Battersea Arts Centre announces a season of groundbreaking and playful work (April to July 2021) which explores fresh ways of living differently and sharing experiences.
NEWS: Finalists announced for new online theatre award OnComm
Since the start of the Covid pandemic closures in 2020, many independent, alternative and fringe theatre venues and companies across the UK and beyond responded to the challenges of lockdowns by taking their shows online – and OffWestEnd has responded to this whole new strand of theatre by launching a new award, the OnComm, for the best of this new stream of online theatre.
NEWS: OffWestEnd announces 47 finalists for its Offies Awards 2021
OffWestEnd announces 47 finalists for its Offies Awards 2021, across 15 categories, covering 24 venues across London.
NEWS: Winners announced for The Stage Debut Awards 2020
Newcomer Sam Tutty scooped two awards for his star-making performance in the hit West End musical Dear Evan Hansen at The Stage Debut Awards 2020. The awards were presented as a virtual ceremony filmed at London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket.
‘An honour to have shared the experience’: AUTOREVERSE – Battersea Arts Centre ★★★★
The combination of Argentinian history told through a collection of recorded tape cassettes from her family archives, Florencia Cordeu explores how her family identified what and where home was after they fled Argentina for a new life in Chile.
‘It is theatre that sends a powerful message’: QUEENS OF SHEBA – Touring ★★★★★
Queens of Sheba is a play of contrasts it is angry and joyous, fun and sad, quietly contemplative and in your face loud.
‘Compelling, piece of engaged political theatre’: TROJAN HORSE – Battersea Arts Centre & Touring
This touring production of Trojan Horse, a verbatim theatre piece about the Birmingham schools scandal, is absorbingly polemical and moving.
‘Questions bandied about with gleeful nihilism’: THE FUTURE – Battersea Arts Centre
In The Future, Little Bulb has drawn on research from the finest minds in science, mathematics and philosophy to look at the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the impact it could have on us.
‘Naturally engages the audience’s empathy’: WOKE – Battersea Arts Centre ★★★★
Written and performed by Apphia Campbell, Woke connects the experiences of the civil rights movement in the 1960s-70s with events of the present day.
‘The eccentric inventiveness is thoroughly entertaining’: THE FUTURE – Battersea Arts Centre
The eccentric inventiveness of what Little Bulb has done is thoroughly entertaining.
Little Bulb Theatre: The Future, Battersea Arts Centre 2019. Photo: Adam Trigg
I loved Little Bulb Theatre’s last production Orpheus so much I saw it twice, so I was really excited to see their new work The Future.
It projects us into the world of three scientists who, with the help of a compere/conductor/presenter (Clare Beresford), explore super intelligence – AI – and the impact it will have on humanity.
This being Little Bulb their take is executed with quirkiness, music and song.
The scientists wear tinfoil on their heads and have an idiosyncratic way of talking that manages to be nerdy, dry and humorous all at the same time. Shamira Turner is particularly brilliant in her style of delivery.
Living with super intelligence
AI is represented by a box on a stand – the genie contained – and the play (and it’s rock-inflected songs) explore the good and bad of living with super intelligence.
Scenarios and presentations are played out by the scientists in their own quirky style of fun and you find yourself laughing at them just as much as with.
Little Bulb Theatre: The Future, Battersea Arts Centre 2019. Photo: Adam Trigg
Sometimes points are embellished with songs which, hand on heart, I didn’t like much. It’s a personal thing, I find it hard to engage with narrative delivered in this way and musical theatre does have a tendency to make me cringe. Sorry.
It did temper my enjoyment, but there was a lot I did like, the eccentric inventiveness of what Little Bulb has done is thoroughly entertaining.
Artificial intelligence is a meaty topic and not one that is going to be properly explored and challenged in 60 minutes but The Future touches on some interesting aspects of the debate, creating a platform for further discussion.
Little Bulb Theatre: The Future, Battersea Arts Centre 2019. Photo: Adam Trigg
All the characters in the play are based on real scientists with some dramatic license and we are left with a selection of their written works,which inspired the piece, to peruse.
See The Future at Battersea Arts Centre until June 29th.
It’s 60 minutes without an interval and it gets ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ for inventiveness and fun but ⭐️⭐️ for the songs.
You might also like to read:
My review of Little Bulb’s Orpheus
Fringe review: Woke, Battersea Arts Centre, a powerful look at American civil rights activism now and in the 70s.
From the archives: Remembering the travellator in the Young Vic’s production of Joseph K with Rory Kinnear.
And more about Little Bulb Theatre.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
‘The writing is vivid & alive’: WOKE – Battersea Arts Centre ★★★★
Apphia Campbell gives a powerful and engaging performance in Woke at Battersea Arts Centre and the play’s message about how much hasn’t changed is firmly nailed to the mast.
‘Roars with generations of unheard black voices’: WOKE – Battersea Arts Centre
Apphia Campbell performs the two central characters in Woke at Battersea Arts Centre, embodying their passion and anger through storytelling and song, in this lightning-strike of a show.
PHOTOS & VIDEOS: More on the making of Dante or Die’s User Not Found
Only a few more chances to see Dante or Die’s acclaimed site-specific, one-man play User Not Found, running at The CoffeeWorks Project next to Battersea Power Station until this Sunday 2 June 2019. Have you been following our behind-the-scenes video series? Time to get booking before it’s too late!
‘Occasionally bizarre & irrefutably theatrical’: DIE! DIE! DIE! OLD PEOPLE DIE! – Battersea Arts Centre
Yet for Norman and Vivian, the elderly couple in Ridiculusmus’ new show about ageing, time is a languid, sluggish force. Every weighty moment is stretched to its limits, threatens to stall, and is marked by discomfort, weakness and struggle.
‘One of our initial instincts was to stage the performance in a café’: Dante or Die’s Terry O’Donovan & Daphna Attias on User Not Found
As User Not Found prepares for its London transfer – running at The CoffeeWorks Project next to Battersea Power Station from 17 May to 2 June 2019 – the show’s co-creators and Dante or Die co-artistic directors Terry O’Donovan & Daphna Attias recall the article that originally inspired them. Time to get booking!
FEATURED SHOW: Check out the ★★★★★ reviews for Dante or Die’s site-specific hit User Not Found
Why has Time Out chosen Dante or Die’s User Not Found as one of its Top Theatre Picks for May? The raves that Time Out’s Andrzej Lukowski and so many other critics gave the show when it was first seen at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe gives a strong indication. We’ve rounded up our favourite review highlights below. The two-week-only London run begins this Friday – time to get booking!
WATCH: Dante or Die & Chris Goode’s digital groundbreaker User Not Found transfers to Battersea coffee shop
Following huge success at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, and a 2019 tour to cafes around the country Dante or Die’s ground-breaking digital hit User Not Found, written by Chris Goode, arrives this week in London, for a run at a coffee shop next to Battersea Power Station for a strictly limited two-week season. Time to get booking!
‘Remarkably funny & unexpectedly painful’: DIE! DIE! DIE! OLD PEOPLE DIE! – Battersea Arts Centre
Ridiculusmus is at the top of their game and Die! Die! Die! Old People Die!, complete with fart jokes, is an absolute must-see for anyone who wants to be awed by what two men on a small stage can achieve.
‘There’s plenty to like about this show’: WOW EVERYTHING IS AMAZING – Touring
There’s plenty to like about Wow Everything Is Amazing, particularly the young performers. But it feels simultaneously too simple of story, and one that was created by adults and foisted on young people rather than the young people making something messier but fully owned by them.
‘I can never do this show justice. It’s simply too good for words’: THE SHAPE Of PAIN – Wilton’s Music Hall
Fantastic collaboration between Rachel Bagshaw and Chris Thorpe results in the really amazing show The Shape of Pain at Wilton’s Music Hall.