Event type: Performance

Spoken Word

The Spoken Word evenings hosted by Sophie Clarke continue this July in the Theatre Room at the Mansion House.

Spoken Word events encompass a huge variety of writing and performance styles, from the intimately personal and heart-breaking to the uproariously funny and celebratory. Poetry in all its forms will be the main feature, along with memoirs, stories, monologues and any number of almost-indefinable types of prose!

They recommend this event for adults 18+. The event is held Mansion House, Calderstones Park, 22 July, 7pm and will be indoors. The Mansion House is wheelchair accessible, for access enquiries please contact them at tickets@thereader.org.uk.

“Answer July—
Where is the Bee—
Where is the Blush—
Where is the Hay?

Ah, said July—
Where is the Seed—
Where is the Bud—
Where is the May—
Answer Thee—Me—”

Emily Dickinson, ‘Answer July’

Sounds in the Park

Bringing the Garden Theatre stage bursting into life this Summer 2021 – The Reader presents Sounds in the Park a series of open-air concerts in collaboration with Early Music as Education.

The very special series of events will feature live classical music performances, including a comic opera and 17th & 18th century chamber music selected in response to Book I of William Wordsworth’s The Prelude and a sacred music production based on the oldest written story on earth, The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Each musical performance has been chosen in response to texts from The Reader Bookshelf, an annual programme of carefully curated great literature which, this year, is based on the theme of ‘Walking The Earth’.

Sunday 20 June, 3pm & Thursday 24 June, 7pm

The Early Music Youth Orchestra performing Stabat Mater by Emanuele Rincón d’Astorga.
Featuring performances from Julia Smith, Luke Freeney, Robin Datta, Armand Rabot, Alberto Sanna.

Sunday 1 August, 3pm

17th & 18th Century Chamber music performed by The Wondering Fiddlers – Marino Capulli, Elizabeth Elliott, Donatella Paiano, Alberto Sanna.

Thursday 5 August, 7pm & Friday 6 August, 7pm

La serva padrona (The Maid as Mistress) – a comic opera by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
Featuring performances from Angelina Dorlin-Barlow, Armand Rabot, Early Music Youth Orchestra, Alberto Sanna.

Directed by Harriet Feeny and Françoise Lecomte.

The Garden Theatre in Calderstones Park has its origins in the ‘Holidays at Home’ scheme during World War II and was added to the 19th Century Mansion in the 1940s. The theatre opens onto the Mansion’s Gardens – an arena where people once sat in deckchairs to watch outdoor performances.

Much like people did in the 40s, at all of The Reader’s outdoor performances, you’ll need to bring your own picnic blanket or chair to enjoy the entertainment. During the daytime performances, you can also order picnics to enjoy while you watch the performance. No matter what the weath.

£24 Family ticket price (2+ ad, 2+ ch) £2 off per ticket

Africa Oyé: Nyumbani – Episode ...

Africa Oyé are delighted to reveal the line-up for the sixth episode of their online series of original concerts, interviews, documentaries and DJ sets, Africa Oyé: Nyumbani.

This edition of series – which takes its name from the Swahili word for ‘at home’ – will premiere on the Liverpool institution’s Facebook and Youtube pages at 7pm on Friday 28th May, with future episodes airing monthly.

Featuring on the show will be an original concert, dance workshop and exclusive interview with West African singer-songwriter, Batch Gueye.

Gueye is a West African Griot – a storyteller through the mediums of music and dance – who descends from a long line of artists. His songs talk about his own life experience of love, jealousy, travel and immigration, and pay tribute to places he has lived and those he is grateful.

The FREE online show, hosted by Africa Oyé ambassador, Spykatcha will also feature a set from acclaimed DJ, John Rowlands.

Following a terrific response from his Nyumbani debut last month, Eat Up Gud’s Greg Falola will return with another Caribbean recipe cook-a-long for the audience to try their hand at in their own kitchen.

The show will also feature music from up-and-coming Liverpool star, Remée who festival fans will recognise from having played the Sefton Park festival’s Oyé Introduces slot in 2018.

 

Stealing Sheep’s Song Machine

Liverpool based artist’s Emily Lansley, Luciana Mercer & Rebecca Hawley are a group of womxn who perform under the moniker Stealing Sheep. They create audio-visual spectacles that explore futurist themes by combining light art, sound sculpting and live instruments.

The trio are creating a mass songwriting experience for a special LightNight commission which will take the form of the conceptual Song Machine as they invite the audience to create a ‘Liverpool Song for the future of Play’ that communicates what ‘Play’ is.

Want to have your lyrics as part of the Song Machine? Tweet up to 6 words @Stealingsheep #playis

Audience members can send up to six words that will be fed to the Song Machine and processed into a new composition performed live at the British Music Experience on the 21 May 2021.

Live Performance on LightNight at 9pm

Limited tickets are available for some lucky audience members to watch the performance live at British Music Experience!

Stealing Sheep are collaborating with visual artist Amy Cadwallder on Song Machine. Amy is producing the live light art visuals that everyone can experience, either via the live stream or live in the venue.

Amy’s work is in video and installation, taking recordings of lights and shiny reflective objects and distorts them into sequences of motion and colour. The video content consists of cutting out and pairing different segments into new patterns, creating repetitive visuals for the viewer to watch.

Tickets for the live performance at the British Music Experience are very limited due to government restrictions and standard covid safety measures are in place. The building and bar is open from 20:00, with performance starting at 21:00. The event takes place in the stage area, and museum galleries remain closed.

Booking is essential. You can book free tickets here.

Livestream

Everyone can watch Song Machine as a YouTube broadcast on LightNight at 21:00, or you can catch the recording later in the evening.

BSL interpretation will be offered by Andy Higgins to support the performance.

Play the Stars

In a new interactive digital commission for LightNight, you are invited to help create a 3D story as Tilt Brush artist Rosie Summers live-paints audience suggestions into a magical virtual reality world set at Liverpool’s waterfront.

Produced by theatre company leo&hyde the live-streamed performance will feature a live score by Liverpudlian composer Marco Galvani and storytelling by Rebecca Macauley.

The event is held online, 21 May, 7.30pm-9.30pm. You can watch here.

About the artists:

leo&hyde is a Mancunian theatre company, exploring ways to combine live storytelling, music and technology. They’ll be joined by Warrington actress Rebecca Macauley, who starred in their production The Marriage of Kim K at The Lowry in 2019.  @leoandhyde

Rosie Summers is a Leeds-based 3D animator, virtual reality artist and Tilt Brush live performer. She tells stories through light and motion with her animation work – check out her Twitter and Instagram at @VR_Rosie.

Marco Galvani is a Liverpudlian composer, equally at home writing classical and electronic. In this project, he’ll create an ecstatic synth vision – listen to his seductive synth soundscapes here.

 

The Play Scratch Night with Yolanda Me...

The Play Scratch Night showcases 5 new pieces of work created by the community especially for LightNight. Yolanda Mercy invited anyone, new to writing or experienced, to her Writing Lab in the lead up to LightNight.

The event is held online, 21 May, 6pm-7pm. You can book free tickets here.

Participants were invited to take inspiration from their lived experiences and the theme of Play to write a compelling and captivating 5-minute monologue.

Yolanda Mercy is an experienced writer and workshop leader, having run workshops for over 10 years. She has worked with a variety of people within the community and professional sector, nationally and internationally. Yolanda is passionate about helping a broad range of people unlock their writing potential.

Five monologues were shortlisted from 50 entries and will be performed by either the writer or a professional actor on LightNight as part of The Play Scratch Night via Zoom.

The Play Scratch Night will include BSL interpretation and Live Closed Captioning.

 

 

The Three /\/\/\/’s by Haroon Mirza

Haroon Mirza’s presentation for Liverpool Biennial 2021 comprises two elements: a three-part video work, Pathology in Three Parts (2021) and a new choral performance The Three /\/\/\/’s (2021).

The event is held 21 May, 5pm-12am. You can watch here.

The Three /\/\/\/’s (2021) explores social gatherings and ritual, and is informed by the Fibonacci sequence and golden ratio – a mathematical phenomenon visible throughout nature and often applied in classical art.

This ongoing performance featuring Liverpool based singers could not invite an audience while restrictions apply, but has been documented instead, with the resulting footage forming the central element of the new three-part video work.

Pathology in Three Parts (2021) follows Mirza’s “modular opera” structure, and features two scenes or “acts” from a previous iteration, Construction of an Act (2019), either side of this new performative element.

As new acts join the repertoire, the narrative, based around a shaman who uses her voice to heal, unfolds exploring ideas of sound, medicine and mystical experience. Both works ask us to consider the sociological and physiological properties of the human voice, and explores Mirza’s interest in systems of belief, waveforms and patterns of movement.

Pathology in Three Parts (2021), will feature on Mirza’s forthcoming album released in digital format on the TAKUROKU label as part of a collaboration with Café OTO on 21 May 2021.

Featuring material commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art for the Melbourne International Festival (2019).

Pathology in Three Parts (2021) vocal performance by Sarah-Jane Lewis. The Three /\/\/\/’s (2021) features performances by Anne Taft, Emma Bispham, Jennifer John, Steve Boyland and Tayo Aluko.

Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial, with support from Open Culture.

Specifically aimed at adults but is family friendly

Queer The City: Drag Cabaret

After months of Drab, we’re ready to get out and werk it this LightNight!

Join Liverpool’s big mouth scouse singing sensation Filla Crack and some of the most stunning Drag Performers in the UK who will play, interact and delight the night away. Just outside Lush on Church Street they’ll have banging and energetic pop-up kikis. You’re all invited to come play!

The event is held 21 May, 5pm-9pm.

During the day artist and designer Leo Soph Welton will be taking over the Lush store windows with a Homotopia mural, and what it says and looks like is decided by you! Visit Homotopia’s social media and send in your ideas around LGBTQIA visibility and identity in our city and Leo will react to your thoughts with some fabulous artwork.

Also, pop into the largest Lush in the world for more fun and a whole host of in store activities with a live DJ and our Lush players keeping the party going.

There’s plenty to do, whether you fancy a coffee with a Queen in the Lush coffee shop, have your heart set on getting your make up done by one of Lush’s in store make-up artists or want to send a bath bomb down the newly installed bath bomb run. There’s something to satisfy all of your senses.

Can’t make it in person? At 20:00 a pre-record of Queer The City: Drag Cabaret will be broadcast from the Homotopia YouTube channel.

A Homotopia and LightNight Co-commission, supported by LUSH and Liverpool BID Company.

Audience: Specifically aimed at adults but is family friendly

Social Media

Twitter: @HomotopiaFest
Facebook: @LGBT.festival.liverpool
Instagram: @homotopiafest

The Cut-out Opera by Love Ssega

Join friends Karl, Malik and André as their Project Earth world is transported to Liverpool and brought to life from a 2D comic into a 3D Cut-out Opera.

Voiced and Directed by Love Ssega, with new music exclusively written for Liverpool LightNight and featuring original artwork by Andrew Kiwanuka.

Commissioned by METAL in association with LightNight. The event is free and held online, 21 May, 5pm-12am. You can watch here.

Musician, songwriter and curator Love Ssega presents an escapist family adventure where viewers are transported into a parallel version of Liverpool City region based on Andrew Kiwanuka’s Project Earth comic, which Love Ssega recently commissioned as part of his Season For Change Airs of the South Circular project.

New music has been specially written and composed by Love Ssega to accompany this 3D Cut-out Opera, where the 2D characters and friends from Project Earth find themselves filmed and brought to life in 3D.

As a founder member and original songwriter of Clean Bandit, expect hooks to sing along to as well as a mix of synths and baselines associated with Love Ssega’s more experimental solo productions.

Touching upon the themes of climate education, justice and air pollution affecting school-age children, Love Ssega brings stories he noticed growing up in South East London by the South Circular to the Liverpool City Region adapted especially for LightNight, as an act of creative solidarity.

Following the event, viewers will be able to download Love Ssega’s music and backgrounds to create their own ‘Cut-Out Opera’ at home with family or friends.

Watch the event here or on Love Ssega’s Youtube channel.

Social Media

Twitter: @MetalLiverpool
Facebook: @metalliverpool
Instagram: @metalliverpool

Everyman Underground 

This first edition of the Everyman Underground is a series of standalone digital performances featuring new and established artists.

The artists will be performing sets live from the iconic Everyman, Liverpool, compered by actor Paislie Reid.

The event is shown online from 5 May. You can book tickets here.

Multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Laura Groves, Jazz artist Ni Maxine, songwriter Oisín Hassan and experimental spoken duo The Circus Minds will perform as part this digital series that will be available to watch on-demand at home.

Tickets for the first series of Everyman Underground cost £5 each and are on sale now! All performances will be available to stream online for seven days after they are first broadcast.