THE UPSETTERS TAKEOVER FESTIVAL

TAKEOVER FESTIVAL will be an annual week-long touring festival which takes over a new theatre venue each year around the country with the aim of presenting new work by artists of colour while engaging with the next generation of young theatre-makers from culturally diverse backgrounds.

Each festival will showcase two new full-length plays as a double bill, provide workshops led by industry professionals, a poetry night by poets of colour and see the return of our highly successful scratch night. Everything will be staged with audience accessibility at the forefront of our minds.

We believe that TAKEOVER FESTIVAL has the potential to become a highly recognised cultural event that has the ability to engage new audiences on a national scale while providing new opportunities to underrepresented people of colour.

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NEW WRITING DOUBLE BILL: WAKES AND UNBURIED

WAKES by Sidney Belony focuses on the experiences of grieve and bereavement between two young Black women. Sidney is a Luton-based writer and director who has had work performed at Royal Stratford East. She creates work which explores social and political themes. WAKES will be directed by Brigitte Adela. Previous work includes Dutty Wine (Southwark Playhouse) and Tamasha Scratch Night (Soho Theatre).

UNBURIED by Jimin Suh tells the story of the forced transfer of a Korean family from Soviet Russia based on real events in 1937. Jimin is a South Korean actor and playwright who recently recently completed a masters in Writing for Performance at Goldsmith’s University. UNBURIED will be directed by Adrian Tang who is returning after working with us on our scratch night in June.

POETRY NIGHT

Poetry, much like the theatre industry, is one that has a number of challenges for people of colour. We hope to provide a new platform to explore poetry as an art form while engaging with new audiences.

We will have poetry and spoken word performances from artists including Zia Ahmed and Tyrone Lewis. Full line-up to be confirmed.

SCRATCH PERFORMANCES

To wrap up our performances, we'll be putting our Scratch Night into the main event Saturday slot rather than hidden away on a dark day. We want to put emerging artists front and centre to get the exposure their brilliant work deserves. Scripts will be selected from an open callout. We've already lined up some brilliant emerging directors for the Scratch Night including Kwami Odoom, Aneesha Srinivasan, Yasmin Hafesji, Rebekah Murrell and Jasmine Teo. Selected writers will be announced on 9th February 2020.

LEARN AND EARN WORKSHOPS

We want to do something new and innovative with our workshops. We plan to host a series of workshops, for up to 20 participants each, where we pay young people of colour to attend. Free workshops are vitally important but, in our current gig economy, often the only people who are able to attend them are people who can afford not to be at work. We want to cover the loss of earnings required to attend a three hour workshop.

We will be providing a £31.65 payment for a three hour workshop at the London Living Wage rate.

This would cover any loss of income while providing young people of colour with a chance to work with highly experienced industry professionals and workshop facilitators who are also people of colour.

Each workshop will have 10 places available to anyone to attend regardless of race or age on a pay-what-you-can basis. Plus, 10 places open to people from 18-25 years old from Black, South Asian, East Asian, Latinx, Middle Eastern or other underrepresented backgrounds where they will be paid to attend.

We have facilitators covering a range of topics including Tobi Kyeremateng (Producing), Tuyet Van Huynh (Producing), Chinonyerem Odima (Playwriting: Opening Scenes), Steven Kavuma (Introduction to Directing) and Ava Wong Davies (Experimenting with Theatre Criticism).

ACCESS NOTES

Our Poetry Night will be relaxed. Every performance of our New Writing Double Bill will be relaxed and captioned using The Difference Engine. Our scratch night will be relaxed and captioned with a baby-friendly matinee.

The Bunker Theatre is wheelchair accessible and has gender-inclusive bathrooms.

Relaxed performances means the houselights will be kept on low, people will be free to come and go from the theatre, a chill out area will be provided, sounds will be reduced and each performance will have a content warning announcement.

We try to be as accessible as possible but we do not have this cracked. If you have any concerns or queries about access, please get in touch: hello@theupsetters.co.uk

BLACK TICKET PROJECT

10% of all our tickets available to young, Black people via the Black Ticket Project founded by Tobi Kyeremateng. If you're interested in attending any TAKEOVER FESTIVAL performance, email hello@theupsetters.co.uk for more information.

WHERE AND WHEN?

TAKEOVER FESTIVAL will be at the Bunker Theatre from 24th February to 1st March 2020. Performances will be at 7:30pm every day with a Saturday matinee for our scratch performances.

Follow us on social media @TUpsetters to stay up to date.