Festival featuring the best of European theatre returns to Birmingham.
BE FESTIVAL, Birmingham’s festival celebrating the best of European theatre returns to the city and a new home at Birmingham Repertory Theatre this July. Featuring over twenty electrifying performances from eleven European countries, plus live music, exhibitions, workshops, discussions and delicious food, this vibrant festival puts Birmingham on the map as the theatre capital of Europe from 2nd–12th July 2014.
The fortnight-long festival brings together daring and unforgettable new performances from Spain, Italy, Denmark, France, Hungary and Germany among others.
Celebrating its fifth anniversary, this year BE FESTIVAL takes over Birmingham Repertory Theatre, turning the building back-to-front as festival-goers will be able to step backstage and experience The REP in an innovative and exciting way. The REP’s set construction workshop will be transformed into a festival hub with a bar for audiences to socialise and the scenic paintshop becomes an interactive exhibition space, while the theatre’s vast main stage will be converted into a pop-up restaurant with food from Blanch & Shock Food Design.
The first week features an exclusive double-bill: Finger, Trigger, Bullet, Gun, written for UK theatre company Stan’s Cafe by Serbian playwright Nenad Prokić, uses thousands of dominoes to stage the outbreak of WW1; and Danish company, Out of Balanz return with their award-winning show from last year’s festival, Next Door.
In the second week the festival gets into full swing with audiences invited to experience a choice pick of shows in a unique atmosphere, format and setting. Each night features four different 30 minute-long shows with audiences offered the opportunity to eat dinner with the performers in the interval. Before and after the performances the festival also offers live music, visual art and the chance to attend workshops, while each day opens with Feedback Café – an informal chance to meet the performers from the previous night’s shows.
Festival highlights include an evening of solo shows from the participatory loops & breaks by Julia Schwarzbach (Austria) to Anna Peschke‘s (Germany) dark, probing silent cabaret, Ilsa’s Garden. Radioballet – aka Hungarian dance artists Bea Egyed and Milan Ujjvaro – perform in front of an English-speaking audience for the first time with From The Waltz to the Mambo while Iraqi actor and director Mikhallad Rasem (Belgium) brings his meditative piece, Waiting. David Espinosa and El Local Espacio de Creación (Spain) explore whether bigger necessarily means better in Mi Gran Obra (My Great Work), and Jamie Wood (UK) stages his own epic Wimbledon final in the joyful Beating McEnroe.
A theme running throughout BE FESTIVAL 2014 is alternative currencies. Drawing inspiration from the festival itself Netherlands based artist, Dadara, has created this year’s visual arts programme, Money = Time = Art. As self-appointed CEO of his own financial institution, The Exchanghibition Bank, Dadara has introduced Karma, a new currency to operate in the backstage bar. 20,000 Karma notes featuring original designs by Dadara will be issued in return for cash which festival goers can then spend, but not before adding their own message on the reverse transcending each note’s status as merely legal tender into something more personal and connected.
Throughout the festival, Dadara also invites audiences to contribute their banknotes to a cumulative sculpture, The Transformoney Tree, transforming their value by creating a beautiful object. This piece will join a wider exhibition of Dadara’s work that runs at mac Birminghamfrom Sat 5 July to Sun 31 August.
As part of the alternative currencies theme, audiences attending during the first week of the festival will also be rewarded with REP pounds to spend on tickets to future shows at The REP. Festival goers also have the option of buying a Golden Ticket by paying an extra £8 for their shows. Golden Tickets grant a stranger entry to one day of the festival, and are distributed via local partner organisations working with people who do not ordinarily get to enjoy a trip to the theatre.
Tickets and information: 0121 236 4455 / Birmingham-rep.co.uk
