Emergency 22
Evening Programme, 5pm-10pm
Updated 5 Jan 2023
Presented by Word of Warning + Contact in the second half of Emergency 22 — an Evening full of short shows from 5pm to 10pm on Saturday 1 October.
Evening Schedule
5pm DNA Studio · 5.30pm Jian Yi · 6pm Kerensa Diball · 6.30pm Christian Asare · 7pm Bold Mellon Collective · 7.30pm Interval · 8pm Emergency Chorus · 8.30pm Josh Coates & Alicia Jane Turner · 9pm Kellie Colbert · 9.30pm Bitterroot
Timings and participating artists subject to change.
Evening Programme Notes
Age Advisory: 16+ (mainly aimed at adults, parental/guardian discretion).
Content Warnings: some works may disturb, please click here.
NB some works have limited capacity on a first-come first-served basis.
5pm DNA Studio · 955 ≤ 996
Nine Five Five Less Than or Equal To Nine Nine Six is an interactive audiovisual-physical performance that provides a unique view of an employee in the race for success. A dialogue between two performers, human and audiovisual; live video loops of the performer are manipulated in real time using computer vision algorithms to question, challenge, and see the person behind the job title, in a bid for workplace well-being.
DNA Studio is a collaboration between Dor Frenkel — a physical theatre director, choreographer, and filmmaker — and Amit Segall — a new media artist and musician. They specialise in creating immersive experiences that question human behaviours and cultural changes through performance art and interactive new media.
amitsegall.com · dorfrenkel.com · Instagram
5.30pm Jian Yi · Magic Theatre — [scenes from the unconscious]
A new multimedia Live Art work/series expressing a deeply personal evocation of Queer/East Asian/Diaspora heartbreak… Through putting the audience in a dreamlike trance state, it explores the dark side of the mind, engaging kinaesthetically with themes of marginalised identity and mental health.
Supported in development by Creative Scotland and Anatomy Arts.
Jian Yi (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist working in performance art, contemporary dance, and new genres. Their practice is rooted in an ongoing enquiry into the ambiguities of emotional experience. Their work has been performed at Dance Base Edinburgh, Tramway, and CCA Glasgow, among other locations.
6pm Kerensa Diball · The Kick Inside
Cat Lady! Dried up spinster! Barren ghost! Frigid witch!
Poignant and revelatory; an autobiographical performance scrutinising and celebrating one woman’s decision to remain child-free.
Kerensa considers her mother’s desire for grandchildren, cracks open the canon of capitalism, mourns her lack of female role models, and embarks on a quest to become a wild and free childless goddess.
Written & performed by Kerensa Diball · Music & performed by Roman Tucker · Outside eye: Simone French/Tom Yum Sim · Dramaturgy by Bryony Kimmings
Kerensa Diball is a London/Melbourne-based performance maker and performer. She is inspired by the feminist performance art philosophy ‘the personal is political’. Her work spans theatre, Live Art, feminist performance art, and socially-engaged performance. She has presented in Melbourne festivals: Next Wave, Big West, Melbourne Fringe, and has been commissioned by Melbourne Fringe, Darebin Arts, Geelong Arts Centre.
kerensadiball.com · Instagram · Twitter
6.30pm Christian Asare · Diasporic Identity — an Exploration
My tone, my vocabulary, my gait, my orientation — does it make me British? Ghanaian? Or something other?
Doing my traditional dance in traditional robes and European medieval armament, would I feel like a Ghanaian Brit — channelling something ancient and intrinsic? Or a British Ghanaian — trying my hand at something I don’t really know? This performance explores the intersection of the various cultural influences that form my diasporic identity.
A Divergency seed commission.
Christian Asare is a Manchester-based self-taught fine artist, performer, and choreographer working across theatre, Live Art, and dance. Black British of Ghanaian Heritage but transatlantic educated, he pulls influence from the variations in culture between the UK, USA, and Africa.
7pm Bold Mellon Collective · KLAZO
A raw, autobiographical dive into contrasting experiences of the onset of Tourette’s Syndrome.
Treading between vulnerable and absurd, two tourettic movers mirror and oppose each other to create a visual foray into the breakdown of identity that coincides with the development of disability. Through organic movement, Live Art, and body prints, they explore tics and their connection to self-control to redefine the relationship between body and mind.
A devised collaboration by Maddie Mellon, Dan Jones, Emilia Nurmukhametova · Designed by Tainted Saint · Original music by Kay Rowan.
Bold Mellon is a multidisciplinary artist collective creating and supporting work that celebrates underrepresented voices within the queer community.
linktr.ee/boldmelloncollective · Instagram
7.30pm INTERVAL
8pm Emergency Chorus · All the Barometers in the World
Through a cloud of uncertainty, AtBitW attempts to predict the future, to know what cannot be known. Leeches squirm in anticipation of the coming storm, stock brokers hedge their bets, and mystics foretell a great rupture.
A work-in-progress performance of a new duet.
Ben Kulvichit & Clara Potter-Sweet have been making performance together as Emergency Chorus since 2016. Based between Bristol/London, their work straddles experimental theatre, Live Art, and dance, colliding disparate source materials to create collages of text, choreography, music, and image. Currently they are preoccupied with crisis and capitalism, intimacy and collaboration, ecology and networks, precarity and the future.
emergencychorus.com · Instagram · Twitter
8.30pm Josh Coates & Alicia Jane Turner · Metal Music
A group of metal heads, emos, grebs, goths, moshers, and punks walk in to a theatre. They walk on stage and scream. They scream about the things they are doing and what they want to be doing. Things will be getting loud. Things are loud already. We just want to be louder.
Josh Coates is a Manchester-based theatre maker. He makes work with people about people, giving space for stories to be told in experimental and experiential forms for audiences. He has collaborated with Blast Theory, Belarus Free Theatre, Dan Bye, and was a supported artist at Royal Exchange Theatre.
Alicia Jane Turner is a composer, sound designer, and performance artist whose work spans contemporary theatre, Live Art, and experimental music.
Instagram Alicia · Instagram Josh · Twitter Josh
9pm Kellie Colbert · This Is Dedicated To The One I Love
And tell all the stars above. This is dedicated to the one I love. (Love can never be exactly like we want it to be.)
Kellie Colbert is a Greater Manchester-based performance maker. She would describe herself as an autobiographical artist, who creates work that is honest, relatable, and at times self-critical. She uses spoken word and symbolism to explore memories, often focusing on themes of mental health and feminism. She has collaborated with Eggs Collective, and has been commissioned by NIAMOS and (in)sane Mcr as part of the Starvin Artists project and Breakdown Bolton.
9.30pm Bitterroot · If it’s to Break
Your soft clay is put in an oven to cook and harden. It either splits, cracks, breaks… or it holds. Is it up to you to decide if it’s to break or if it’s to hold?
A dark, atmospheric piece exploring mental health, self-acceptance, and failure in art. Driven by body-based work in collaboration with Michael Pinchbeck, with an original sound score composed by Chris Richards, this performance asks the ancient question, ‘what does it mean to make art?’
Bitterroot is a newly-formed theatre collective comprising Jake Rayner Blair & Chris Richards. Their debut was at Bath Fringe Festival in Summer 22 and they are looking to develop If it’s to Break for touring.