Haphazard 2023
Programme Notes
Updated 8 February 2024
A free day out for the curious of all ages presented by Word of Warning + Z-arts on Saturday 22 July from Noon to 3pm.
Artists
Gemma Lees · Jana Aizupe & Gi Vasey · Joe Beedles · Julie Burrow · Kitunda Argyle · Krissi Musiol & Amy Vreeke · Luna Ælflæd · Maddie Wakeling & Rowan Szulek · Nicola Smith · Orla Collier & Magdalena Górnikiewicz · Puppetfingers · Thomas Daniel Byrne · Look at some of our artist’s images.
Participating artists subject to change; Plaster Cast unable to perform due to change of circumstances.
Programme Notes
NB features Live Art, performance, and participatory works with varied content in different spaces and formats i.e. seated, standing, spoken word, visual.
With multiple spaces, and some works having a short duration and/or repeating, you may not get a chance to see everything. See Content Warnings.
Gemma Lees · Making Sense
An immersive sensory experience where you have permission to touch, mess, and play with everything.
Initially conceived for neurodiverse folks, this is an inclusive space for all.
Dig up dinosaurs in the sand with tiny shovels, sit in a dark tent and play with lights & projections, jazz-up slime to take home, play with scented play dough, spin one of fifty fidget spinners on the board, or take a moment to mindfully draw and colour — there’s something for everyone!
Content Warning: please click here.
Gemma is a Romany Gypsy, disabled, and neurodiverse artist, poet, actor, facilitator, and theatre-maker from Bury. Her work often deals with her lived experiences of mental illness, homelessness, physical disability, neurodivergence, and the contemporary Romany experience.
A core team member of Girl Gang Manchester, she has worked with Graeae, Triple C, British Art Show, BBC Radio Manchester, amongst others.
Facebook gemmathepoet · Insta gemisace
Jana Aizupe & Gi Vasey · dreaming of you
Two silver birds glide through our daily world — ethereal, other-worldly, they collect and carry the dreams that humans wish for and might just come true.
Gi is a theatre designer and improv theatre maker.
Jana is a street dancer, performer, and facilitator whose work has been shown by China Plate, Omnibus, Camden People’s Theatre.
Design Assistant: Dara Hughes
Joe Beedles · Cheshire Cat quanta
A work for live sound and laser — synchronising in a hypnotic and captivating aerial display.
Content Warning: please click here.
Commissioned by Venture Arts.
Performed by Joe Beedles, with audio descriptive poetry by Sally Hirst.
Joe is an artist primarily working with digital sound and laser, exploring human sensory systems and physical phenomena through synthetic means. His work has been featured in both club and gallery contexts internationally, including Future Everything at The Whitworth.
joebeedles.com · Insta joebeedles
Julie Burrow · The Mime may be Simplified by Leaving Out the Vision Scenes
Julie hopes to wow you with the complicated mimes she’s learning.
She found them in a book from 1934 and there are A LOT of instructions.
Some of them are for A LOT of people — there’s just one of her but she’s going to try really hard to bring them to life for you.
Be honest and tell her what you think of her mimes. Come and throw roses or rotten tomatoes. She appreciates your feedback!
Julie is a writer-performer based in Manchester. She makes lo-fi, colourful, stupid performances, in which she has variously played an Aperol Spritz, a big showbiz moth, and the entire city of Bruges.
Insta juliesusieb · @juliesusieb
Kitunda Argyle · Brickin It
Kitunda Argyle are Brickin It… Building a nice big tower held together with cream… But no matter how hard they work, tempers rise but the tower doesn’t.
An absurdist performance of perpetual motion and futile endeavour.
Kitunda Argle is a collaboration between Daniel Hunt & Alex Willmott.
Together they’ve performed at Whitstable Biennale, Nottingham Contemporary, The Bracknell Gallery at South Hill Park, Watch This Space at the National Theatre, LIFT Molten Festival, Stockton International Riverside Festival.
Krissi Musiol & Amy Vreeke · Ready To Pop
Inspired by the baby that’s just about ready to P-O-P…
Join them in some balloon popping, party popping, fizz popping, bubble popping, popcorn popping — and explore this messy and sensorial celebration of birth and motherhood.
Allergy Warnings: latex (balloons) / popcorn.
Content Warning: please click here.
Krissi is a solo contemporary performance maker, writer, performer, and Senior Lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire. Her current project Maternal Matters is a collection of performance works exploring motherhood, the maternal body, labour (birth), and labour (work).
Amy is a comedian, actor, theatre maker, writer, and women’s health advocate based in Greater Manchester.
Assistant: Jemima Woods
krissimusiol.com · Fb KrissiMusiolPerformance · Insta krissi_musiol_performance · @KrissiMusiol
amyvreeke.com · Fb Amyvreekecomedian · Insta amyvreeke · @amyvreeke
Luna Ælflæd · Centrifuge in Pink followed by Enfold (womb fruits)
Bold, pink, giant, spinning jellyfish!
Then, crocheting their body inside a woollen egg…
Luna is a fine art student at the University of Lincoln, currently using social engagement, performance, and installation combined with textiles, moving image, and humour in their practice to see what it means to be a body in the world we live in today.
Maddie Wakeling & Rowan Szulek · Flights of Fancy
You see us now, scoundrels of the street, rats of the sky.
But once we were cupids, messengers of love, better than the telephone!
Join two entrepreneurial pigeons as we reclaim our stake in this industrial heartland.
Become our first customers, entrust us with your messages of love, hook them onto our wings, and we’ll trade you a treasure (a chip or three if you’re lucky).
Inspired by our shared obsession with pigeons and our fear of dating apps.
A love mission in a world of commerce and an attempt to find something beautiful in the city.
Maddie has worked extensively as an actor and maker, recently as a performer/deviser with SOAPBOX and DeadWeight Theatre. She is a Starting Blocks 2023 Artist at Camden People’s Theatre.
Rowan is an artist, designer, and maker who has created sets and props, delivered workshops, and performed pieces in spaces and places throughout Manchester and beyond.
Insta maddie.wakeling · roszu.weebly.com
Nicola Smith · Slinky POP
Get your “Slinky POP” on in this fun dance workshop, where you’ll participate in a toy slinky movement-routine set to music.
Nicola is a Neurodivergent Artist based at Rogue Studios, Manchester. She makes solo and participatory performances that involve movement, music, film, dress-up, sensory materials, special effects, gesture, speech, words, and pictograms — influenced by everyday life experiences of being a person with ADHD and autism, a carer, and a home educator.
nsartist.myportfolio.com · Insta access_friendly_performer
Orla Collier & Magdalena Górnikiewicz · You’re Here (Hooray!)
Exploring the need for touch and attachment, two performers wriggle around each other, intertwined and knotting themselves up, both motivated by their own need for touch — perhaps at the expense of the other.
Concept by Orla Collier, co-created with Magdalena Górnikiewicz.
Orla is a freelance dance artist based in Cumbria. A performer, choreographer, and teacher, she is inspired by the capacity that dance and theatre has for emotional expression, and how sharing honest feelings and experiences can have huge impacts.
Magdalena is a dance artist from Poland based in Leeds, currently in her final year at Northern School of Contemporary Dance. In her performance- and dance-making practices she is exploring the automatism and invisible chaos inside and outside the moving body.
Insta orla.collier · Insta gornik.iewicz
Plaster Cast
Unfortunately they are unable to perform due to change of circumstances.
Insta plastercasttheatre · @PlasterCastThtr
Puppetfingers · Cheesy Moon
Meet the Moon. She’s silly, sassy, and made of cheese.
She’s the headline act of the sky, dazzling 7.8 billion people every night, but she’s about to be rudely interrupted by an unwelcome visitor.
“One small nibble for mouse, one giant bite for micekind.”
Expect cheesy puns, object puppetry, clowning, and all round silliness in this show about fun and friendship.
Puppetfingers is Amy Hegarty, an Irish artist based in Manchester. She is equally at home in front of a sewing machine, up a ladder with a glue gun, or dancing in a silly costume on the street. She has been a maker and performer for Manchester Day, The Lanterns at Chester Zoo, The Queen’s Jubilee Parade. Above all she is passionate about creating accessible art for communities, and with communities.
Performer: Alison Whitehead
puppetfingers.com · Insta puppetfingers · Insta a.whthd
Thomas Daniel Byrne · Burger
A burger comes to life inside a microwave and tells a tale of dreaming to become an opera singer, unfulfilled… Until now!
A 6-minute micro-puppet show for an audience of three — an intimate, lovely, silly experience that can be enjoyed by children and adults of all ages.
Thomas is a performer, musician, and puppeteer based in Manchester who has worked with Horse + Bamboo, Dizzy O’Dare, Whalley Range All Stars, Handmade Theatre. His style is rooted in play and reconnecting with our sense of childhood fun and adventure.