the building's in-house audience and production facilities, bringing back to full use its 750 capacity Assembly Hall - the largest purpose built auditorium in Shoreditch - as a public space, as well as installing two lifts to significantly improve access.

Learn more at www.upstart-theatre.co.uk.

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