upstairs at the western - spring 2014
DESCRIPTION
Leicester's Pub Theatre presents its Spring Brochure 2014. Including events from Dave's Leicester Comedy Festival.TRANSCRIPT
LEICESTER’S PUB THEATRESEASON GUIDE SPRING 2014
www.upstairsatthewestern.com @UpstairsWestern
Including
S pring is a time of new beginnings and, for the first time, we are featuring performances as part of Dave’s Leicester Comedy Festival, Britain’s longest running comedy festival and an important event in the city’s calendar. Some well-
known characters will be adding Upstairs at the Western to their already prestigious CVs: Stan Laurel, Jane Eyre, Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks as an eclectic example. Who else might you find yourself standing next to at the bar?
Leicester may not have been awarded UK City of Culture 2017 but the positive energy generated from the bid process looks set to continue throughout 2014 and beyond. Upstairs at the Western is proud to be a part of such a culturally rich city and, with your support, we will be a permanent pin in Leicester’s cultural map.
So, for a great night out in Leicester’s own West End, have a browse and book from our wide-ranging programme. We love to know what audiences think of the performances as well as the venue itself so do please keep in touch. And if you would like to get involved with future seasons, on or off stage, contact us at the details below.
We look forward to seeing you soon Upstairs at the Western.
Off the Fence Theatre Companywww.upstairsatthewestern.com @UpstairsWestern
www.off-the-fence.com @OfftheFenceTC
Brochure design by Libby Sidebotham.Cover photo: from and this is my friend Mr LaurelAll photos supplied by artists
Welcome to the Spring 2014 season at Upstairs at The Western, Leicester’s first pub theatre
Date Performance Time Saturday 8 Feb Bright Club 7.30pm
Saturday 8 Feb DNCG Part I: 10.30pm Jack Britton’s Discussion Kitchen
Monday 10 Feb Upstairs and Funny 8.00pm
Tuesday 11 Feb, Double Booked & Something Fishy 7.30pm Wednesday 12 Feb
Thursday 13 Feb Chatback Comedy: Stand Up & Slam 8.00pm
Friday 14 Feb Big Daddy vs Giant Haystacks 7.30pm
Saturday 15 Feb Stand Up Comedy Night 9.00pm
Monday 17 Feb, A Kitchen Nightmare & Other Tales 8.00pm Tuesday 18 Feb
Wednesday 19 Feb, … and this is my friend Mr Laurel 7.30pm Thursday 20 Feb, Friday 21 Feb
Saturday 22 Feb Bright Club 7.30pm
Monday 3 March, Clamber Up the Crucifix 7.30pm Wednesday 5 March
Tuesday 4 March, England Expects 7.30pm Thursday 6 March
Tuesday 11 March Three the Hard Way 8.00pm
Wednesday 12 March Wrong ‘Un 7.30pm
Thursday 20 March Anthropoetry 8.00pm
Monday 24 March Desert 7.30pm
Wednesday 2 April, The Bricks of Burston 7.30pm Thursday 3 April
Friday 4 April, Jane Eyre 7.30pm Saturday 5 April
Bright Club
Upstairs and Funny at the Western
Dan Nicholas’ Conversation Garden Part I: Jack Britton’s Discussion KitchenSaturday 8 &
Saturday 22 February7.30pm, £12
Join us for the launch of Bright Club, a new comedy event for Leicester and where better to begin than at Dave’s Leicester Comedy Festival?
There are already seven successful UK Bright Clubs in London, Glasgow, Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Guildford and Cardiff. They work like this: take one professional compere, add one professional headliner and throw in a handful of professional researchers. They then turn a research topic into a comedy routine and take to the stage to make you laugh.
How important is Jack Britton? How important are you? The answer? Very. This is a chat show with a twist, where we interview you, the audience. Featuring burlesque from Marylin Minx and Bella Bardot this is part one of three chat shows not to be missed.
What happens when Matt, Jack and Dan go to the Western? They get drunk? No, they get hilarious.
Join Matt “ Strong audience rapport and light, intelligent wit” Holmes, Jack “Best Newcomer at 2012 Nottingham Comedy Festival” Campbell,and Dan “Has the ability to make you laugh without you being completely sure why” Nicholas.
Come upstairs and laugh at them.
Saturday 8th February, 10.30pm, £5/£4
Monday 10th February, 8pm, £5
Double Booked & Something Fishy
Stand Up and Slam!
Big Daddy Vs Giant Haystacks
Two witty plays about modern family life with teens
The Foundry Group supported by Create Theatre, Mansfield presents:
Tuesday 11th & Wednesday 12th February, 7.30pm, £10/£8
Double Booked: Mum Ruth Rich economises on the truth and ties her schedule in knots to save face and please everyone. Events build to a hilarious climax in this fast, funny play about families.
Something Fishy: Ruth decides to leave daughter Ellie at home alone in order to chaperone unruly son Fred on his school trip to Marrakesh.
Performance poetry: comedy’s boring cousin? Stand up: poetry’s idiot relation?
For the first time the best of London go head to head as comedy and poetry collide. The winners? Whoever the audience decide are the best art form on the night.
Direct from London’s Comedy Cafe, Chatback Comedy Club and Canterbury’s poet laureate Dan Simpson proudly present Stand Up & Slam! Six acts face off in three rounds of Stand Up Comedy vs Performance Poetry.
As seen on BBC4’s documentary When Wrestling Was Golden: Grapples, Grunts and Grannies. Every Saturday from 1976 - 88, millions of Britons were in the grip of an extraordinary sports phenomenon: watching two fat men pretend to fight.
This play by Brian Mitchell and Joseph Nixon, brings back to grunting, grappling life the famous feuding wrestlers.
Thursday 13th February8pm, £8/£6
Friday 14 February7.30pm, £10/£8
“A delightful comedy. A true happy hour.”www.fringereview.com
“ Wonderfully raucous. Sharp and funny.”Michael Coveney, WhatsOnStage
Dave’s Leicester Comedy Festival Stand
Up Comedy Night
A Kitchen Nightmare and Other Tales
Saturday 15 February9pm, £6/£5
Monday 17 & Tuesday 18 February, 8pm, £8/£6
Come and join us for a benefit show in aid of Dave’s Leicester Comedy Festival’s Big Difference Company. All money raised goes towards their Make Me Happy
programme which each year gives 20,000 people the chance to take part in a wide range of cultural
activities and events. This year’s show will be hosted by TV comedian and Festival favourite David Morgan who will be introducing some very special guests. If you want a top night of comedy and to help others, get your tickets now. In aid of Big Difference Company - registered charity 113516
Irish comedian and impressionist Liam Hourican, star of Very Important People (C4), iCandy (C4), APE (E4) and The Savage Eye (RTE), presents a staggering array of characters in a brand new foodie sketch show. Gordon Ramsay faces an old foe in his most nightmarish kitchen nightmare to date, Simon Cowell’s son turns out to be a chip off the smug old block and Will from The Inbetweeners decides he wants to be a ‘serious’ actor.
… and this is my friend Mr Laurel
Wednesday 19, Thursday 20 & Friday 21 February, 7.30pm, £12/£10
A biographical one-man play about the life of film comedian Stan Laurel starring Jeffrey Holland (Spike from BBC’s Hi-De-Hi). Set in the bedroom of a sick Oliver Hardy the show takes place during Laurel’s visit to the dying man. Recounting their past success as the comedy double act Laurel and Hardy this is a humorous and touching look at one of the great cinematic partnerships of the last century.
by Gail Louw and Jeffrey Holland’
Clamber Up The Crucifix
Off the Fence Theatre Company presents 2 Plays for World War I:
Monday 3 & Wednesday 5 March7.30pm, £8/£6
It is midday, 11th November 1918. A soldier under armed guard reflects on luck, rats, a mate and a whore.
To the officers he had been invisible, hardly more human than the telegraph key he operated. Earlier that day and privy to certain information, he had caused serious offence. But how could he not have made the choices he did?Footsteps approach.
England Expects
Vesta Tilley was music hall’s greatest male impersonator. Vesta’s role in recruiting thousands of men made her the darling of the establishment but as the brutal reality of war became known she had a decision to make: whose side was she really on?
Sitting in her dressing room on her farewell tour she reminisces on her role as Britain’s Best Recruiting Sergeant and the lives she touched. Through her stock-in-trade of impersonation and songs Vesta explores her role in the war, and the impact of her choices on those left behind.
Tuesday 4 & Thursday 6 March, 7.30pm, £8/£6
By John Kitchen, directed by Gary Phillpott
By Tom Glover, directed by Gary Phillpott
Wrong ‘Un - A Suffragette’s Story
Three the Hard Way
A new one-woman musical written by Boff Whalley and directed by Justin Audibert.
February 1918, four years of bloody war, Parliament is poised to grant what the suffragettes have fought for: votes for all women.
Wrong ‘Un tells Annie Wilde’s story, a Lancashire mill-girl galvanised by a rousing mixture of injustice, conviction, self-doubt and fear on her journey from schoolroom to prison cell in a musical drama that draws on class, privilege, hope and disappointment in wartime England.
Red Ladder Theatre Company invite you to join them for a post-show discussion.
In Celebration of International Women’s Month, 2014Three reasons to join us Upstairs at the Western: to celebrate International Women’s Day, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze’s birthday and the launch of a brand new tour! Three the Hard Way derives from Jamaican culture where male DJs work together across venues, bouncing off and responding to each other’s sets in collaboration and competition. The description was adopted by UK male dub poets, led by Linton Kwesi Johnson in the early 80s. The name is again re-appropriated - but for the first time by three female artists of diverse backgrounds: Alison Dunne of Irish ancestry, Lydia Towsey of Hungarian, Jewish and Welsh and Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze of African Caribbean. The event also features a guest writer and an audience of men and women to explore our times, from the personal to the political. Afterwards, join Jean, Lydia and Alison for a post-show discussion.Supported by and produced in association with Writing East Midlands.
Wednesday 12 March, 7.30pm, £10/£8
Red Ladder Theatre Company presents:
Jean Binta Breeze MBE, Lydia Towsey and Alison Dunne present
Tuesday 11 March, 8pm, £10/£8
The Bricks Of Burston
Stuff of Dreams Theatre Company presents:
Wednesday 2 & Thursday 3 April7.30pm, £10/£8
1914 is rightly remembered as the year WW1 began but 1914 also marked the beginning of the longest industrial strike action in English history. This is made more remarkable as the strike was led by school children.
The Bricks of Burston focuses on Tom and Annie Higdon, inspired educators who fought to change the poverty and injustice inherent in their society. They were blackballed, reviled and persecuted by many but also inspired loyalty, trust and devotion from those they battled to help. This powerful piece of theatre explores remembrance, relationships and change.
AnthropoetryThursday 20 March, 8pm, £8/£6
How do we express our spleen? Whose business do we stick our noses into? When did we start wearing our hearts on our sleeves, and why are we up to our elbows in heels and bums? BBC R4 Slam Champion Ben Mellor takes you on a stand-up poetry and music-fuelled tour around the body, with sounds, beats, beeps and whistles by Dan Steele.
Premiered at Edinburgh Fringe, 2012, award-winning Anthropoetry is inspired by anthropometry, the study of measuring the human body. Ben presents a set of brand new poems and stories that get to the heart, or the bottom, of modern life.
“ Elegantly crafted rhymes… always engaging.”The Scotsman
Desert‘If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day, 7 days a week for 8+ months, what would you do?’
In 2010 Pfc Bradley Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst, leaked classified documents to Wikileaks. In 2013, he was sentenced to 35 years in jail. How did this 25 year old super-intelligent, awkwardly effeminate soldier become the centrepiece in the war between Wikileaks and the US Government?
Desert blends real-life transcripts with imagined events. Responding to events as they happen, the MolinoGroup’s ‘excellent new play’ (Exeunt) captures the force of this compelling, contemporary narrative.
Monday 24 March, 7.30pm, £8/£6
The MolinoGroup presents
Jane EyreThe Rosemary Branch Theatre presents:
By Charlotte BrontëDirected and adapted by Bryony J. Thompsonwith original music by James Young
Friday 4 and Saturday 5 April7.30pm, £10/£8
Part ghost story, part Gothic romance this gripping new adaptation combines Bronte’s original dialogue with narrative from her classic novel, bringing the book literally to life. Set in 1840s northern England, the early stirrings of feminism shine through the strict adherence to social hierarchy giving this venerated novel its iconic status.
Orphaned into an unloving household, subjected to poor treatment at a charity school, Jane Eyre emerges to seek her fortune unbroken in spiritand integrity. She becomes a governess to the ward of the enigmatic Mr Rochester. This story illustrates a passionate and tenacious woman’s search for a wide rich life.
“Fringe theatre at its best”The Stage
If you would like to hire Leicester’s first pub theatre Contact Verity at [email protected]
Upstairs at the Western Optimum capacity of 60 seatsLight set up and speakersEnd on stage, raised 3ft
“Really cool, intimate venue”Audience member, November 2013’
Tragedy and comedy: the perfect couple, right? Tragic characters are often funny: Frank Spencer, David Brent and Will from The Inbetweeners
all trigger an uncomfortable combination of squirming sympathy and sniggers.
The widely recognised symbol of theatre, (darlings), is two masks: one Edvard Munch-like in woe, the other a beaming smile.
Masks were integral to the development of theatre. An actor puts on a mask to inhabit a role and, on a more practical level, play more than one part. For an audience it aids recognition of a character’s age, gender and social status without the need for exposition.
Thespis, a tragedy specialist, is widely considered to be the first ever actor having won Greece’s inaugural theatrical contest around 534BC. Actors performed in one of three genres: tragedy, comedy or satyr in festivals paying homage to Dionysus, Greek god of ecstasy. Tragedy and comedy were considered completely separate forms never combined in one play. A satyr featured the mythological element of a tragedy, performed in a comedic manner and burlesque in nature. Phallic props featured prominently and performances provided a short burst of light relief after the required trilogy of gloomy tragedies.
Only men could perform, with female characters signified by donning rather cumbersome wooden breasts. Further costume considerations included wearing elevated boots if playing a tragic character and, for comedy, thin soled shoes known as socks.
But why is theatre symbolised by comedy and tragedy? It all started with naughty old Zeus when he slept for nine consecutive nights on Titaness of Memory Mnemosyne’s sofa at the base of Mount Olympus. Nine daughters miraculously appeared, all of whom became muses to make the ‘world disremember evil and relieve sorrows’ through literature, dance and music. As actors needed to project their emotions to a large audience in a wide space, masks had exaggerated features and the woe of Melpomene (tragedy) and joy of Thalia (comedy) provided scope for heightened facial expression. After over two and a half thousand years this still tells you what to expect from theatre: an actor putting on a mask to convey different emotional states.
So, spare a thought for your average, jobbing Greek actor. Semi-naked, wearing a mask made of wood or cork, fringed by animal hair, clomping across stage in stack-heeled boots and adorned with wooden breasts. If they weren’t laughing they’d be crying.
It’s All Greek to Me by Sally Jack
Portrait of Tragedy and Comedy by Angelica Kauffman 1741-1807
14/48: The World’s Quickest Theatre Festival
Fri 7 & Sat 8 March8pm & 10.30pm£7/£5 (Festival ticket £10/£8)
Straight from the streets of Seattle and following the success of Leicester’s very own 14/48 in May 2013, The Y is giving another exciting opportunity for audiences to witness 7 brand new plays each day – all written, rehearsed and performed in 24 hours! A host of professional artists including writers, directors, actors and musicians will come together, against their better judgement, to provide Leicester with a whirlwind of entertainment. It’s theatre Jim, but not as we know it!
The Y, 7 East Street, Leicester LE1 6EYwww.ytheatre.co.uk0116 255 7066
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LEICESTER’S PUB THEATRE
We have 7 real ales, guest ciders, a large range of whisky and rum, and some rather nice wines.
Situated in Leicester's West End, we have a large beer garden, a log burning fire and regular food, drink and music events.
For more info, make friends with The Western Leicester on facebook, visit our website: www.steamin-billy.co.uk/western or even better, pop in for a chat.
T here is expected to be a high level of interest in the programmed events therefore please book in advance at www.upstairsatthewestern.com.
Tickets may also be purchased in advance from behind the bar at The Western or on the door on the night of the event.
All information is correct at time of printing. Off the Fence is not responsible for the content of events listed. In the unlikely event performers withdraw Off the Fence reserves the right to reschedule events as necessary.
Booking
Important note Because our venue is small and intimate we are unable to admit latecomers. Thank you for arriving promptly.
AccessUnfortunately, due to the nature of the building there is no wheelchair access.
Parking Upstairs at the Western is located in a residential area. There is pay per hour parking as well as free parking after 6pm on Western Road and surrounding streets. Please check signs carefully – some streets are resident permit only.
CyclistsThe Western is a bike friendly pub and has a bike park adjacent to the beer garden. Bikes left at owners risk.
How to findUpstairs at The Western
The Western Pub70 Western RoadLeicester LE3 0GA
Contact: [email protected]
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