A chance to enjoy Stand up for Labour

The Labour Party goes through its ups and downs, well don’t we all?  A group has started that encompasses a lot of what Labour is about.  Labour party people have a great sense of humour, a strong belief in what they feel is right for the country, a determination to achieve that and a desire to support each other in the process.  The Stand up for Labour group is all of that and is something that even a Tory can enjoy (occasionally).  They have been to Eastbourne recently and there is another chance to see them coming up in the South-East for people who just want to have a great laugh.

Stand up for Labour are putting on shows with great comedians and guest speakers, the proceeds after paying for promotion and the venue all go to the Constituency Labour Party in the area to spend on campaigning.  For areas such as Eastbourne that are struggling to do much because of low membership, it can be a great financial boost.  On March 9th the Underground Theatre was packed out as people roared with laughter at the antics of Grainne Maguire, Crispin Flintoff, Arthur Smith and Lord Denis Healey.

The party gained from the promotional material, it gave a great visual presence to Labour outside of election time.  Manos gave a hysterically funny view of the Greek crises and the approach of Angela Merkel.  Arthur Smith got even the Tories in the theatre laughing (there were two  brave enough to come along).  Jon Rogers from Unison was the guest speaker who added some confirmation about why we were all there.

They aim to keep ticket prices low and get the largest number of people coming along.  On May 25th Stand up for Labour will be at the OLd Market House in Hove as part of the Brighton Festival.  They have their own website where you can find out more and if anyone really wants a boost to their morale it will surely be all they are looking for.  Appearing in Hove will be Joe Wells, Manos Kanellos, Arnold Brown and Claire Summerskill.

Brighton festival programme announced

By Sarah Jackson
Brighton Festival’s 2013 programme was announced yesterday with Guest Director Michael Rosen, the writer, broadcaster and former Children’s Laureate.
This will be the 47th annual arts festival held in the city, which takes place for three weeks each May. Over 150,000 attendees will be attracted to Brighton and will generate £20 million to the local economy.
“It’s a huge privilege for me to be the Guest Director,” said Michael Rosen. “I believe in the chemistry of it, the way it will get the whole city talking and wondering.”
Andrew Comben, the Chief Executive of Brighton Dome and Festival, said that he believed Rosen’s energy and curiosity was a perfect match for the festival.
He said, “Michael Rosen has entertained, educated and moved audiences of all ages and over several generations”.
Including visual arts, music, theatre, outdoor performances, books and debates and family-friendly events throughout the city, Brighton Festival runs between the 4th and 26th May. More information is here.

Brighton Festival Review: dreamthinkspeak, The Rest Is Silence

credit: Jillian Edelstein

We’re in a perspex walled box. Black floor, a faint glow from a large ceiling screen creating reflections of reflections. Boundless space. Projections of bare trees surround us, even above our heads.  A man walks toward us between the trees, goes away.  Another man looms in the extreme foreground. One wall is a close-up of his ear, leaking bloody poison. The image echoes around us.

A man wakes with a start.  His ultra-modern bedroom is a brightly lit box beyond our perspex wall. He steps through the door to his bathroom, an adjoining box, rehearsing the speech Claudius makes to Hamlet, urging him to get over his father’s recent death and join his new parents in a united front.  Overhead, we see him through the plughole as he tries out phrases and inflections above his basin.

Rooms appear on all sides.  A fashionable young woman nervously straightens her jacket; her brother does a few press-ups before slipping into an expensive business suit; an attractive older woman brushes on foundation. Multiple video images from advertising and politics are projected onto other walls.   A large room, one whole side of our own, is set up with a minimalist sofa for what looks like breakfast TV.

Behind us, a young man sits on the edge of his bed in the gloom, reflections creating the impression he’s underwater. He wrings his hands, and stares.

Preview: Brighton Fringe Festival 2012

England’s largest fringe festival is back, with a hugely exciting and eclectic line-up announced by incoming director, Julian Caddy.

Running alongside Brighton festival 2012, Brighton Fringe Festival is a showcase of art and culture, which will run from 5^th-27^th May. Brighton will play host to a plethora of cultural events from theatre to dance, photography to literature and with Citroen as the leading sponsor, this festival promises to outflank the last.

2012’s Fringe Festival will have over 675 events housed in over 191 venues across Brighton, including this year’s stand out fringe experience, ‘Dip Your Toe’; Brighton Fringe’s response to the cultural Olympiad’s ‘The Boat Project’. Six custom built Victorian bathing machines will be placed in iconic locations around the city, and each will be the venue for a series of original performances by South East artists.

Vanessa Redgrave delivers stellar Brighton Festival 2012 line-up

Vanessa Redgrave by Annabel ClarkThe UK’s largest international arts festival is back with a packed programme curated by this year’s Guest Director, Vanessa Redgrave.

By Alex Oxborough

The UK’s largest international arts festival is back with a packed programme curated by this year’s Guest Director, Vanessa Redgrave.

Described by playwrights Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams as “The greatest living actress of our times”, Redgrave’s credentials are immaculate. The only British actress ever to win the Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Cannes, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild awards, she is more than just a doyenne of British theatre.

The founding member, along with her brother, the late Corin Redgrave, of the Trotskyite Workers’ Revolutionary Party in 1973, she has remained a principled political activist unafraid to stand up for what she believes in. In recent years Redgrave has been a vocal campaigner for human rights, supporting Liberty, Amnesty International and Russian NGO’s Memorial and Za Prava Cheloveka, in addition to her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

Jane Fonda, who in 1977 co-starred in Julia, a film about an anti-fascist activist in Nazi-era Germany, said of working with Redgrave “Her voice seems to come from some deep place that knows all suffering and all secrets”. Her selections for the Brighton Festival 2012 programme reflect this depth.

No quarter is given to the dark forces of realpolitik in the headlining event, the world premiere multimedia performance A World I Loved by Wadad Makdisi Cortas. An exclusive festival commission, which is narrated by Redgrave herself, chronicles the life of Cortas, from her childhood in Lebanon under the French mandate, through the creation of Israel and the expulsion of the Palestinians, to the Lebanon civil war, as told in her book A World I Loved: story of an Arab woman.

 

The first ever recital of Alice Oswald’s Memorial, a re-telling of Homer’s Iliad, which looks at what it is to lose a generation of young men to war, is joined by King Priam, an opera by Sir Michael Tippett. First performed in the rebuilt Coventry cathedral in 1962, it is a scathing denouncement of militarism.

Unashamedly highbrow, the books and debate selections offer echoes of the zeitgeist in Be Outraged – there are alternatives! and Antarctica, alongside the more contemplative but no less topical The Unsaid: Diplomatic Incidents which explores how language frames our understanding of reality.

Cosmopolitan, humanist and oh-so Brighton, Redgrave’s festival programme is bound to be a sell-out success.

Tickets are now on sale online at http://brightonfestival.org.

Out of the Ordinary Festival

By Lily Davis

Classing myself as a bit of a ‘fake hippy’, it is somewhat surprising that I haven’t made it to the Out of the Ordinary Festival before – especially as it is literally a five minute drive from my house. Fortunately, 2011 was my year. Though after pulling into Knockhatch’s incredibly long drive, it appeared that every other person with a faintly bohemian calling had also decided to venture to the three-day festival, held between Eastbourne and Brighton for the last five years.

Brighton Festival Review: Sufjan Stevens @ Brighton Dome, 14/05/2011

By Nick Owen

“Hi, my name is Sufjan Stevens and I’m your entertainment for the evening. We’re going to be travelling the far reaches of inner and outer space under the cosmic battleship that is the Dome. It should be a lot of fun.”

So began the most bizarre and outlandish musical spectacle the so called “cosmic battleship” is likely to ever see. Those who have had the chance to witness a Sufjan show will know that the man is rather fond of creating his own little universes, but this really was something entirely out there.

News: Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is inspiration for this year’s Brighton Festival

By Poppy Bragg

Photo by Stuart Isett - isett.com

The 2011 Brighton Festival is taking inspiration from its guest director, Burmese Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, by celebrating liberty and freedom of expression.

Suu Kyi is the third person to hold this position, following artist Anish Kapoor in 2009 and musician/producer Brian Eno in 2010.

But unlike her predecessors she will not be able to attend the event, due to fears that if she leaves Burma she will be prevented from returning by the military junta that rules the country.

Suu Kyi said in a recorded video message that the festival was: “A time for festivity, for diversity, for creativity, for expression, for freedom of expression.

“We look to you, to use your freedom of expression to let the world know what it is like in our country, what it is like to not be able to say what you want to say.”

Profile: Aung San Suu Kyi – ‘a global symbol of moral courage’

By Poppy Bragg

The 2011 Brighton Festival will celebrate the remarkable achievements of a woman who, since 1988, has dedicated her life to fighting for the freedom of the Burmese people and for the democratisation of her country.

Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi has been widely lauded by the global community and has received many human rights awards including the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, the Rafto Human Rights Prize in 1990  and the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

She has been described by U.S. President Barack Obama as “a hero”, British Prime Minister David Cameron called her “an inspiration” and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said she was “a global symbol of moral courage”.

Her fight for democracy has also resulted in her spending a total of 15 years in detention – the majority under house arrest.