Festival Programme 2023
Please contact us for information on accessibility for any event.
First Flights: Clear the Runway
Join the soon-to-be-graduates as they look back on their time at Queen Mary and prepare to leave the nest. A night of performance, installation and live art from the theatre-makers of tomorrow.
Produced by Polly Chedgzoy and Morgan Obermeyer, this event will showcase a wide range of artworks including studio, installation and durational performances.
SAT 3
19:00 (3 hrs)
Arts One
Salon Sunday Night at the Pinter
Do you have any work-in-progress ideas for a performance or just want to talk to a group of creative peers about a potential idea? Join us for a Sunday night at the good old Pinter Studio for a low-stakes, low-pressure environment catered towards talking, showing and sharing any old or new ideas and projects.
You might be interested to show something or simply talk through a project you're planning or even ask us to all collectively help devise some ideas.
Whether it's a 5-minute conversation, a dance or poem, an application for a pitch or a work-in-progress action, we welcome it all.
SUN 4
19:00 (3 hrs)
Arts One
Creative Skills Academy: Journalism Masterclass (in-person)
Cultural journalist Ru (To Do List/QMUL) will be covering the four main types of online journalism and will give you some resources to make a start in the media. 20 spaces available, please book to reserve a space.
MON 5
11:00 (2 hrs)
Arts One Foyer
Creative Skills Academy: Journalism Masterclass (online)
Cultural journalist Ru (To Do List/QMUL) will be covering the four main types of online journalism and will give you some resources to make a start in the media. Please book to reserve a place.
MON 5
14:00 (5 hrs)
Online
What the F*** am I Doing with My Life?
Come to this friendly drop in discussion session to reflect on all you have learned and enjoyed about your course, and how you can make that knowledge work for you. This is a session with Careers Consultant Fliss Bush to reflect, to talk, and to plan; with the aim of helping you shape the next part of your career journey.
MON 5
14:30 (1.5 hrs)
Arts One
Writing with other-than-humans with Rosa Postlethwaite
A gentle writing and performance dramaturgy workshop that investigates ways of conversing with other-than-humans. The workshop involves meditation, being-with, free-writing, poetry writing, letter writing (following Annette Arlander’s research ‘Meetings with Remarkable and Unremarkable Trees’) and sharing our experiences with each other. This session is open to those curious about attending to other-than-humans. No previous experience or knowledge required.
Any questions or requirements please do contact rosapostlethwaite@gmail.com. These emails and calls are very welcome.
MON 5
15:00 (2.5 hrs)
Arts One
MOONFACE by Meg Hodgson
MOONFACE, a live solo theatre show, uses drag and clowning to explore how colonial mining models created on Earth are informing the future of interplanetary travel: an audience/moon collaboration exploring how much 'space' we all take up in our late-stage capitalist universe. Made in collaboration with Professor Ilan Kelman, coordinator of UCL’s Space Health Risks Research group, and the London Mining Network, MOONFACE is a humorous and exuberant love letter to our nearest celestial neighbour.
MOONFACE is a cross pollination of scientific and artistic knowledge and tactics, a collaboration between scientists and artists. It premiered at the Grant Museum of Zoology, surrounded by specimens of life on Earth.
This performance will take place in Queen Mary’s very own working Astronomy observatory, with a special post show long table held in the physics museum.
*This event will consist of 2 staggered performances, each with an audience of around 10 people starting from 6pm, and culminate in a Long Table at 7:30pm. Please check back to choose your preferred time slot.
MON 5
18:00 (2hrs)
Arts One
Field Trip: National Theatre Tour and Talk with Liza Vallance - QMUL Only
Join alumna and NT Assistant Head of Learning Liza Vallance as she takes you on a behind the scenes trip to the National Theatre where you’ll hear about careers and increasing access to the arts. 40 spaces are available.
TUE 6
10:30 (3 hrs)
National Theatre
Through the Diaspora - PtP Film Festival : 'Nest' Film Screening
Join us to view ‘Nest’, and a Q&A with QM's Dr Kiki Yu.
"Nest" is a thought-provoking documentary that follows the life of Fang Junrui, a 30-year-old man living in a cramped apartment in Shanghai with his parents and three cats. Despite his deep-rooted passion for restoring cultural relics, Fang has encountered relentless obstacles in his pursuit of a job within his desired field. The enduring cycle of rejections and limited opportunities has left him disillusioned and on the brink of abandoning his dreams. Approaching its subject matter with a compassionate lens, ‘Nest’ presents a heartfelt exploration of universal themes such as hope, resilience, and the pursuit of self-fulfilment.
Kiki Tianqi Yu is Senior Lecturer in Film at Queen Mary University of London. As a theorist, filmmaker and curator, she is committed to advancing de-westernised film theories and research-led practice. Her current works include theorising cinema through Daoism; documentary, essayistic nonfiction and artist moving images from the Global south and east; women’s cinema and localised feminism in East Asia.
TUE 6
11:00 (2 hrs)
Arts One
A Public Studio on Neurological Disease Prevention and Risk Assessment
Join us for an engaging Public Studio event where you will have the opportunity to participate in a discussion with Dr. Ruth Dobson, a consultant neurologist, and Dr. Alison Thomson, a design researcher from the Preventive Neurology Unit at the Wolfson Institute. Together, we will explore topics related to neurological disease prevention and risk assessment, including early intervention, risk reduction measures, and ethical considerations around testing. Learn about the latest advancements in neurological disease research and contribute to an important public discussion.
TUE 6
14:00 (2 hrs)
Arts One
Feeling Places
Feeling Places is a collaborative project with Queen Mary University and Half Moon Theatre. An interdisciplinary Post Graduate Research student team will work in a participatory research collaboration with young people from local schools to explore the psychogeography of the university. Feeling Places will combine the expertise of young people in their lived and affective experiences with knowledge and skills brought by PGRs from Geography, Film and Drama. With Lydia Hallam and Maggie Inchley.
TUE 6
16:30 (2 hrs)
Arts One
Through the Diaspora: Yasmin Fedda’s ‘Ayouni;
Noura and Machi search for answers about their loved ones – Bassel Safadi and Paolo Dall’Oglio, who are among the over 100,000 forcibly disappeared in Syria. Faced with the limbo of an overwhelming absence of information, hope is the only thing they have to hold on to. ‘Ayouni’ is a deeply resonant Arabic term of endearment - meaning ‘my eyes’ and understood as ‘my love’. Filmed over 6 years and across multiple countries in search of answers, ‘Ayouni’ is an attempt to give numbers faces, to give silence a voice, and to make the invisible undeniably visible.
Yasmin Fedda is a lecturer in Film Practice at Queen Mary University, and her work as a filmmaker, researcher, and film programmer focuses on themes that broadly fit under film, anthropology, and political sciences, with a focus in documentary, interactive storytelling, forced migration, representation, film & ethics, language, disability, activism and human rights.
TUE 6
19:00 (3 hrs)
Arts One
Women / Theatre / Justice
In 1979 serving prisoners in HMP Askham Grange founded a women-only theatre company. Today it is the internationally renowned theatre, education and advocacy organisation Clean Break. For more than four decades, the company has placed women’s experience of the criminal justice system centre stage.
Women/Theatre/Justice is a research project with and about Clean Break Theatre Company. The interdisciplinary research team are academics from Theatre and Performance Studies and Work and Organisation Studies. Together they have been researching what Clean Break does, how it does it and why it matters.
Laura Dean has been artist in residence with the research project. un:mute is her astute, bold, often humorous and always compassionate response to this work.
There are three elements to the event:
· un:mute – an exhibition of artwork, a screening of Sweatbox (Chloë Moss) and interviews with Members, staff and associates, past and present.
· A sharing of findings from the Women/Theatre/Justice research project.
· A Long Table on ‘How can we end the criminalisation of women?’
WED 7
10:00 (3 hrs)
Registration at 09:30
Exhibition until 18:00
Arts One
All Hands on Decks
Building on last year’s very successful vinyl DJ workshop, SuperSevens are back! Offering Peopling the Palace attendees a chance to play analog music. Led by Chris Quayle, we bring the records you bring the creativity. SuperSevens are a long established DJ collective who only play 7” vinyl who run Open Deck sessions, have regular slots on Voices Rdio and Shouting Fire Radio and supply support for live artists. No experience is necessary. Kat Five from Feral Five and Loud Women will also be at the workshop. 6pm – 8pm, 7th June ArtsOne, followed by BLT, come and you might end up playing support!
WED 7
19:00 (2 hrs)
Arts One
After Hours Mixer: Curated by BLT
After Hours Mixer, a vibrant and inclusive queer performance night that celebrates diversity and empowers emerging LGBTQIA+ artists.
Featuring a variety of performance styles, from drag to live art, this event is a one-of-a-kind celebration of community and intersectionality. After Hours Mixer promises you an unforgettable night with plenty of live performances and DJ sets, back-to-back throughout the night. Let's mix it up!
Ticket prices vary from £2.50 - £10. Please pay what you can -- all profits will be paid to the performers!
WED 7
20:00 (4 hrs)
Arts One
Long Table on Care and Solidarity
Come to the table for a public discussion on care: how it ensures wellbeing, fosters creativity, yet may be unevenly distributed and can risk individualising responsibility and eroding our commitment to social welfare. Three speakers, Dr Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal (Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies, QMUL), Professor Jen Harvie (Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance, QMUL) and Niall Morrissey (Head of Advice and Counselling, QMUL) will offer short ‘appetiser’ presentations contextualising the topic and posing questions. The event will then move into Lois Weaver’s Public Address System format of the Long Table, where anyone can come to the table to speak on the topic or to write their ideas on the tablecloth.
THU 8
14:00 (2 hrs)
Arts One
Rosemary Lee - Moving Worlds - Dance on Film
This special screening celebrates Rosemary Lee’s unique contribution to dance film making over the last thirty years, and her status as one of the UK’s most original and innovative choreographers. As with her live works, Lee’s choreographies for film revel in and reveal human movement as part of the environment, be that rural, natural or urban. Drawing on a substantial body of work, this special screening will present a selection of collaboratively made films that focus on this interconnectedness of the human and the environment including acclaimed works such as boy (Anderson/Lee1995), Snow (Hinton/Lee), and Liquid Gold is the Air (Chesher/Lee 2015). The screening will include a short introduction by Rosemary Lee and Martin Welton, Professor of Theatre and Performance at QMUL, reflecting on sensory ecologies and care in Lee’s work.
The screening will be followed by refreshments and an opportunity to talk to the artist. During the refreshments, there are opportunities to view Liquid Gold is the Air at your leisure.
THU 8
19:30 (2 hrs)
Arts One
Mad Hearts: The Arts & Mental Health - Queering Boundaries
Day 1 - Onsite
This two-day event explores productive, radical, contemporary encounters between the arts and mental health, bringing together clinical, artistic and research perspectives that offer a re-interpretation of contemporary mental health science and practice. A focus on how boundaries can inhibit creative re-imagining of identities and new horizons for knowledge and practice, and on how blurring them can help us imagine a different future. Programme includes:
Performances by MSc Creative Arts and Mental Health students from their Text, Self and Performance Module – focussed on experiences and discourses about mental health
Conversation with creative director Daniel Vais & artists Lady Francesca, Nikita Gold and Davina Starr from Drag Syndrome
Workshop with Mojisola Adebayo
Workshop with Simon Thomas on Síomón Solomon’s audio play Hölderlin’s Poltergeists
NeuroQueer Mushroom Installation
FRI 9
09:00 (9 hrs)
Registration at 09:00
Exhibition until 18:00
Arts One
Blind Date with Maya Rao & Lois Weaver
The sheer thrill of the first encounter. The excitement of the unknown. Lois Weaver and Maya Rao, two eminent feminist performers from New York and New Delhi, making art for almost half a decade in their own corners of the world, meet each other for the first time for a blind date. No preparation, no rehearsals, no prompts. Only their love for the element of surprise. Join us for the party!
The artists will be introduced by Swati Arora.
FRI 9
13:00 (1 hr)
Online
Nando Messias / TransMission: Sissy TV
So many things. What to do with them all? How to get inside? Where to find my forbidden desire? Nando Messias invites you into their Narnian closet, a trans archive of exquisite ephemera, poignant stories and bodily wonders. Their TransMission is an intimate dance of self-confrontation, exhumation, immolation, lovingly bequeathing and fabulo-cannibalising, all from the inside of Sissy TV.
Nando Messias' work straddles performance art, dance and theatre. Their performances combine beautiful images with a fierce critique of gender, visibility and violence. Nando has performed at prestigious venues such as the Royal Court, The Gate, Hayward Gallery, V&A, Tate Britain, Roundhouse, Royal Vauxhall Tavern and ICA, among other spaces across the UK and internationally.
SAT 10
18:00 (1 hr)
Arts One
Mister Poppy performs JELLY LIVE
Jelly Live is a musical work where a spoken and sung voice is embedded in an endless and static electronic throb that doesn’t acknowledge the human presence or breath. This sonic environment denies any awareness of harmonic movement or melodic content that might harbour the voice. So the voice is contained and free floating but not anchored. As if it was a sample. Which it is not. But it is as if it were. It’s a sonic homage to Rauschenberg’s Nightshades and Phantoms: traces of thoughts on the surface of a reflective sheet of polished metal.
There are 5 parts to Jelly Live each approx. 12 minutes long or short. The show lasts approx. 65 minutes.
Andrew Poppy is a composer, musician, vocalist and record producer with a unique body of eclectic work that mixes acoustic and electronic sounds with language, visual images and performance styles.
FRI 9
20:00 (1 hr 30)
Arts Two
Mad Hearts: The Arts & Mental Health - Queering Boundaries
Day 2 - Online
This two-day event explores productive, radical, contemporary encounters between the arts and mental health, bringing together clinical, artistic and research perspectives that offer a re-interpretation of contemporary mental health science and practice. A focus on how boundaries can inhibit creative re-imagining of identities and new horizons for knowledge and practice, and on how blurring them can help us imagine a different future. Programme includes:
Artist’s Keynote by Rachel Mars
Panel conversation on Neuroqueering: Reframings & Repositionings with Sumita (autistic arts-expresser), Jané Mackenzie (collaborative participatory artist and community organiser) & Sonny Hallett (autistic therapist and trainer)
Panel conversation on Queering Boundaries, Genders and Mental Health with activist and researcher Dr. Ben Walters (aka Dr. Duckie) and writer, performer and researcher Dr. Hannah Silva
Keynote from Dr Frances Williams (Queercircle) and Yasmin Jiang
Panel conversation on Arts Based Social Prescribing with Maria G. Turri, Francesca Cornaglia, and representatives of East London Arts Organisations
Creative Enquiry led by Dr Louise Younie
SAT 10
09:00 (9 hrs)
Online
Fragility, Festivals, Funding and other F-Words in Live Art
Amidst arts funding cuts, venue closures and a cost-of-living crisis, it has rarely felt more daunting or less sustainable to make and present work. In response to this new era of precarity, Peopling The Palace(s) invite you to come together for a day of discussion, care and performance with and about the Live Art community - academics, producers, programmers and artists, both emerging and established.
A Long Table on the headline topic will be followed by break out gatherings hosted by festival directors, artists, curators and friends. Some people who have agreed to come to the table already are: Selina Thompson (Artist), Benjamin Sebastian (]performance s p a c e [), Joseph Morgan Schofield (FUTURERITUAL), Karl Taylor (BUZZCUT), Lois Keidan (LADA co-founder), Robin Deacon (SPILL), Helen Cole (IBT) and Katy Baird (Home Live Art). Come join them.
Food will be available to purchase at the Care Café, and the day will culminate in a presentation of TransMission: Sissy TV by Nando Messias and ASCENSION, a new performance experience by internationally renowned artist Shaun Caton. These performances are free but tickets for must be booked separately.
SAT 10
13:00 (4 hrs)
Arts One
Ascension by Shaun Caton
Ascension is a new performance experience from British performance artist, Shaun Caton, that brings together 40 years of fertile reinvention. Caton’s ongoing performance work is characterized by his own uniquely expressionistic take on performance art - that he calls 'a sensory fusion epiphany of immense, immersive, living pictures'. Shaun creates a magical space for transformation and interaction using inspiration from ancient art and non-western culture. His elaborately crafted cut-outs and wire figures made from found objects and materials evoke a primordial world filled with bizarre rituals that he sees as 'souvenirs gifted out of deep time'.
SAT 10
19:00 (1 hr 30)
Arts One
Live Art Social
The Live Art social returns this year to encourage audiences and artists alike to reconnect and enjoy each other's company in a genial setting with good music and refreshments.
SAT 10
21:00 (3 hrs)
Arts One
‘I'll Teach You Differences’: a book launch, a commemoration and a celebration
People’s Palace Projects celebrates the memory of the Department of Drama’s beloved colleague, Catherine Silverstone, with the launch of the book, Re-Imagining Shakespeare Eductation edited by Liam E. Semler Claire Hansen and Jacqueline Manuel. The afternoon will feature a reading from a chapter in the publication, ‘I’ll Teach You Differences: Learning across languages and cultures with Forum Shakespeare’, written by Catherine Silverstone, Bridget Escolme and Paul Heritage.
Please join us for a cup of tea or a glass of bubbly as we remember Catherine Silverstone’s important contributions, launch this new publication and toast the closing of another Peopling of the Palaces Festival
SUN 11
16:00 (2 hrs)
Arts One