Six nights of Queer Theatre at the heart of LGBTQIA arts and culture festival
Jade Anouka Image Credit: Michael Shelford
Homotopia, the annual arts and culture festival held in Liverpool, returns this month celebrating LGBTQIA culture and Queer joy.
Six nights of Queer theatre at the city’s Unity Theatre are part of the wider programme, telling the rich and varied stories of LGBTQIA experience, love, life and celebration.
The festival theme of Coming Out is a call to arms for a Queer community to tell their own stories and control their own narrative, as well as a show of support for artists and cultural venues after months of lockdown.
The six nights of theatre include:
→ The Village Hall
Unity Theatre, 2 November, 7.30pm, £6
Tabby Lamb presents …
Tabby Lamb’s follow up to the critically acclaimed Since U Been Gone explores rural isolation, intergenerational queerness and showtunes, in this heart-warming play about the place we call home. A staged reading of a work in process, the play focuses on The Lower Thorpe Players, a troupe itching to make their small village a theatrical metropolis, but the high-speed train line’s looming and will go directly through the heart of their community. Protests are failing. It’s up to them to accelerate their plans to celebrate their rural idyll. Can the show go on?
→ Yours Sincerely
Unity Theatre, 3 November, 7.30pm, £8 / £6
Quick Duck Theatre presents …
Will Jackson has accidentally stolen 300-second-class stamps from the post office. But he’s making them count. He’s going to write letters. From reconnecting with old friends and ex-boyfriends to run-ins with the marketing department at John Lewis, stamp collecting has never looked so sexy…
→ HEART
Unity Theatre, 4 November, 7.30pm, £6
This is a story for all the misfits, all those who have ever felt ‘other’. A one-woman show, written and performed by Jade Anouka. Presented through poetry, and based on a real story, our heroine is trying to follow her heart. But with a beast lurking it’s sometimes hard to know how.
HEART is a blazing journey of words and rhythms that lay bare our shared want to fit in whilst being our authentic self.
Note: This is a staged reading, rather than a full theatre production. Expect the same great script and lively delivery, but with a striped-back feel.
→ You Otter Know: Live!
Unity Theatre, 5 November, 7.30pm, £8 / £6
Harry Clayton-Wright, with very special guests, presents …
An evening of live art, variety, queer celebration and the official print edition launch of You Otter Know: The Omnibus.
Originally commissioned in lockdown by Homotopia as part of their Queer Art Always series, You Otter Know is a queer zine created by Harry Clayton-Wright in collaboration with independent publishing house Polari Press. Inspired by a love of vintage porno mags and the graphic design of top shelf publications from the 70s, 80s and 90s.
→ Rajesh & Naresh
Unity Theatre, 6 November, 9.00pm £8 / £6
SITE Productions presents …
“The only thing for you now is to find a good wife.”
Oh no. Every time.
Rajesh is a British Asian banker in London who parties hard but feels like he’s missing something. Naresh is a Rajasthani cricket bat maker who’s so awkward around love he’s on the verge of giving up. On his mother’s suggestion that he visit India, Rajesh encounters Naresh in a nightclub, and sets off sparks that neither of them can deny.
But cross-cultural clashes and the distance of two continents invade that world – and when it becomes time to bring a man back home to his mother, Rajesh wonders if love can ever have a happy ending.
Rajesh and Naresh was written from a series of workshops conducted with the creative ensemble and members of the queer British Asian community in London. Set just after India’s landmark decriminalisation of homosexuality in 2018, Rajesh and Naresh is a romantic comedy for the modern age.
→ An Evening with David Hoyle and Friends
Unity Theatre, 6 November, 7pm, £12 / £10
For decades, Homotopia Festival favourite David Hoyle has been at the forefront of true queer avant-garde performance.
A fireball of the cabaret apocalypse, the avant-guardian, all singing, all raging wonder. David is post drag, post gender and impossible to beat.
In an event specially curated for Homotopia Festival 2021, this is a one-of-a-kind evening of performance and provocation. David welcomes to the stage a veritable selection-box of queer treats, offering a sublime combination of arts and politics.
Featuring:
- Adam All is one of the UK’s top Drag Kings and the ultimate showman.
- Bellatrix and Grace Savage are BURD: the undefeated, two times UK Tag-Team Beatbox Champions.
- Yasmin Benoit is a British model, award-winning asexual activist, writer and speaker.
- Pretentious Dross is Liverpool’s self-proclaimed Art House Witch.
- A sumptuous performance poetry set from Homotopia Festival Artist in Residence Jade Anouka.