A season of two halves, we enter our fifth autumn with an opening October flurry — the seventeenth free day out for the curious, followed hard on by an evening of the different. We then fast forward to November for a special comeback and an exploration of manliness…
Brought to you by hÅb with Black Gold Arts Festival, Contact, Divergency, STUN, The Lowry + Z-arts, we look forward to seeing you at some or all of Autumn/Winter 2016. If you want to check out what happened last season take a look at our Spring/Summer 2016 archive, and if you came to an event please help us by taking a few minutes to fill out our online survey.
What is Word of Warning + where did it come from?
Consistently refreshing and surprising, no season is ever the same…
Simply put, Word of Warning is a one-stop shop for the bonkers, the beautiful and the bizarre of new live performance — an attempt to keep alive the best of the 25 year greenroom legacy and to introduce new people to the possibilities of seeing live work in Manchester + beyond…
…a strand of alternative and fledgling work that has only recently got a new lease of life via Word of Warning and Emergency.
Creative Tourist on Manchester theatre (November 2014)
We take live work very seriously — but we don’t take ourselves seriously at all. Over the past 4½ years we’ve shown funny, thought-provoking, beautiful work by the likes of Action Hero, Michael Pinchbeck, Ria Hartley, Lowri Evans, the vacuum cleaner, Leentje Van de Cruys, Stacy Makishi, Kim Noble + Richard DeDomenici amongst others. We’ve also created bonkers all ages live art (Haphazard), hosted Hunt & Darton’s pop-up art-café, unleashed bizarre behaviour upon Manchester’s city centre (Hazard) and created performance festivals in blocks of flats (Domestic).
Curated by the ever-impressive Word Of Warning…
The Guardian’s Lyn Gardner, on Domestic (November 2013)
Who’s it for? Anyone looking for a different night (or day) out.
We don’t want to put you off by talking labels — yes there’ll be theatre, live art, dance — the aim is to be anything but elitist or po-faced. So if you like comedy, music, gaming or just a friendly, stimulating evening — there’ll be something you might want to take a chance on.
What our audiences said about the work in S/S 2016
• Astonishing. Like nothing else. Transformative, immersive, moving.
• Brave, dark, humerous, intimate, intense.
• Heartwarming, funny + engaging.
• Strangely mesmeric. A unique experience.
• Very enjoyable — felt accessible and thus enjoyable to all.
What our audiences said about us in S/S 2016
• Always special, bringing the unexpected and intriguing, thank you.
• Bringing some of the most interesting performance work in the world to our city.
• Fabulous for seeing things different from the mainstream machine.
• I don’t know what I would do with my spare time without you.
Who is Word of Warning?
My name’s Tamsin Drury and I run an organisation called hÅb, which was greenroom’s partner for over a decade. You might not know hÅb but you might know some of our events — like Emergency (Manchester’s free marathon of live work, now in its seventeenth year) and Hazard (biennial random sprees of eccentricity in Manchester’s City Centre).
I’ve been around a while, a really long while… and in that time, I’ve been responsible for making the Arndale Tower flash, wrapping Cathedral Gardens in 7km of hazard tape and encouraging a mass audience conga and a glitter-cannon Hallelujah chorus! On the less eccentric side, over the years hÅb has also worked with literally hundreds of young NW artists to help them create new pieces of theatre + dance.
Please send programming enquiries to me at info@habarts.org
I’m joined in this lunacy by John Franklin, greenroom’s long time programme co-ordinator. Often spotted in a hat or proffering a variety of bizarre refreshments, John is the friendly face greeting you and eliciting your feedback at many of our events. We are also grateful for the support of a growing band of hÅb-ettes: currently Catherine (Cat) Shaw, Sam Stockdale + Toni-Dee Paul.