Poetry Plays at The Cockpit

POETRY PLAYS…

...with theatre. with music. it plays with dance. and storytelling. with puppets, pop-up books and film. poetry plays with poetry. with time. with reality. with your head. poetry plays with… Théâtre Volière and The Pomegranate London magazine, in their new festival of poetry in performance at The Cockpit. Nine performances over three days - original, multidisciplinary shows featuring or inspired by poetry.

DAY 1 - Thurs. 18th - The Capital of Europe / Waldrand / Ruptured - Total running time approx. 95 mins. (excl. 20 min. interval)

The Capital of Europe

Film, sound and poetry collective Cox and Box take you to the abandoned corners, crumbling apartments and restless banlieues of an ideal, unreal capital on the Rhine. Strasbourg, Théâtre Volière’s home city, is the backdrop to an unsettling but ultimately uplifting meditation on loss and new beginnings.

Waldrand

Observed by real and imagined demons, a family living on the edge of a forest struggles to come to terms with its self-imposed isolation. Transit Productions’ interpretation of Mick Wood’s poetry sequence set in the Vosges mountains. Haunting live music, storytelling and carnival masks, drawing on folk traditions from Alsace and the Black Forest.

Ruptured

Featuring sublime, intricate dance and searingly honest poetry from Joanna Wonicka, Ruptured explores the influence migration has on identity and familial relationships. How does migration affect our ability to understand each other? And how do we untangle the messy mixture of cultural, linguistic, and generational barriers that get in the way?

DAY 2 - Fri. 19th - Storm Child / Shed - Total running time approx. 90 mins. (excl. 20 min. interval)

Storm Child

Knocked unconscious after a fall, a theatre technician dreams of an island with perpetual sun, a pop-up grimoire, and a dark father figure with terrible intent. Surreal, gothic metatheatre adapted by Michelle Penn from her collection Paper Crusade (Arachne Press, 2022), itself a reimagining of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. A collaboration between Théâtre Volière, Michelle Penn, Eric Domenicone (La Soupe puppet company), and dancers Eloïse Frey and Jan Wood.

Shed

In his last few moments in his remote shack on the Suffolk marshes, a reclusive hoarder strives to make sense of his ghosts and clutter. Poet and photographer Martin Figura, with his celebrated wit and humanity, shows us how even the most stunted of lives can be transformed into a work of profound art. An animated assemblage of a show, with object manipulation and sumptuous visuals from Martin himself and Norwich-based illustrator Natty Peterkin. A Théâtre Volière co-production, with the assistance of Norwich Arts Centre and LJ Hope Productions. 

DAY 3 - Sat. 20th - Lost Language / The Stone Men of Newcastle / All the Things I Said / First Thought Best Thought - Total running time approx. 95 mins. (excl. 20 min. interval)

In 2023 The Pomegranate London and Théâtre Volière ran the inaugural Pomegranate Poetry Theatre Prize, inviting poets and artists to collaborate on creating new short pieces for performance. The competition was judged by former Rambert Dance director and choreographer Mark Baldwin and poet and photographer Martin Figura. In the first half of session 3 we’ll be presenting a performance of the winning piece, and rehearsed and staged readings of the two runners-up.

Lost Language

Writer and Poet Saili Katebe and dancer Divija Melally perform Lost Language - first prize winner in the Pomegranate Poetry in Performance Prize. Mesmerising interplay between the musicality of Saili’s writing and Divija’s amalgamation of classical Indian and contemporary dance.  A trenchant and incredibly moving exploration of the connections between language, place and identity.

The Stone Men of Newcastle

Daniel Hinds’ Pomegranate Prize winning sequence of poems about Newcastle’s statues and their place in the contemporary city. Beautifully crafted writing in a piece with a palpable sense of place. As Daniel says: ‘The statues…represent a past impossible to compete with or at odds with our values… Yet, they can also be sources of inspiration, beauty, and connection to the past, sites of contemplation as well as conflict.’ A rehearsed and staged reading.

All the Things I Said

The Pomegranate prize judges were blown away, and so were we at Pomegranate and Volière, by the energy and inventiveness of Tom Stockley’s piece about the experience of living with ADHD. It’s a funny, tragic, angry, defiant, fond piece of work that encapsulates perfectly what we mean when we talk about poetry playing in the theatre. An absolute gift for our performers  in this rehearsed and staged reading.

First Thought Best Thought

Multidisciplinary improvisation to close our festival, with The Pomegranate London’s editor Zerlina Mastin curating one of her fast-becoming-legendary mash-ups of jazz, dance, spoken word and visual art. Join us around the long table or watch from the safety of the auditorium as special guests make an instant response to work from the latest issue of The Pomegranate London - putting words to pictures, music to words, dance to music, pictures to dance… above all, playing with poetry. 

The line up of improvisers for First Thought Best Thought will be confirmed just a few weeks before the festival, so please keep an eye on Pomegranate and Volière’s social media and this webpage for updates.

Note on ticketing: When booking please ask for tickets by their day number and date rather than individual show titles. Tickets are not available for individual shows within each day.