20 Apr 2023
How how how is it April already?
We hope you're enjoying the new lurch into sunny weather as much as we are. After a very busy March, Barrel Organ has a quieter month ahead, but that gives us an excellent opportunity to share work from the past month and shout about some of our faves presenting brilliant work over the next few weeks.
The quality and ambition of the shows at LIVE at Barnsley Civic blew us away a few weeks back, and showed us the way forward for hybrid theatre. Thanks once again to this fantastic cohort of artists, and to everyone who came along in person and online. You can catch up with the acts by following this link here.
Then we headed to Doncaster to wrap up this stage of our Campfire project with Doncaster Mind, presenting a work-in-progress with some fantastic participants and audience members at CAST (pic below, by Wemmy Ogunyankin). We all left that room with the warmest, fuzziest feelings, and can't wait for the project to go on to even bigger and better things.
Our week in Leicester a week later kicked off with NSDF. It was a day of reflection, discussion, and hope, and as ever was a joy to connect with young artists who are the future of theatre. It was topped off by a performance by lowercase, who are receiving support from our Barrel Organ and Company programme this year, presenting their first ever public performance. Is It Dead Out is going to be at our next LIVE event and in Grimsby later in the year - you won't want to miss this one.
Then we spent the rest of the week exploring and playing with a fab bunch of Leicester-based young artists, thinking about how to make work collaboratively. We ended the week presenting a brand-new piece of work, The Bolts of Being, which we live-streamed after only four days of making! You can watch the recording by clicking the link below - it's a hoot. Thanks to the Leicester Curve for hosting us.
Now for shout-out time! Some pals of us from NSDF are involved in the transfer of Chalk Line Theatre's Blanket Ban to Southwark Playhouse, following a SOLD OUT Edinburgh Festival Fringe run, hot on the heels of their stint as winners of the Underbelly and New Diorama Untapped Award. You can find tickets from 25 April - 20 May 2023 here.
Then, after you've seen that, you can catch last year's Barrel Organ and Company artists, Votive Theatre, present their all-kinds-of-excellent show Choose Your Fighter, at Camden People's Theatre, 9th-13th May (tickets available on this link). This show has a special place in our heart as it was the first BO&Co show to be presented in-person at NSDF, and we knew from the moment we started supporting Katrina and Amy that they were onto something special. We weren't wrong.
Anyway, that's enough recommendations to be getting on with for now. Enjoy all the bank holiday silliness in May - we'll see you in a few weeks.
Team BO x