Brighton Festival 2014: 3-25 May
Ticket Office: 01273 709709
Website: brightonfestival.org
Twitter: @brightfest
Brighton Festival 2014 announces theatre programme
Brighton Festival 2014, with critically acclaimed choreographer, dancer, musician, composer and
performer Hofesh Shechter as Guest Director, has launched three weeks of unrivalled arts
celebration which includes the world premiere of Vanishing Point’s Tomorrow (21 - 24 May) and the
UK premieres of Opus No.7 (3 - 8 May) from Russian theatre director Dmitry Krymov and international
theatre company Berlin’s multi-media work Perhaps All the Dragons (21 - 24 May).
Hofesh Shechter said, 'Brighton has a magic to it that no one can explain. Finding a place where
one can develop and grow artistically is a delicate thing, an important thing. Brighton Dome and
Brighton Festival have been an inspiring, energising and encouraging place for my company and me in
the last 5 years. We've enjoyed the buzz, the lightness, energy, and the unexplainable essence of
Brighton. We have resided in its cultural heart - Brighton Dome, and the pulsating artistic heart
of Brighton Dome is the annual Brighton Festival. It's been a privilege to have been part of the
planning for this inspiring event and I feel a rush of excitement about sharing our programme with
audiences in Brighton and beyond.'
This year's Brighton Festival features a feast of music, theatre, dance, visual art, film,
literature and debate from a wide range of national and international companies and artists. 448
performances across 147 events will take place in 34 venues throughout the city and beyond. In
total, the Festival will play host to 37 premieres, exclusives and co-commissions and 26 free
events.
Brighton Festival 2014 - Theatre:
Dmitry Krymov Lab
Opus No 7
UK premiere
3 – 8 May
Brighton Dome Corn Exchange
Conceived and directed by Dmitry Krymov
Set design by Vera Martynova and Maria Tregubova
Dmitry Krymov is one of the most influential figures in Russian theatre. Rarely seen in the UK, his
works are deeply moving, visually majestic theatrical experiences that conjure beguiling images on
a grand scale — unmissable for anyone interested in bold, thought-provoking theatre.
This bewitching, genre-blending performance pitches you headlong into a world in which objects,
sounds and people can change in the blink of an eye. Progressing from a lyrical and starkly
beautiful requiem to the Jews of Eastern Europe to an hallucinogenic exploration of the tortured
life and career of the Soviet-era composer Dmitry Shostakovich, Opus 7’s ensemble of performers use
simple materials and extraordinary skill to explore an elusive and frightening past.
Featuring original music by Alexander Bakshi alongside Shostakovich’s harrowing Piano Trio No. 2
and his epic Seventh Symphony, Opus 7 combines this with a theatrical explosion of invention
featuring larger-than-life puppets, duelling pianos, living walls and blizzards of newsprint.
This bewitching, genre-defying double bill pitches you headlong into a world of transformation in
which objects, sounds and people can change in the blink of an eye. Progressing from a starkly
beautiful requiem to lost Jewish lives to an exploration of the tortured life of Soviet-era
composer, Shostakovich, Opus 7 is a theatrical explosion featuring larger-than-life puppets,
duelling pianos, living walls and blizzards of newsprint.
Rarely seen in the UK, Dmitry Krymov’s works are deeply moving, visually majestic theatrical
experiences — unmissable for anyone interested in bold, thought-provoking theatre.
Tomorrow
World Premiere
Created by Vanishing Point
Conceived and directed by Matthew Lenton
21 – 24 May
Brighton Dome Corn Exchange
This new work from Vanishing Point explores what it is to grow old and be cared for, in a world
where myth and magic have been subsumed by what we all know to be true – that we are born, we live
and we die.
Using its distinctive visual imagination, Vanishing Point explores this subject through the
dreamlike story of a young man who suddenly finds himself in an alarmingly unfamiliar place. A
place where everyone seems to know him, where strange rules apply: a place he is not at liberty to
leave. He is attended by a series of visitors who seem to have his best interests at heart, but who
have problems of their own.
A major international co-production between Vanishing Point, Brighton Festival, Cena Contemporânea
(Brasilia) and Tramway, Tomorrow is a striking meditation on growing old, dementia, needing care
and needing to care.
As those who saw Interiors at Brighton Festival 2012 will know, Vanishing Point has a reputation
for subverting reality and making the ordinary extraordinary. Its unflinching new production brings
together an international, multi-age cast to ponder how we deal with old age now and in the future.
Mani Soleymanlou
One
Directed and performed by Mani Soleymanlou
Co-directed by Alice Ronfard
UK Premiere
3 – 5 May
Brighton Dome Studio Theatre
Nominated in by Quebec’s Association of Theatre Critics (AQCT) as Best Original Script and winner
of Best Male Performance, Mani Soleymanlou’s one-man show is a search for identity, a coming-of-age
and a coming-to-terms story in which he searches, finds, loses, forgets, rejects and ignores what
he thought he always wanted to be. It’s also a comedy.
From his birthplace in Iran, via Paris to Montreal, where he now lives, Soleymanlou charts his own
journey and ponders that of today’s Persian youth, who fight daily for their liberty, their freedom
of speech and their lives. Along the way he attempts to answer a recurring question: how can you
embrace what you are without rejecting where you came from?
One is a solo performance but it is populated by numerous characters: family members, girlfriends,
worshippers, airline passengers. Above all, the culture, colours and scents of Iran permeate this
witty, wise and optimistic love letter to home and identity.
Berlin Theatre Group
Perhaps all the Dragonsin our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once,
with beauty and courage
UK premiere
21 – 24 May
The Spire
Thirty chairs in front on 30 individual screens. Thirty tellings of 30 tales — one-to-one
encounters that blur at the edges and seep into neighbouring stories. The spectator will get to see
five stories; perhaps the one about the famous pianist who realizes on stage that she studied the
wrong concerto. Or the neurosurgeon who swaps the heads and bodies of two monkeys, which remain
alive. Maybe a look at the 700,000 Japanese people who withdraw into their bedrooms for a year at a
time.
Following its UK debut at the 2012 Festival with Land’s End, the celebrated Belgian collective of
Bart Baele and Yves Degryse returns with a unique theatrical experience that encounters the people
behind stories, both big and small, in the international media. The stories are transformed into 30
filmed monologues orchestrated by dramaturgy that gives them coherence and interaction, and
challenges the way we tell stories and the way we hear them.
Berlin’s imaginative project challenges the way we tell stories and the way we hear them, as 30
films are experienced as one-to-one encounters.
Invisible Flock
Bring the Happy
3 – 25 May
Onca Gallery
Invisible Flock invites you to create a map of happiness in Brighton. This life-affirming project
is going to try to create a portrait of people’s lives, taking happy memories from local residents
and weaving them into a spectacular live event that celebrates the happiness of Brighton.
For ten days, a city-centre gallery will be transformed into a giant 3D map of Brighton on which
you can plot your own happy memories. A first kiss, a longed-for baby, a chance encounter: where
did it happen and how happy did it make you feel? As the people of Brighton mark their moments of
happiness, we can all explore what has made people happy – and where.
Invisible Flock
Bring the Happy Live
23 – 25 May
The Old Market
With the brilliant six-piece band Hope & Social, the memories collected from Brighton and
throughout the country will be shared in all their beautiful, tragic, ridiculous and occasionally
mundane glory in Bring the Happy Live. Pitched somewhere between a wedding and a wake, this
performance is an extravagant event specially created to celebrate happiness and where we find it.
Northern Stage
Catch-22
by Joseph Heller
Directed by Rachel Chavkin
13 – 17 May
Theatre Royal Brighton
For 60 years Joseph Heller’s explosive satire on the absurdities of bureaucracy has been cult
reading, hailed as one of the definitive novels of the last century. Now it can be cult watching,
too, as Northern Stage presents the first UK touring production of Heller’s own dramatization.
During the closing months of World War II, Captain John Yossarian is trapped in the illogical cycle
of an inescapable war. As he and his fellow airmen struggle to maintain their sanity – and their
lives – amidst the madness of military reasoning, Yossarian is stalked and thwarted by the
merciless Catch-22.
Directed by Rachel Chavkin of acclaimed New York company The TEAM, this production brings together
a superb ensemble to mine the fast-moving theatricality of Heller’s cynical vision. Intense and
subversive, this is energetic and edgy theatre that will appeal to anyone who has ever questioned
‘the system’, or found themselves in a catch-22.
Fire Exit / David Leddy
Long Live The Little Knife
14 & 15 May
Brighton Dome Studio Theatre
Liz and Jim are small-time con artists on a mission to be the greatest art forgers in the world.
There’s only one problem: they can’t paint. But when you need £250,000 to buy your way out of a
turf war, you can’t let a little thing like that stand in your way…
Long Live The Little Knife is a fast-paced and boisterous caper whose pared-down presentation
heightens its true-story feel. As he picks his way through forgery, castration and blind
drunkenness, writer and director David Leddy asks whether we can ever know if something - be it
love, the story of two con artists or a castrated labradoodle in a classic Chanel bag — is real.
Globe Theatre on Tour
Much Ado About Nothing
by William Shakespeare
Directed by Max Webster
22 – 25 May
St Nicholas Rest Garden
Claudio loves Hero and Hero loves Claudio, and it seems that nothing will keep them apart. Benedick
loves Beatrice and Beatrice loves Benedick, and it seems that nothing will bring them together.
Until, that is, plots and scheming turn things upside down, with reputations and lives at stake…
Its irresistible blend of comedy, romance and drama makes Much Ado About Nothing one of
Shakespeare’s most captivating plays, and in the bickering, bantering Beatrice and Benedick it
presents one of the most beguiling of all romances. Performed on an Elizabethan-style stage in the
tranquil open-air setting of the St Nicholas Rest Garden, Max Webster’s production continues the
Shakespeare’s Globe’s much-loved presence at Brighton Festival. The Globe provides the joy, the
pathos and the thrill; you can bring the picnic.
Third World Television
The Epicene Butcher and Other Stories for Consenting Adults
Directed by John Trengove
Written by Gwydion Beynon
19 – 21 May
Brighton Dome Studio Theatre
Did you ever wonder what cats dream about when they’re in heat? What happens when a butcher
develops a taste for the most beautiful woman in the land?
Find out in this weird but
wonderful cross-cultural theatrical oddity, rooted in children’s street theatre but
definitely not for children…
Kamishibai is an ancient Japanese form of street theatre; traditional storytellers cycled
from village to village telling stories using hand-drawn cartoon boards. Here the
traditional art form is given an hilarious, profane and utterly original revival in a cult
show that has been a huge hit from South Africa to Edinburgh. In this colourful reinvention
the tales are firmly for adults and run the gamut from the silly to the sublime. From
pornography to epic poetry. From cannibalism to nuclear catastrophe.
Using simple but beautifully drawn images, Jemma Kahn conjures a frame-by-frame comic
strip, a sort of live Manga cartoon that blends the traditional with the contemporary,
aided and abetted by her sulky accomplice, Chalk Boy. Clever, funny and, in a silent story
about the Fukishima tragedy, extremely moving, the beauty of the illustrations and the
sheer verve of the language pay joyous tribute to visual and verbal storytelling.
Berlin (Antwerp)
Bonanza
4 – 6 May
Sallis Benney Theatre
Once Bonanza was booming: there were 6,000 inhabitants, 36 saloons, seven dance halls and
innumerable prostitutes. Now there are just five houses and seven permanent residents who live on a
hotbed of accusations, gossip, surveillance and fear. In a unique cinematic portrait of a desolate
Colorado mining town, Berlin creates a world in miniature using a scale model of the town alongside
five film screens – one for each of the residents’ houses. As we watch interviews with the
inhabitants, our prejudices are confounded and questions are raised about why people choose to live
in such a remote community – and to what extent it is a community at all.
Cheek by Jowl
’Tis Pity She’s a Whore
by John Ford
8– 10 May
Theatre Royal Brighton
‘Thou hast told a tale whose every word,
Threatens eternal slaughter to the soul.’
Incest, religion and corrupt morality collide in the tale of a brother and sister, locked in a
relationship that defies taboos and that sparks a passionate descent into hell. Even after nearly
400 years, few plays are as controversial as this dark and violent Jacobean tragedy, and few are as
intense.
Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod’s internationally acclaimed production updates the action to a
contemporary setting which, our modern different attitude to sex and social boundaries, emphasizes
the play’s ability to shock audiences of any era.
Thrillingly paced as it hurtles to its climax, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore is classic theatre with a
startlingly modern outlook — typical of the gripping, stunningly theatrical style which
characterizes Cheek by Jowl’s work.
Tim Crouch and Andy Smith
what happens to the hope at the end of the evening
Written and performed by Tim Crouch and Andy Smith
Directed by Karl James
3 – 5 May
Brighton Dome Studio Theatre
Your friend is late. The meal is spoiled. A shadow has fallen. The story of this evening, one
evening and every evening. The story of two men meeting in the middle of their lives, and at the
outer edges of their friendship. As they strive for common ground – as they fight and fail, as the
wine is drunk and the world falls apart – the possibility of the theatre as a place for community
and change comes alive.
An extraordinary new play by long-term friends and award-winning theatre-makers Tim Crouch and Andy
Smith (An Oak Tree, ENGLAND, The Author), what happens to the hope at the end of the evening opened
to critical acclaim at the Almeida Theatre, London, in July 2013. It marks a welcome return to
Brighton Festival for Crouch, whose I, Malvolio was a highlight of the 2010 programme.
Ida Barr’s Mash Up
Written and performed by Christopher Green
18 May
Brighton Dome Studio Theatre
Musically pitched somewhere between Lady Gaga and Lord Haw-Haw, Ida Barr is the world’s only oldtime music hall artiste turned Rap superstar. Following the success of her albums Artificial Hip
Hop and Slipped Disco, she has been busy working with young people, elders, community choirs and
musicians from across the city to create a mass intergenerational choral experience.
Music-hall singalong meets R&B pump and grind in this inspired musical fusion that will set toes
tapping whether you’re a grandparent, a grandchild or somewhere in between. So join Ida and friends
for the ultimate Music Hall/Hip Hop/Rap crossover —followed by a nice cuppa, of course.
-ENDSFor further enquiries, please contact our press team:
Emma Robertson, Head of Press and PR – emma.robertson@brightondome.org I 01273 260 803
Chris Challis, Senior Press Officer – chris.challis@brightondome.org | 01273 260838
Anna Whelan, Digital and Admin Officer – anna.whelan@brightondome.org | 01273 260825
Ticket Office - 01273 709709 | brightondome.org
Follow us on Twitter - www.twitter.com/brightdome (@brightdome)
Join our Facebook fan site - www.facebook.com/brightondome
Listen to our monthly podcast - http://soundcloud.com/brighton-dome
Notes To Editors:
About Brighton Festival:

















Brighton Festival is an annual mixed arts festival which takes place across three weeks in the city each
May. The festival’s total audience reach in 2013 was 470,000, including public visual art installations
experienced by over 300,000 people.
Full programme details will be announced on Tuesday 25 February 2014.
Brighton Festival attracts inspiring and internationally significant Guest Director’s who bring cohesion
to the artistic programme with British sculptor Anish Kapoor as inaugural curator in 2009 followed by
the Godfather of modern music Brian Eno in 2010, the Burmese Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 2011,
actress and Human Rights campaigner Vanessa Redgrave in 2012 and poet, author and former Children’s
Laureate Michael Rosen in 2013.
Brighton Festival 2013 featured 370 performances, 154 events and 28 commissions and premieres across 33
venues in and around the city, reaching 470,000 people.
Brighton Festival is an innovative commissioning and producing arts festival, offering an ambitious
programme that makes the most of the city’s distinctive atmosphere.
Brighton Festival is England’s most established mixed arts Festival and a major milestone in the
international cultural calendar
Brighton Festival includes visual art, theatre, music, dance, books and debates, family friendly events
and outdoor performances throughout the city including site-specific and unusual locations.
Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival produces the annual Brighton Festival and also manages the three
venues of Brighton Dome year round. It aims to champion the power of the arts, to enrich and change
lives and inspire and enable artists to be their most creative.
The first Brighton Festival in 1967 controversially included the first ever exhibition of Concrete
Poetry in the UK, alongside performances by Lawrence Olivier, Anthony Hopkins and Yehudi Menuhin
Hofesh Shechter Company is a Resident Company of Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival since 2008.
The UK premiere of Hofesh Shechter’s new work Sun takes place at Sadler’s Wells on Wednesday 30 October
2013.
Sun is produced by Hofesh Shechter Company with generous support from Bruno Wang and The Columbia
Foundation fund of the London Community Foundation.
Sun is co-commissioned by Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival, Sadler’s Wells London, Melbourne Festival,
Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Théâtre de la Ville - Paris, Festspielhaus St Pölten (including
a working residency), Berliner Festspiele - Foreign Affairs, Roma Europa, with co-production support
from Mercat de les Flors and the Theatre Royal Plymouth.
Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival manages a year round programme of arts at Brighton Dome – a three
space, Grade 1 listed building made up of the Concert Hall, Corn Exchange and Studio Theatre - and
produces the annual Brighton Festival in May.
It aims to champion the power of the arts, to enrich and change lives, and to inspire and enable artists
to be their most creative.
Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival are a registered arts charity
Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival are working with the Royal Pavilion & Museums on a joint masterplan to
realize a future vision for the Royal Pavilion Estate. For updates and news please visit
www.brightondome.org or contact royalpavilionestate@brightondome.org to be added to our mailing list.
About Hofesh Shechter:
Hofesh Shechter is recognised as one of the UK’s most exciting artists and is renowned for composing the musical
scores for his dance creations with his raw, atmospheric music complimenting his Company’s unique physicality.
Hofesh graduated from the Jerusalem Academy for Dance and Music before moving to Tel Aviv to join the world
renowned Batsheva Dance Company, where he worked with artistic director Ohad Naharin and other choreographers
including Wim Vandekeybus, Paul Selwyn-Norton, Tero Saarinen, and Inbal Pinto. Hofesh began drum and percussion
studies whilst in Tel Aviv and continued later in Paris at the Agostiny College of Rhythm. Subsequently, he
began experimenting and developing his own music while participating in various projects in Europe involving
dance, theatre and body-percussion. In 2002 Hofesh arrived in the UK.
His choreographic debut, Fragments, for which he also created the score, immediately attracted international
attention and in 2004 Hofesh was commissioned by The Place Prize to create the sextet, Cult. The work was one of
five selected finalists and was announced winner of the Audience Choice Award. From 2004 to 2006 Hofesh was
Associate Artist at The Place and was commissioned by the Robin Howard Foundation to create Uprising. The three
works formed the triple bill deGENERATION, Hofesh’s first full evening of work.
In 2007 London’s three major dance venues, The Place, Southbank Centre and Sadler’s Wells, collaborated on a
unique producing venture, commissioning Hofesh to create In your rooms which was presented at all three venues
in 2007 and culminated in sell-out shows at Sadler’s Wells Theatre. In your rooms was nominated for a South Bank
Show Award and won the Critics’ Circle Award for best choreography (modern) in 2008.
In 2008, in response to popular demand Hofesh formed Hofesh Shechter Company and the Company embarked on its
first world tour and became resident at Brighton Dome.
Since then the Company can be found performing
throughout Europe, Asia, North America and Australia and reaching audiences in many of the world’s leading dance
venues. Recent tours have included South America and the Middle East with the global appetite for Shechter’s
work continuing with his later creations.
Now under the banner of Hofesh Shechter Company, in 2009 Hofesh produced his first The Choreographer’s Cut–
commissioned by Sadler’s Wells and performed at The Roundhouse. He reworked his acclaimed double bill
Uprising/In your rooms to feature a band of 20 musicians alongside a company of 17 dancers. Also in 2009 Hofesh
was commissioned by Brighton Festival in 2009 to create the “exquisitely acrimonious” The Art of Not Looking
Back (The Observer, 2009) which was inspired by and made for six female dancers alongside a major new youth work
called Bangers and Mash.
In May 2010 his first full-length work Political Mother, commissioned by Brighton
Festival and premiered at the Brighton Festival, winning 5 star reviews from all the major national press and
subsequently embarking on an extensive international tour, further cementing the Company’s reputation.
2011 saw the second time Hofesh created a ‘Choreographer’s Cut’ of his work, this time for Political Mother –
the result was‘a howling beast of a dance show’ (Metro), featuring over 40 performers and which returns to
Sadler’s Wells in July 2013. Shechter collaborated with Antony Gormley on Survivor commissioned by the Barbican
and reaching sell-out audiences for its run in January 2012. In October 2013, Hofesh unveiled his next major
creation co-produced by partners around the world and co-commissioned by Brighton Festival and on worldwide tour
until the summer of 2014.
Alongside his work for Hofesh Shechter Company, Hofesh’s works have been taken into the repertory of many UK and
international dance companies including Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet (New York), Carte Blanche Dance Company
(Norway), Bern Ballett (Switzerland), Scottish Dance Theatre (UK) and CandoCo (UK).
He has also worked as a choreographer in theatre, television and opera notably at The Royal Court Theatre for
Motortown by Simon Stephens (2006), The Arsonists (2007), and for the National Theatre’s award winning
production of Saint Joan (2007) directed by Marianne Elliot and starring Anne Marie Duff. In television, Hofesh
choreographed the hit dance sequence ‘Maxxie’s Dance’ for the opening of the second series of Channel 4’s
popular drama Skins. In 2013 Hofesh will collaborate with Metropolitan Opera, New York.
Hofesh is an Associate Artist of Sadler’s Wells and Hofesh Shechter Company is Resident Company at Brighton
Dome.