Riverside Studios announces the full line up of specially curated brand-new theatre initiative Bitesize Festival. To kick off the year, Riverside’s Bitesize Festival showcases work from fresh new talent and award-winning performers. The programme offers a variety of punchy, thought-provoking, and inspiring theatre and play-readings, with each performance an hour or shorter, allowing audiences to see one at a time or enjoy multiple events across one evening. Tickets are accessibly priced, starting at £10 with discounts available for multiple bookings.
Following their run of DJ Bazzer’s Year 6 Disco, ChewBoy Productions returns to Riverside Studios to open the festival with these words that’ll linger like ghosts till the day i drop down dead on 18 January. Pip Utton joins the line-up with hit solo show Playing Maggie from 26-30 January alongside Claire Parry’s Intolerable Side Effects, before Neck and Neck Theatre present new work by Jonathan Lewis - A Level Playing Field. Ivantiy Novak’s Samaadhi, a play in development, runs 3 February – 5 February alongside Clementine Bogg-Hargroves’s Skank. The Devil’s in the Chair by Eoin McAndrew runs 6 February before Nick Warren’s Sunday Morning and Sinéad O’Brien’s No One is Coming run 8 February – 13 February to complete the line up.
Rachel Tackley, Creative Director of Riverside Studios, says today “For everyone intending to start 2022 with fresh energy, and to get back to the joy of live performance, we are delighted to be offering an exciting array of bitesize theatre, championing new work from inspiring artists. We aim to inspire you to see something different and challenge yourself to see new things with this programme…”
FULL PROGRAMME:
Tuesday 18 January, 7.30pm
THESE WORDS THAT’LL LINGER LIKE GHOSTS TILL THE DAY I DROP DOWN DEAD
By Georgie Bailey
Presented by ChewBoy Productions
Two living, breathing people face each other in a theatre space. One is here to help. The other is seeking something. these words that’ll linger like ghosts till the day i drop down dead is a brand-new experimental play from the multi-award-winning playwright Georgie Bailey, exploring the things we wish we’d said to those that have now left us in life, how we navigate grief and how, ultimately, we can never change the past.
Georgie Bailey is an award-winning writer and producer of ChewBoy Productions. As a playwright, his credits include Gorger, The Fibster, Tethered, These Things That Burn, Tadpoles, Feel More, EUAN, Drag Me Out, Rash, The Universe, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Wednesday 26 January – Saturday 29 January 8.30pm, Sunday 30 January 2.30pm
PLAYING MAGGIE
Directed by Marguerite Chaigne
Performed by Pip Utton
Simon Sherwood, an actor, is preparing to play Margaret Thatcher the famous British Prime Minister. He talks to his stage manager and technician and then to Mrs T herself as he puts on the costume, make up and wig. He transforms into Mrs Thatcher and prepares to make a speech. She starts in her normal ‘party conference’ mode but then suddenly changes her mind; instead of talking to the audience she decides to talk with the audience and invites them to join in and ask her anything they want to ask; anything. And she will answer honestly. The actor has no idea what he will be asked but must always answer as Mrs Thatcher until he can talk no more, and his family history during her time as PM comes to light before Mrs Thatcher finally takes control again.
This isn’t just a reflection on how to portray this lady, nor is it in praise or condemnation, but it’s a live audience with Margaret Thatcher.
Pip Utton plays Margaret Thatcher. He is an actor and playwright. His work includes the award-winning Adolf, Chaplin, Only The Lonely, Bacon and Labels.
Wednesday 26 January – Sunday 30 January 7.30pm
INTOLERABLE SIDE EFFECTS
Created by Claire Parry
Diane is a millennial rabbit. She's keen to find love but she's not keen to have a litter. At the GUM clinic she's advised to take 'Celery' as a form of 'Vegetation Separation', but Celery causes some bizarre and unpleasant side effects, hindering her dating and sex-life significantly more than it helps. Join Diane as she generously and hilariously shares her trials and tribulations, from dating to female grooming to contraception - but will there ever be a revolution?
Intolerable Side Effects is an absurd, comic, and poignant exploration of the darker side of contraception through the eyes (and ears) of the inimitable Diane.
Claire Parry is a multi-disciplinary theatre maker. Her theatre work includes Boorish Trumpson and she is a Movement Director and Director for The Three Inch Fools.
Wednesday 2 February, 7.30pm
A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
Written by Jonathan Lewis
Presented by Neck and Neck Theatre
Watch as a cast of professional actors read and perform some brand-new plays and bring the words to life for the first time.
Jonathan Lewis is an actor, writer, and director. His theatre work includes Our Boys; and for television credits include London’s Burning, Soldier Soldier and Desperados.
Tuesday 3 February – Saturday 5 February 6.00pm
SAMAADHI
Written by Ivantiy Novak
Performed by Mohit Mathur and Ivantiy Novak
Samaadhi is a show in development that deals with trauma and colonisation. At its heart rests the Jallianwala Bagh massacre that took place on the 13th of April 1919 in Amritsar, Punjab during the British Raj in India. The piece examines both the psychological and social impacts that suffering, loss, duty, family, and identity have on our lives.
As a two-man production, Samaadhi utilises poetry, physical theatre, dance, clowning, and archive records to bridge historic strife to the questions of today.
Ivantiy Novak is an actor and playwright previously appearing in Samaadhi at Bridge House Theatre. Other theatre credits include Raj (Bridge House Theatre) and Plains of Delight (Merde Theatre Company).
Mohit Mathur’s previous theatre credits include The Trial of Prince Charming (Barons Court Theatre), Raj (Bridge House Theatre), Great Expectations (Rotherhithe Playhouse), The Tempest (Finsbury Circus Gardens), One Night Only (AKvarious Production) and Beyond Bollywood (London Palladium.
Thursday 3 February and Saturday 5 February 9.00pm, Friday 4 February 7.30pm
SKANK
Performed by Clementine Bogg-Hargroves
Presented by Future Artists Ltd
SKANKS just wanna have a clean bill of health, the adoration of the public and some decent recycling facilities.
Kate could be a successful writer if she could just concentrate. Instead, she needs to recycle this bean can, shag sexy Gary and stop obsess about her untimely death.
Clementine Bogg-Hargroves is a professional film and theatre maker, creating her own work as well as producing that of others. She has toured her own work across the UK, appearing at the Edinburgh Fringe and VAULT Festival.
Sunday 6 February 5:30pm
THE DEVIL’S IN THE CHAIR
Written by Eoin McAndrew
A reading of a new play by Eoin McAndrew.
A Northern Irish family, barely on speaking terms with each other, spend four days together in a cottage in rural Donegal. Jamie was recently hit by a car, and is self-medicating will a mixture of pills and alcohol. Darragh is rebuilding his life again, and thinks it’ll work this time.
Saoirse can’t hide her disappointment at the men her sons have become, and might not even be trying. Liam would just like everyone to be a little bit nicer to each other.
Over the course of four days the family are forced to spend more time with each other than they have in years and there are some things that need to be talked about. A play about spending time with people you love but don’t like.
An explosive and funny new play from Eoin McAndrew, following his 5 star, award-nominated debut play, The Girl Who Was Very Good At Lying.
Eoin McAndrew is an actor and writer. His plays include The Girl Who Was Very Good At Lying and Internet Boy.
Thursday 8 February - Sunday 13 February 6.00pm,
SUNDAY MORNING
Written by Nick Warren
Directed by Jenine Collocott
Mat is a successful photographer who has his life exactly how he likes it – ordered, neat and beautifully composed – until the day his girlfriend tells him she is pregnant. In an attempt to process this disturbing information, he goes out for a run. Straying from his regular route, he ventures into a strange part of the city where he makes a gruesome discovery that changes everything.
Nick Warren is an internationally acclaimed author, playwright, and TV screenwriter. His plays include The Gaff, Trojan Women, The Grow Job, The Man in the Moon, Dirt, Scrooge and The Old Man and the Sea.
Thursday 8 February - Sunday 12 February 9.00pm, Saturday 12 February 2.30pm
NO ONE IS COMING
Created and performed by Sinéad O’Brien
Growing up in a home surrounded by mental health and addiction issues, it’s surprising that Sinéad never realised her family was different until other people pointed it out. And now they never stop pointing it out…
Encompassing elements of Irish folklore, this storytelling performance is full of anecdotes and myth, funny stories, and tough home truths. It’s a rollercoaster experience inside a fun (if slightly traumatized) Irish woman’s brain.
Sinéad O’Brien is a storyteller and theatre maker from Ireland. Following countless shows in Fringe Festivals across Europe and after working as a storyteller in Ireland’s National Leprechaun Museum, Sinéad found herself working as the Resident Storyteller for a 130-year-old anti-poverty charity in London’s East End.