Norfolk & Norwich Festival lights up the county

The fantastic Norfolk & Norwich Festival runs from May 12th28th with artists from around the world and across the region sharing exceptional arts experiences, exploring the unique physical and cultural identities of the city and county.

A weekend of free family fun across Norwich opens this year’s Festival. The two day street party Welcome Weekend will include theatre, dance, circus and comedy and on the Saturday night Gorilla Circus will present their aerial circus show Unity featuring dance trapeze and wire walking in the heart of Festival Gardens. Across the weekend, pop-up performances include: ancient dance forms and uplifting song from South Asian dance company Akademi; Avanti Display; Candoco Dance Company and choreographer Jamaal Burkmar present new duet dance performed by disabled and non-disabled dancers; a fun filled interactive game show that uses food to tell cultural histories - The Game Show Part 2; a dance show about the history of tea - Teabreak; In Oh Europa! a motorhome doubles as a recording studio for you to sing love songs in; and Working Boys Club serves up brass not beer at their bar in Serving Sounds.- a multi-sensory sound installation. Circus returns to the Adnams Spiegeltent in Festival

Gardens with international troupe Chelsea McGuffin & Co. headlining across ten nights from May 17th with their raucous vaudevillian adventure Le Coup. Magician and illusionist Vincent Gambini returns to the Festival on May 17th to present his critically acclaimed This Is Not A Magic Show. On May 19th-20th Sadiq Ali brings The Chosen Haram, a performance of extraordinary movement on two Chinese Poles, telling the story of two queer men and their chance meeting through a dating app.

More theatre highlights include multi-award-winners Sh!t Theatre bringing hit musical comedy Evita Too, telling the story of the first ever female president who shares a name with the iconic Eva Peron. Artist-in-residence Zineb Benzekri presents their work in progress La Zanka Cosmic Care exploring the use of water in self care and curing. Norfolk based sensory theatre makers Frozen Light return for a second Festival run of Fire Songs, their immersive sensory sound experience for audiences with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD). Around the county, Jason Parr will present Broken Spoken, a unique Norfolk spoken word night showcasing local talent in Great Yarmouth and Neil Brand will tell the touching story of the world’s greatest comedy team in Laurel and Hardy in Diss Corn Hall.

In 2023 the Festival continues to combine a core-classical repertoire of music with exceptional new commissions. On May 19th, conductor-less string collective 12 Ensemble and piano and percussion pair GBSR Duo join forces to present works by Mica Levi from the 2014 film Under The Skin, electronic and acoustic Flowing Down Too Slow by Fausto Romitelli, the world premiere of TOMB! a Norfolk & Norwich Festival co-commission by Laurence Osborn reinventing the tombeau genre - works written by one composer on the death of another - and Ambient 2, a major work of the ambient genre written by pioneering British artist Brian Eno with Harold Budd. Across the 17 days, the adventurous string ensemble Solem Quartet will be artists-in-residence, presenting three concerts spanning Beethoven, Bartók, Steve Reich, and Kate Bush with world premieres from Bushra El-Turk and Edmund Finnis.

The City of Literature Weekend returns to the streets, gardens and historic buildings of Norwich for the final weekend of the Festival featuring: Caleb Azowah Nelson, Jyoti Patel, East nnfestival.org.uk.

The Visual Arts programme sweeps across Norfolk with a range of free shows and exhibitions including: a live art trail in which the audience become pilgrims in Anne Bean’s In Search of the Miraculous; the the first solo exhibition by illustrator Gemma Corral I Have No Idea What I’m Doing; Waste Not, an exhibition redefining waste through creative approaches to resource use and resilience at Groundwork Gallery in King’s Lynn; new works from Julian Stair OBE in Art, Death and the Afterlife at Sainsbury Centre; Lucy Stein and Sarah Hartnett undertake a pilgrimage along the Mary ley line, using the journey as a feminist quest for producing collaborative work in Ex-Voto at PRIMEYARC in Great Yarmouth.Glen Jamieson and Rob Filby explore Norwich’s mediaeval wall in Wall Existing at Norwich Castle Museum and Gallery. On the final weekend of the festival, Barbican Artistic Director and former BBC Arts Editor Will Gompertz will be in conversation with London-based artist Rana Begum.