Propel is HOME’s platform for artists to play with new ideas, to experiment and to try out new ways of working. Curated by award-winning theatre company Clean Break, this evening will see all chosen artists explore the same theme: ‘speaking truth to power’. Clean Break pride themselves on handing a megaphone to the marginalised, and shouting out on behalf of the voiceless – this is an evening that shows how you can speak up on behalf of something you care about.
Clean Break was set up in 1979 by two women prisoners who believed that theatre could bring the hidden stories of imprisoned women to a wider audience. Still the only women’s theatre company of its kind, Clean Break has remained true to these roots, and continues to inspire playwrights and captivate audiences with groundbreaking plays on the complex theme of women and crime.
We are delighted to be partnering with Clean Break in their 40th anniversary year on this Propel evening. You will get to see pieces at the beginning of being made, some you might love and some that might leave you with more questions. Either way, you are guaranteed to play an integral part in shaping theatre of the future.
Propel and Pizza
Why not relax after the show and chat with the artists you have just seen – a chance to find out more about what drives them to make work the way they do – and you can even enjoy a slice or two of pizza on us! Simply join us in the restaurant bar after the show.
Performances on the night are:
Dynamica: Living with the F Word
Living With the F Word revolves around the physical disability of fibromyalgia. Performer Kat Humphrey is affected second-hand by this illness which, despite the grand amount of people who suffer from it, there is still surprisingly little known about. Fibromylagia is an invisible disability and often people have preconceptions and get it misconstrued as someone being lazy or forgetful, whereas the consequences are much deeper and debilitating. Kat hopes with this piece that people realise just how seriously fibromyalgia can turn your whole life around, to the point someone is not even able to tell their own story.
Dynamica (Kat Humphrey) is a theatre company that tells stories and tells them loud. She is concerned with views on social identity and looks to discuss topics that revolves around people and their lives. She won’t rest until there is change for certain people in society, for example those with disability, both mental and physical, the LGBTQI+ community, the misfits, the outcasts, the one’s that never got a chance. She wants change, and she wants it now. She does this through the means of theatre, poetry, dance and uses the voices of others.
Ginni Manning: Gold Star
Gold Star begins at wedding party, taking place the same day as the royal wedding of Will and Kate. As the bride gives a speech about the relationship with her new husband and her expectations of the instilled notion of a prince to rescue her, we also see the future of their relationship breakdown. This piece is an exploration of the dialogues applied to a marriage and how redefining the nature of our relationships outside the traditional ideas of ownership as a ‘couple’ can empower us.
Ginni Manning is a playwright, theatre maker and facilitator from Liverpool. She is continuing to develop this play with director Margaret Connell and actor Rachael Kearney.
Jo Lane: Daily
In a world where stereotypes, restrictions and hypocrisies, perpetuated by the political elite, box us in, push us down and divide us, we have two choices, apathy or action. We choose action. We choose protest. Daily is a cross art form collaboration, involving physical theatre, music and film, featuring performers Sophie Giddens, Monica Sagar, Yinka Akintayo, Francesca Izzo and Eleni Varon; and music by La La and the Boo Ya.
Jo Lane is a Manchester based artist and filmmaker. Her work spans fine art/painting, sculptural installations, moving image/film and theatre. There is an element of creative protest and campaigning within much of Jo’s work and she believes art can transform lives and empower individuals and communities.
Jennifer Jackson: Endurance
Inspired by the story of Bolivian warrior Bartolina Sisa and modern day women who are out-performing men at endurance sports, Endurance looks at how we endure, why we endure, and how women can make their innate propensity for endurance work in their favour to tip the balance of power.
Jennifer Jackson is a British actor, theatre-maker and movement director. Raised in the Midlands via Bolivia, her work interrogates how the female body is presented in performance, her relationship with the UK, and the duality of living between cultures.