Event type: Theatre

Stella

Stella is a high-octane, one-act comedy that brings to life the whirlwind journey of a young woman navigating her early twenties in and around the vibrant streets of Liverpool. Written by Robert Farquhar and performed by the dynamic Kalli Tant, this fast-paced solo show is a masterclass in multi-rolling, with the actor seamlessly portraying everyone from family to strangers—each character adding depth and complexity to Stella’s world.

Stella is a sharp-witted, restless soul, trapped in a turbulent relationship with her distant father and a constant search for meaning. Her inability to say no often lands her in absurd and chaotic situations, while her tough exterior masks a deeper vulnerability. Set against the backdrop of Liverpool’s bustling cityscape, the play moves through lively scenes that highlight both her independence and isolation. With relentless energy, Stella questions life, love, and her own identity, all while refusing to settle.

Directed by Chris Tomlinson, Stella is a compelling exploration of youth, self-discovery, and the fierce drive to keep going, no matter what. Wildly funny, brutally honest, and relentlessly real, Stella is a show that gurantees to keep you laughing and gasping in equal measure!

 

The Team 

Robert Farquhar – Writer

Kalli Tant – Performer

Chris Tomlinson – Director

 

Spooky Tales

2pm & 6pm

Perfect for brave children aged 9+ and their families.

From the Team that brought you When Another Dragon Roars

Do you enjoy stories about ghosts, witches, and things that go bump in the night? You do?

Then join Edward and Martha Creep as they share terrifying tales that will make you gasp, gawp, and grin.

Please say you’ll come, we’re dying to meet you!

 

Featuring Altered Scale Theatre’s outstanding puppetry and Petite Ullaloom’s unique storytelling, Spooky Tales is a Halloween treat!

Claire Beerjeraz | Creative’Pool Workshop

6-8pm

Join writer Claire Beerjeraz for an inspiring creative writing workshop exploring the themes of home and belonging. Claire will guide participants through a series of prompts that they used in the development of their show Rooted, offering a hands-on opportunity to write, reflect, and create.

You’ll also gain insight into Claire’s creative process, with a chance to see how these writing exercises helped shape Rooted and their wider theatre practice. Whether you’re a seasoned writer or just starting out, this workshop invites you to connect with your own stories and discover new ways of telling them.

Ugly Bucket Creative’pool Workshop

6pm-8pm

Join the multi award winning Ugly Bucket in a workshop exploring the endless possibilities of verbatim and devising.

Verbatim is a key feature of Ugly Bucket’s work to date; Personal testimony can be a dynamic tool to tell honest stories and devise exciting, perspective changing productions.

Together we can focus on how we can care for the communities we bring into our work, and explore different forms to show these stories on stage.

Participants will devise with verbatim from previous Ugly Bucket productions, learning more about documentary style theatre as we create.

Waiting For Godot

Matthew Kelly and George Costigan star in a new staging of Samuel Beckett’s classic play – in which absolutely nothing happens.

Set in a shifting, timeless landscape, Waiting for Godot follows two men, Vladimir and Estragon, as they wait for someone who may never come. As they pass the time with scraps of conversation, moments of tenderness and flashes of dark humour, their story becomes a moving reflection on what it means to keep going in a world that rarely offers answers.

Beckett’s timeless play endures as one of the defining works of the 20th century and returns to our stage in all its strange, funny and heart-breaking brilliance. Darkly comic and deeply moving, Waiting for Godot is a profound exploration of what it means to be human – even when the waiting never ends.

Pixiematosis – The Object Project

7:30pm
Everything was perfect in the midnight garden. The flowers grew, the fairies flew, the grobbity  grobbits danced a merry dance in the twinkly moonlight. Then one day, without warning, the  deranged gardener from next door threw the shed door wide, and let loose the massive-evil pitchfork-of-doom!

PIXIEMATOSIS is a happy/sad tale of tiny extraordinary creatures living in a nocturnal paradise  who realise, far too late, that they are being exploited for a distinctly sinister purpose.

Featuring sqwonky puppets, odd-automata and a slew of charity-shop rejects, PIXIEMATOSIS is  not unlike watching a lost episode of Bagpuss, filmed by the Tales of the Unexpected crew… or  witnessing Fingermouse being folded up and used to stop a pub table wobbling.

Come along, be charmed, be appalled; get swept up in the existential madness of it all, Plus Meet the puppets on stage after the performance!

 

“We loved Pixiematosis and people still talk about how brilliant it was.”

Jack Robson – Crediton Arts Centre

 

“There is a lot of love in this show. Surprises delightful and traumatic. Laughter and horror. I highly recommend it.”

Audience member – Ashburton Arts Centre

 

 

The Team

Marc Parrett – Writer, director, designer, performer

Nicole Colbert – Director, technician, creative support

Ione Vaughan – Associate Producer

MOONFACE

Shady billionaires make plans to colonise and mine the solar system, and our nearest celestial neighbour has something to say about it.   A clowning show performed by Meg Hodgson with live sound from Livvy Lynch, MOONFACE is a funny and exuberant love letter to our rocky satellite that explores what it means to be human. Expect burlesque and drag-style numbers, testimony from survivors of human-made disasters, and movement inspired by the gravitational interactions between Earth and moon.

Unity Christmas Cabaret

8pm

UNITY CHRISTMAS CABARET IS BACK!

After last year’s anarchic success, our cabaret is back to entertain you with comedy, acro, puppets and more, featuring Velma Von BonBon, Katy Anne Bellis, Caustic Widows and Teatro Pomodoro!

Perfect for works Xmas parties, to enquire email info@unitytheatre.co.uk

OTHER PEOPLES STORIES | Graeae Workshop With Mike Kenny and Jenny Sealey

6-8pm

Free for Creative’pool subscribers when you book a ticket to see Graeae’s production of Bad Lads. Workshop spaces limited.

This workshop explores the challenges when writing a living person’s narrative. We will explore the responsibility, sensitivity of the process and the emotional complexity of writing people’s stories.

Each person will share a short segment of their lives and then write the starting point for writing a segment they have heard from another person. We will encourage people only share what they feel comfortable with as we move through the process.

ACCESS The workshop is held in a wheelchair accessible space and is audio described and BSL interpreted. Any materials will also be provided also standard, large print, and easy read formats.

If you have access requirements not covered here, please email jodi@graeae.org upon booking to discuss how else we can support you to participate.

War of the Worlds

H.G. Wells’s classic novel retold byimitating the dogSupported by Lancaster Arts and Cast, Doncaster

“Life is real again, and the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die.”– H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

Four performers enter the stage with cameras and construct an epic road movie before our eyes.

It’s a story we know, or think we know – an apocalyptic tale of alien invasion and the unfolding destruction of everything we hold dear. Extraterrestrial lifeforms land from the skies. Lines of Brits scrabble to flee across the channel while their cities and towns lie in smouldering ruins. It’s all of our worst nightmares.

What would you do if order broke down?

What would you do to survive?

How far would you go to protect your own?

Using miniature environments, model worlds, camera tricks, and projection, imitating the dog mix the live and the recorded, the animate and the inanimate to create a thrilling, audacious and timely retelling of H.G. Wells’s classic novel.

Following their acclaimed adaptations of literary classics Heart of Darkness (2018), Dracula (2021), Macbeth (2023) and Frankenstein (2024), “multimedia daredevils” (The Times) imitating the dog push their inventive storytelling to new heights.

imitatingthedog.co.uk