Brighton Festival 2011 by Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival

„Die Hoffnung flüstert sanft mir zu: Wir werden frei, wir finden Ruh’.“ “Hope whispers softly to me: We shall be free, we shall find peace.” fidelio

Guest Director

Aung San Suu Kyi 7 – 29 May 01273 709709 brightonfestival.org Brighton Festival Radio 87.7FM and online

Photo: 2011 Stuart Isett/isett.com

Introduction

„Die Hoffnung flüstert sanft mir zu: wir werden frei, wir finden Ruh’.“ “Hope whispers softly to me: we shall be free, we shall find peace.” fidelio Festivals are moments to cherish. Burmese people love festivals. There is something to celebrate every month of the year. There are the better known festivals such as Thingyan (the water festival) in April and Thidingyut (the light festival) in October as well as lesser known ones such as those connected with the religious examinations held for monks. In spite of the large number of our own festivals we are not averse to celebrating those of other countries and cultures. Whether it is the Muslim Id, the Hindu Divali, the Chinese New Year or Christmas, the Burmese are quite ready to take part in the fun and the feasting. Perhaps because of the repression and injustices to which they are subjected, the Burmese have a remarkable capacity for extracting the maximum amount of fun from the opportunities offered to them during our traditional festivals.

So it is especially pleasing for me to see, albeit remotely, Brighton Festival taking shape this year, and to think that so many people will come together in May to celebrate great art and experience the inner peace it brings. It is wonderful too to know that there is such support for the effort to bring democracy and freedom to Burma, for which the Burmese people have been diligently working for so long. I wish everyone involved in Brighton Festival this year – the artists and the audience – the happiest of times. And thank you – please continue to use your liberty to promote ours. Aung San Suu Kyi

Brighton Dome & Festival Supporters

Festival Venues Brighton Dome Concert Hall, Corn Exchange, Pavilion Theatre, Founders Room, Dome Foyer Church Street, Brighton, BN1 1UE (Pavilion Theatre entrance on New Road).

Accessibilty info: 01273 261516 / 261525 brightondome.org

Brighton Town Hall Bartholomew’s Square Brighton, BN1 1JA Access is limited for New World Order. Contact 01273 260819 for access information.

National Media Partner

Regional Media Partner

Radio Partner

Travel Partner

Associate Sponsors

Community Outreach

Community Music

Children’s Parade

Corporate Members

Bonett’s Estate Agents

Patrons and Trusts & Foundations

The Basement Argus Lofts, 24 Kensington St, Brighton, BN1 4AJ 01273 699733 thebasement.uk.com

Charleston Festival Charleston Firle, Lewes East Sussex, BN8 6LL 01323 811265 charleston.org.uk Crew Club Coolham Drive Brighton BN2 5QW (Take the No.1 bus to Whitehawk) Duke of York’s Picturehouse Preston Circus, BN1 4NA picturehouses.co.uk/cinema/ duke_of_yorks

Fabrica 40 Duke Street, Brighton BN1 1AG fabrica.org.uk

Glyndebourne Lewes, East Sussex, BN8 5UU glyndebourne.com Wheelchair access – foyer circle level only.

Jubilee Library Jubilee Street, Brighton, BN1 1GE

Komedia 44 Gardner Street, Brighton BN1 1UN komedia.co.uk

Music Room, Royal Pavilion Pavilion Gardens, BN1 1EE royalpavilion.org.uk

Sallis Benney Theatre & University of Brighton Gallery 58 – 67 Grand Parade, BN2 OJY brighton.ac.uk/ gallery-theatre

St Ann’s Wells Gardens Entrances on Somerhill Road, Nizells Avenue, Furze Hill

St Barthlomew’s Church Ann St, Brighton, BN1 4GP St George’s Church St George’s Road, Brighton, BN2

St Mary’s Church 61 St James’s Street Brighton, BN2 1PR stmaryschurchbrighton.co.uk St Nicholas’ Church Dyke Road, Brighton, BN1 3LJ stnicholasbrighton.org.uk/

The Old Municipal Market Circus Street, BN2 9QF The Old Market Upper Market Street (off Western Road) Hove, BN3 1AS theoldmarket.co.uk The Old Paddling Pool Site Near the West Pier, Brighton, BN1 2JF Pavilion Gardens New Road, Brighton BN1 1UG Queens Park South Ave, Brighton BN2 0BP

St Nicholas’ Rest Garden Dyke Road, Brighton – opposite St Nicholas’ Church Theatre Royal Brighton New Road, Brighton, BN1 ISD ambassadortickets.com/ brighton

Victoria Gardens Grand Parade, Brighton BN2

Booking Online 24 hour secure online booking at brightonfestival.org By Phone 01273 709709

In Person Brighton Dome Ticket Office, 29 New Road, Brighton BN1 1UG

10am – 6pm, Mon – Sat 10am – 7pm, Mon – Sun throughout the Festival

If you are collecting tickets, please bring the same card you used to purchase online or over the phone. £2.25 transaction charge for all bookings by telephone and post. £1.75 for online bookings. No fee for in-person bookings.

Getting to the Festival London Victoria at 11pm calling at East Croydon and Clapham Junction By Rail It’s less that one hour to Brighton from London Victoria by fast Southern Railway trains. There are lots of coastal connections too. Book online to make savings southernrailway.com Festival Late Train Throughout the Festival Southern Railway run a special late train from Brighton to Brighton Festival Chief Executive Andrew Comben 12a Pavilion Buildings, Castle Square, Brighton, BN1 1EE

By Bus Bus travel around Brighton and Hove is fast and frequent. buses.co.uk By Air Brighton is 30 minutes from Gatwick by train or car. By Road Brighton is approx 60 miles from London via the A23/M23 and is wellconnected regionally by the A27 and A24. Brighton Festival would like to thank all the artists, partners, venues and sponsors, and the entire team of Brighton Dome and Festival Ltd who make this festival happen. For contact details visit brightonfestival.org

Brighton Festival is produced and promoted by Brighton Dome and Festival Ltd. Registered Charity number 249748. Brochure correct at time of going to press. Brighton Festival reserves the right to alter the programme without prior notice if necessary. Cover image and brochure design: Harrison + Co | harrisonandco.com Copywriting: Max Crisfield | maxcrisfield.co.uk Aung San Suu Kyi photo: ©2011 Stuart Isett | isett.com

FREE Brighton Festival ticket worth £20 Advanced Brighton Festival bookings Exclusive access to artists 20% off Brighton Dome events year round* 20% off at the Foyer Bar Plus more great discounts from our partners such as Southern Railway

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Brighton Festival 2011 Relax and unwind in the Foyer Bar Brighton Dome forms the heart of Brighton Festival in the city’s cultural quarter. The Concert Hall’s grand atrium foyer is open throughout the Festival, providing a light, elegant, family friendly space complete with fresh food, organic drinks, enticing wines and regular free daytime entertainment.

By Phone 01273 709709 In Person Brighton Dome Ticket Office 29 New Road, Brighton BN1 1UG 10am – 6pm, Mon – Sat 10am – 7pm, Mon – Sun throughout the Festival

Get more from your Festival Members Get More Become a Brighton Dome & Festival Member and you get a FREE Festival ticket worth £20 plus you can save on your trip to the Festival with discounts on Southern Railway, myhotel and NCP (see inside back cover). More For Free and More For Less This year we are pleased to present a large selection of free events including three art installations and a packed programme of outdoor performances and activities. Also, there are over 100 performances with tickets for only £10 or less. Be Bold and Save 15% Try something new this Festival: book two or more of these selected international events and save 15% on your total ticket price. Brighton Dome & Festival members save 20%: Apocrifu, Chouf Ouchouf, Circa, El Gallo, Fanfare Cioca˘rlia vs Boban Marcovic, Gardenia, Giant Sand/Devon Sproule, Monsters and Prodigies. Festival Addict? Buy tickets for six different Brighton Festival events and we’ll give you the cheapest free.

Terms and conditions: one transaction, through the Ticket Office. Offer not available online. Only tickets for six different events are valid (i.e. not six tickets for the same event). The number of free sixth tickets tallies with the equivalent number of paid tickets in your transaction (i.e. you get two free if two tickets are bought for each of the other five events.)

Photo: Matthew Andrews

Online brightonfestival.org

£10 Festival Standby Book the best available seats in person from one hour before the show on selected events. Available to under 26s, over 60s, JSA/IS, registered disabled/DLA or IB and Brighton Dome & Festival Members. Brighton Festival Mobile Phone App Don’t forget to download this App for iPhone and Android smartphones to have access to Festival information wherever you may be. Go to brightonfestival.org from your smartphone. Brighton Festival Radio 87.7 FM Your 24/7 guide to what’s on in this year’s Festival. We’ll have all the latest listings, daily hot picks, and reviews of the shows, gigs and performances, plus the chance to win tickets and get up close and personal with the artists. The station goes live on Tue 3 May to get you geared up and ready for Festival kick-off. Coverage runs right through until the Festival ends on Sun 29 May. Tune in to 87.7 FM or listen online at brightonfestival.org Supported by VisitBrighton. Have Your Say Send a review to our Facebook or use #BF2011 on Twitter and tell us what you really think. We’ll read these out on our Festival Radio too.

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The Festival Guide For more Festival offers as well as previews and reviews of most Festival events see argus.co.uk/brightonfestival Getting here During Festival time Southern Railway kindly add an extra late train from Brighton to London Victoria at 11pm calling at East Croydon and Clapham Junction to get you back in time for the last Tubes. Don’t forget, Southern Railway also offers great online discounts on train tickets if you purchase in advance. southernrailway.com

Full food menu available Mon – Sun, 10am – 5pm; with light bites and bar snacks on offer pre and post many shows. And for extra weekend Festival enjoyment the Foyer Bar is open Thu – Sat till midnight. Outside seating at the Pavilion Theatre on New Road also offers alfresco café style food throughout the Festival.

Paper Lotus Flowers ‘Use your liberty to promote ours’ Aung San Suu Kyi Aung San Suu Kyi’s release in 2010 was a true moment of celebration, but there are still more than 2,100 political prisoners in Burma. To raise awareness of their plight, we invite Festival visitors and Brighton & Hove residents to help us make over 2,000 paper lotus flowers, one to represent each detainee. The lotus flower has always been deeply symbolic. For the ancient Egyptians it signified rebirth, in Buddhist thought it is associated with purity and enlightenment, and Hindus confer upon it notions of prosperity and fertility. Beyond these religious resonances it remains a global emblem of new beginnings and positive change. Make your lotus flower and maybe together we can help make change happen… Download instructions from brightonfestival.org. Paper and instructions are also available in our Foyer Bar and you can add your lotus flower to our installation. Keep in touch about this project and track our success via facebook.com/brightondome With thanks to Coco Sato, hunter-gatherers, Letter Lounge and Wyndeham Press Group.

Events at a glance Classical Music

Visual Arts & Film page 6-7 page 08 page 09 page 10 page 12 page 28 page 28 page 46

utlug˘ Ataman – Mesopotamian Dramaturgies K Janet Cardiff – The Forty Part Motet Lynette Wallworth – Evolution of Fearlessness Nic Sandiland – Everything Looks Beautiful in Slow Motion Aung San Suu Kyi – Lady of No Fear Burma Soldier Pop-Up Cinema Burma VJ: Reporting From a Closed Country

Books & Debate page 15 page 16 page 17 page 17 page 17 page 20 page 22 page 22 page 22 page 24 page 29 page 31 page 34 page 39 page 40 page 42 page 44 page 44 page 44 page 45 page 46 page 49 page 51 page 52 page 52 page 53 page 56 page 56 page 60

5 x 15 Jackie Kay and Helen Oyeyema Philip Hensher and Louise Doughty 33 Revolutions per Minute Linda Grant and Naomi Alderman Sadie Jones and Mirza Waheed Peter Taylor – Talking to Terrorists The Pleasures and Politics of Food Brighton Festival Platform – New Voices DJ Shadow – In Conversation What Next?: The Future of Burma Upsetting the Balance Carol Ann Duffy Zoya Phan Mark Ravenhill – Playing with Fire Article 19 – Freedom of Information and the Right to Know P. D. James – Murder She Wrote People’s Choice Debate 5 New Poets Asa Briggs Writing Freedom Melvyn Bragg – The Book of Books Laurie Anderson – In Conversation Jon Ronson – The Psychopath Test Henning Mankell – The Troubled Man Mohsin Hamid and Hisham Matar House of Exile Izzeldin Abuelaish – I Shall Not Hate Who is the ‘Hero of Brighton & Hove’?

page 18 page 19 page 24 page 25 page 27 page 28 page 32 page 37 page 45 page 49 page 53

page 10 page 15 page 19 page 25 page 41 page 41 page 41 page 41 page 52 page 54 page 54 page 56 page 57 page 58

Contemporary Music page 14 page 24 page 24 page 26 page 35 page 38 page 43 page 47 page 49 page 51 page 59

Asian Dub Foundation – Music Of Resistance Max Richter, Hauschka, Dustin O’Halloran DJ Shadow – Shadowsphere Sufjan Stevens G iant Sand and Devon Sproule L ee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Max Romeo and Adrian Sherwood – Rebel Music Fanfare Cioca˘rlia vs Boban Marcovic John Cale & Band – Émigré/Lost and Found Mulatu Astatke Laurie Anderson – Delusion drian Utley, Will Gregory and Charles Hazlewood A The Passion of Joan of Arc

Dance & Circus page 13 page 21 page 23 page 29 page 33 page 46

G roupe Acrobatique de Tangier – Chouf Ouchouf Circa les ballets C de la B – Gardenia Charles Linehan Company Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui – Apocrifu Brighton Festival Platform – Working Title

Kids Hiccup Theatre – The Owl and the Pussycat Peut-être Theatre – Draw Me A Bird Compagnia TPO – Play Please!

Same Sky – Children’s Parade Compagnie Carabosse – Jardin Flambeau Lone Twin – The Boat Project 2 Rien Merci – Gramoulinophone Mark Smith & Rachel Gadsden with Deaf Men Dancing – Alive! Graeae – The Iron Man Bad Taste Cru – Tribal Assembly Red Herring – That’s The Way To Do It! Shakespeare’s Globe on Tour – As You Like It Générik Vapeur – Drôles d’Oiseaux Générik Vapeur – Bivouac Candoco and Scarabeus – Heartland Wired Aerial Theatre – As the World Tipped Freedom Picnic

Theatre page 11 page 12 page 19 page 20 page 30 page 31 page 32 page 32 page 36 page 37 page 37 page 40

page 16 page 27 page 39

B eethoven – Fidelio Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Lucy Crowe, Andrew Staples & Malcolm Martineau Trevor Pinnock and Friends P urcell Singers – Spem in Alium/Forty Part Motet S tephen Dillane & Heath Quartet – Four Quartets Leif Ove Andsnes Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet C hristopher Maltman and Joseph Middleton T here Was a Child City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Mahan Esfahani A cademy of St Martin in the Fields Joshua Bell and Steven Isserlis

Mornings After

Outdoor

page 40 page 42 page 48 page 50 page 50 page 50 page 51 page 55 page 58 page 58 page 59

Hydrocracker – The New World Order The Three (dis)Graces Victoria Melody, Ursula Martinez, Liz Aggiss Brighton Festival Platform – house 5 x 5 (Loud & Clear) Traverse Theatre Company – Midsummer Told by an Idiot and Drum Theatre Plymouth – And the Horse You Rode In On Edward Rapley – 10 Ways to Die on Stage Jos Houben – The Art of Laughter The Lady of Burma Los Torreznos – 35 Minutes Drew Taylor – Time After Time Jonathan Burrrows and Matteo Fargion Cheap Lecture/Cow Piece Me and the Machine I Came by Myself to a Crowded Place Quim Pujol – Tiburon Tigre (Tiger Shark) For Alfonso: A Wilde Evening at the Royal Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes Monsters and Prodigies Michael Pinchbeck – The End Eva Meyer-Keller – Death Is Certain Butley Brighton Festival Platform – The Growing Room Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes – El Gallo Bane 3 Bane Trilogy Supper Club’s Greatest Hits

page 60 page 60 page 60 page 60 page 60 page 60 page 60 page 60 page 60 page 60

Unpacked and Peut-être Theatre Companies Richard Hahlo – Hydrocracker Told by an Idiot Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui Christopher Maltman Neil Bartlett Claudio Valdés Kuri – Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes Mahan Esfahani Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre Générik Vapeur

Lunchtimes page 61 page 61 page 61 page 61 page 62 page 62 page 62 page 62 page 63 page 63 page 63 page 63

Copenhagen Chamber Ensemble Clara Mouriz and Joseph Middleton Leonid Gorokhov and Laura van der Heijden Finzi Quartet Miloš Karadagli´c Stephen Hough Philip Higham Jerwood Young Artists at Glyndebourne Heath Quartet Aquinas Piano Trio Alexander Karpeyev Shai Wosner

26 Letters page 64 page 64 page 64 page 64 page 65 page 65 page 65 page 65 page 65 page 66 page 66 page 66 page 66 page 67 page 67 page 67

Derek Landy – Skulduggery Pleasant Interactive Storytelling and Drawing with Guy Parker-Rees Happy Birthday Peepo! Poetry and Storytelling with Sean Taylor Jill Hucklesby – Writing Workshop Interactive Illustration with Bruce Ingman Chris Bradford – Samurai vs Ninja! Book Camp for Adults Nick Sharratt Anthony Browne Martin Brown – Horrible Histories Charlie Higson’s History of Horror Anthony Browne in conversation with Joe Browne: Mainly for Grown-ups Aliens, Robots and Elephantmen Telling Stories with Pictures Queen of Hearts Children’s Book Quiz Peacock Poetry Prize

Throughout the Festival

Kutlug ˘ Ataman

Sat 7 – Sun 29 May, 12noon – 7pm The Old Municipal Market FREE Kutlug˘ Ataman

Mesopotamian Dramaturgies

Co-commissioned by Brighton Festival Mesopotamian Dramaturgies, from internationally successful Turkish artist, Kutlug˘ Ataman, is a collection of stand-alone artworks and films conceived in response to the subject of modernism, with the dynamics of its relentless advance into the Middle East and the imagery provoked by its often violent history. Ataman documents the lives of marginalised individuals, exploring issues of political and environmental tensions across this region and beyond. Regarding the location given to Mesopotamian Dramaturgies, the artist says: ‘I am interested in the concept of Mesopotamia – the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, an area now split between Turkey and Iraq – because it was one of the most important centres of civilization in the ancient world.

Photo: ‘Journey to the Moon’ copyright Kutlug˘ Ataman. Courtesy Kutlug˘ Ataman and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.

‘Even today this zone is still of strategic and symbolic importance, because it lies on what we perceive as the borderline between East and West, understood in geographical and above all cultural terms. The clash of these two worlds is one of the great contemporary issues. Mesopotamia is a space of tension, a grey zone where the formulas developed in the so-called ‘centres’ start to transform, to get confused. A collapse of meaning that also gives rise to new possibilities, reconstructions, reformulations, that offers fertile ground and, at the same time, brings us to the brink of disaster. It is no coincidence that across history this area has been a place of sudden floods, earthquakes, virtual apocalypses for many great civilizations, just as it was the cradle of the sciences, of art and religion, for a very long time. A cauldron in which constant deconstruction has driven constant reconstruction’. Born in Istanbul, 1961, Ataman studied film at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA, graduating with an MFA in 1988. He has been awarded the prestigious Carnegie Prize in America and was shortlisted for Tate Britain’s Turner Prize. He lives between Istanbul, Islamabad and London. Artist in conversation For details see brightonfestival.org With thanks to Lighthouse, Brighton & Hove City Council and University of Brighton

Lynette Wallworth

Photo: Rocco Fasano. Image courtesy Forma and the artist

Janet Cardiff

Lynette Wallworth

The Forty Part Motet Sat 7 – Sun 29 May 12noon – 7pm Late nights: Sat 7 & Sat 28 May, till 11pm Fabrica FREE

‘ You can hear the sound move from one choir to another, jumping back and forth, echoing each other and then experience the overwhelming feeling as the sound waves hit you…’ Janet Cardiff

Presented by Fabrica

Thomas Tallis’s choral masterpiece Spem in Alium was written circa 1573 for forty parts – eight choirs of five voices. Now, in this contemporary audio installation, Tallis’s renaissance epic is reborn in an emotional experience of space and intimacy. Forty separately recorded voices resound through forty speakers – each placed torso-like in clusters of five singular voices aligned in an arc. As we move through the space we become ‘intimately connected with the voices…’ allowing us to fully engage with the ‘sculptural construction’ of Tallis’s music.

Evolution of Fearlessness Sat 7 – Sun 29 May 12noon – 7pm University of Brighton Gallery FREE Artist in conversation For details see brightonfestival.org

Janet Cardiff is a Canadian-born, Berlin-based artist whose work combines sound, movement and the environment across a range of media including film, video and photography. She has participated in the Münster Skulptur Projekte (1997), exhibited in the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh (1999), and represented Canada at the Venice Biennale (2001) with long-standing collaborator George Bures Miller.

‘Even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.’ Aung San Suu Kyi Responsive to human touch, this intimate, interactive installation deals with loss and its aftermath – survival – and beyond that: strength. Created by Lynette Wallworth, Evolution of Fearlessness presents eleven portraits of women residing in the artist’s native Australia, but originating from countries such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and El Salvador. Each has lived through wars, survived concentration camps or extreme acts of violence. The work focuses on a state beyond terror and loss most closely akin to mercy. Built around the importance of gesture, Evolution of Fearlessness provides a tactile gateway to the living women contained in the piece, whose stories we are given glimpses of but whose lips do not speak. It is a profound and deeply moving exploration of the strength of the human spirit.

Co-produced and presented with University of Brighton Curated by Lighthouse Commissioned by New Crowned Hope Festival, Vienna With thanks to Forma

Lynette Wallworth’s practice spans video installation, photography and film. Her ‘responsive environments’ lead visitors to transcend their everyday selves and to connect with universal themes that include and describe their own existence. This installation launches a new collaboration with University of Brighton and continues to Thu 9 Jun (except Mon 30 May). The installation Damavand Mountain will be shown alongside Evolution of Fearlessness.

7 May

7 May Same Sky

Children’s Parade Sat 7 May From 10.30am Procession: Sydney Street to Madeira Drive FREE

Carnival is an art form that celebrates life and freedom. Fittingly, this year’s Children’s Parade – one of Brighton Festival’s most enduring spectacles – takes as its theme The Rights of the Child. What do our children need? What do they think of the world we are creating around them? And what will the future be like for them when they have children of their own? These questions have sparked the creativity of 5000 young people across the city, working hard with parents, teachers, artists, musicians and choreographers to make this the biggest and best community event of its kind in the country.

Same Sky is one of the UK’s leading participatory arts companies producing events that ‘mobilise the imagination, strengthen communities and gladden the heart’.

Photo: Matthew Andrews

Now, taking to the streets to the sound of samba – with their effigies, costumes and giant puppets – they kick-start the Festival in a cavalcade of colour, music and fiesta-style fanfare.

Hydrocracker

Nic Sandiland

Sat 7 – Sat 14 May 9pm – Midnight FREE

Everything Looks Beautiful in Slow Motion How do movie-makers intensify the drama of a scene? From Seven Samurai to Raging Bull the slow motion take has been used to push our emotional buttons and rewire our aesthetic response to the onscreen action. Such is the language of Nic Sandiland’s interactive installation. A short snapshot of street life is recorded as pedestrians pass by a shopfront window. The scene is then played back in monochrome slow-mo to an accompanying soundtrack. In an instant our unconscious and often overlooked actions are transformed, elevating the mundane and the everyday to a choreographic context, because, as everyone knows, Everything Looks Beautiful in Slow Motion…

Co-programmed by South East Dance Commissioned by DanceDigital and with additional support from Arts Council England through Grants for the Arts.

For details of the location see brightonfestival.org

The New World Order Sat 7 – Sun 29 May Tues, Suns & Wed 11 May, 7.15pm Wed – Sat & Sun 22 May, 7.15pm & 9.30pm No performances on Mons or Sun 8 May Brighton Town Hall £17.50, limited capacity Running time: 75mins

‘The sense of being trapped within a brutal state machine builds and intensifies during this brilliant site-specific production.’ ***** The Independent

‘A brilliant collage of Pinter’s political plays … a shattering experience that brings Pinter’s world directly home.’ ***** The Guardian

by Harold Pinter Commissioned by Brighton Festival Hydrocracker’s chilling promenade performance of five Pinter short plays premiered at Brighton Festival 2007. Now, it makes a timely return during Aung San Suu Kyi’s Festival directorship. Staged not in the theatre, but a real government building, this darkly compelling production takes its audience on a journey – literally and metaphorically – from the lofty council chambers to the labyrinthine depths below, where the functionaries of the new world order ‘keep the world clean for democracy’. Harold Pinter was arguably the greatest British dramatist of his age; he was also our foremost chronicler of political injustice. Played out through five miniature masterpieces – Press Conference, One for the Road, Precisely, Mountain Language and The New World Order – this intimate and immersive performance draws us into the heat of the action, transforming us from passive viewers to complicit witnesses of covert menace and corrupt power. Taut and uncompromising, The New World Order delivers a short sharp shock to the system. A Guardian Pick of the Year 2007, The New World Order sold out during its original Brighton Festival run. Don’t miss this chance to catch the return of one of the most acclaimed site-specific theatre experiences of recent years. Produced by ArtsAgenda

7 May

7 May Aung San Suu Kyi – Lady of No Fear Sat 7 May 1pm Duke of York’s Picturehouse £6 – £13

In association with CineCity

Dir: Anne Gyrithe Bonne. Denmark. 60mins (cert. TBC) This Danish documentary is a moving portrait of the life of Burma’s opposition leader and democracy activist. The film gives priority to Aung San Suu Kyi’s personal history: her time at Oxford University and marriage to Dr Michael Arris; their domestic family life in England; and her return to Burma in 1988 when she made her first real commitment to the pro-democracy movement. She was first placed under house arrest a year later. The film explores the profound impact of her detainment on her family and friends, providing a rare and powerful insight into a remarkable woman and the massive sacrifices she and her family made for her beliefs.

The Three (dis)Graces

Northern Soul Victoria Melody Co-produced by The Basement

Photo: Georgina Millet

Sat 7 & Sun 8 May 6.30pm, The Basement £10 Or book all 3 for £25 Commissioned by Farnham Maltings, Victoria Melody is a Basement Supported Artist.

In her valiant attempts at joining in, Victoria’s eccentric adventures have found her living with pigeon fanciers and learning to northern soul dance in strangers’ living rooms. Victoria’s journey is documented in this comedic, engaging performance.

My Stories, Your E-Mails Ursula Martinez Co-produced by The Basement

Photo: Hugo Glendinning

Sat 7 & Sun 8 May 8pm, The Basement £10 Or book all 3 for £25

A comical and uncompromising investigation into identity, relationships, confession, obsession, miscommunication, the internet, fame, sex, loneliness … and political incorrectness.

Photo: Mario Del Curto

A trio of uncompromising performances from three of the most powerful and idiosyncratic female voices shouting loudly in the UK today.

Groupe Acrobatique de Tangier

Chouf Ouchouf Sat 7 – Mon 9 May Sat 7 & Sun 8, 6pm Mon 9, 7pm Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £15, £20 Under 16s half price Running time: 75mins Suitable: age 7+

Co-commissioned by Barbican BITE10 and Queer Up North International Festival.

Liz Aggiss Co-produced by The Basement

Photo: Matthew Andrews

For the past 30 years Liz Aggiss has had a finger in many pies. She’s been a Guerrilla Dancer, Diva, Wild Wiggler, Grotesque Dancer, Trout, Professor and herself. In this performance she shares the secrets of her survival.

Weaving together contemporary performance and traditional Moroccan acrobatics, Chouf Ouchouf is a witty and highly skilled evocation of the energy, joy and urgency of life in Tangier. In the medina, the city’s old quarter, where it’s ten to a house, and a hundred to the narrowest street, life is unruly and chaotic. But beneath the clamour are the whispers of its other life: in the maze-like streets and along the rooftops figures move on secret agendas. What, or who, is in the bag? With the same rich language of vernacular acrobatics that made 2006’s Taoub such a breathless success, Chouf Ouchouf is a collaboration between Groupe Acrobatique de Tangier and Swiss choreographers Zimmermann & de Perrot. With live music and a set that floats apart and reassembles to represent the many faces of a vibrant but bewildering landscape, the performers go in search of the city’s beating heart.

Survival Tactics Sat 7 & Sun 8 May 9.30pm The Basement £10 Or book all 3 for £25

Devised and directed by Zimmermann & de Perrot

In association with Crying Out Loud, Supported by The Swiss Cultural Fund and Arts Council England

7 May

7–8 May 5 x 15 Speakers include A. L. Kennedy, Fatima Bhutto, Lemn Sissay and Colin Thubron Sat 7 May 7.30pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50

Passion, obsession, great achievements and wild adventure … all in fifteen minutes. In this lively evening of spoken word cabaret – the latest buzz in intellectual entertainment from the nation’s capital – five speakers from a wide range of backgrounds and professions battle against the clock to inspire and enlighten. Taking the stand for their bite-sized discourse are: novelist and stand-up comedian A. L. Kennedy – on ‘why I do what I do’; poet and writer Fatima Bhutto – on the story of Pakistan; author, broadcaster and poet Lemn Sissay – on his search for his name and family; and legendary travel writer Colin Thubron on his journey to the holy Mount Kailas in Tibet.

Compagnie Carabosse

Jardin Flambeau Sat 7 & Sun 8 May St Ann’s Well Gardens FREE

As the sun goes down over one of Brighton’s bestloved local landmarks, French outdoor alchemists Compagnie Carabosse fan the flames of our imaginations with an elemental Fire Garden. St Ann’s Well Gardens may have derived its fame and fortune from its waters – its ancient spring once the centrepiece of an 18th-century health spa – but it is fire that now transforms this most elegant of Brighton’s open spaces.

Asian Dub Foundation Music of Resistance Sat 7 May 8.30pm Concert Hall, Brighton Dome £18.50 stalls standing/seated £12.50, £18.50 circle seated Festival Standby £10

Inspired by the struggle in Burma, Asian Dub Foundation kick-start Brighton Festival with a special one-off event. Asian Dub Foundation have always been at the forefront of musical resistance and politicisation. Their new album History of Now is no exception with its striking themes of globalisation, democracy, climate change and revolution. All of the collaborators on that album come together here for this live Festival exclusive, taking over the foyer as well as the concert hall. ADF will be joined by special guests: the drummers from the Ministry of Dhol, Nathan ‘flutebox’ Lee, powerful Romany singer Kerieva and Chinese violinists Chi 2 and MC Skrien. Jimmy Cauty (KLF, the Orb and JAMs) in his new guise as the AV artist The One O’clock Club sets the scene. Accompanied by screened footage of Al Jazeera documentary series The Music of Resistance (presented by ADF founder Chandrasonic), this unique event packs a potent agit-prop punch.

Carabosse have staged their striking installations across Europe, with dancing fire sculptures, flaming fire pots and cascades of candles. Each event is unique to its specific location, and here they ignite their creative spark exclusively for Brighton Festival, setting this former Victorian pleasure garden ablaze in an enchanting and intimate alfresco experience. Pop by any time between 8.30pm – 10.30pm

Compagnie Carabosse is invited as part of the ZEPA network, supported by the Interreg IVA France (Channel) England cross-border programme (see page 70). 15

8 May

8 May Philip Hensher and Louise Doughty

Hiccup Theatre

The Owl and Pussycat

Hosted by Dr Katy Shaw Sun 8 May 1pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50

A nonsense adventure for 3 – 8-year-olds and their families… Following successful preview performances, Brighton Festival presents the world premiere production of this enchanting retelling of Edward Lear’s classic poem. Follow Owl and Pussycat as they set out on the high seas with only some honey, money and a runcible spoon to help them find their way through a topsyturvy world! En route they meet the piggy wig, the turkey who lives on the hill and the strangest looking tree you’ll ever see…

Photo: Eamonn McCabe

Sun 8 May 11am, 1pm, 3pm Sallis Benney Theatre £7, Children £5 Family ticket £22 (2 adults & 2 children) Ages 3-8

by Edward Lear World Premiere

33 Revolutions per Minute

Illustration: Smyth Design

Puppetry, live music and beautiful storytelling combine in an absurd hogwash of nonsense, silly songs, babbling puppets and smaller than life characters!

Billy Bragg, Dorian Lynskey and Luke Bainbridge Sun 8 May 3pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50

In association with The Point Eastleigh

Hosted by Guardian Literary Editor Claire Armistead How do we learn to be ourselves? And at the same time discover how to be with one another? Such questions underpin new works by two of Britain’s brightest literary voices. Fiere – Jackie Kay’s new collection of poetry – is a lyric counterpart to her recent memoir Red Dust Road. Infused with both Scots and Igbo speech, and Kay’s trademark wit, it is a profound search for self-identity and the discovery of a tongue that best honours it. Nigerian-born Helen Oyeyemi is the critically acclaimed author of The Icarus Girl, The Opposite House and White is For Witching. Shortlisted for the 2010 BBC National Short Story Award, she returns to the novel form with the mischievous tale of Mr Fox, a story of love, lies and profound truths about belonging…

Photo: Anthony Saint John

Jackie Kay and Helen Oyeyemi Sun 8 May 8pm Pavilion Theatre £8.50

Sudden moments of unforeseen loss trigger spiralling paranoia and undisclosed passions in two gripping new novels about the shadowy reaches of the human heart. In King of the Badgers – the follow-up to Hensher’s Man Booker-shortlisted The Northern Clemency – the peaceful civility of rural Hanmouth gets a rude awakening with the disappearance of an eight-year-old girl. In Doughty’s Whatever You Love – the latest novel from the author of Fires in the Dark and Stone Cradle – Laura’s life is undone when her nine-year-old daughter Betty is hit by a car and killed. Laura’s grief opens old wounds and she soon discovers the lengths to which she will go for love…

Discover the music that has made history in this timely review of the protest song. When pop meets politics, the results are often thrilling, sometimes life changing and never simple. In his new book, 33 Revolutions per Minute, music journalist and author Dorian Lynskey traces this turbulent relationship across 33 pivotal songs that have soundtracked, inspired or informed social change. Through the combined works of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Fela Kuti, The Clash, and many more, Lynskey asks how music has engaged with racial unrest, war, poverty and oppression. Joining Dorian are singer/songwriter and political activist Billy Bragg, and Associate Editor of Observer Music Monthly Luke Bainbridge.

Linda Grant and Naomi Alderman Hosted by Professor Deborah Philips Sun 8 May 5pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50

For many of us the lugubrious days of our university years are halcyon ones. But what happens when reality bites? Linda Grant is one of the few novelists to have won the Orange Prize (When I Lived in Modern Times) and been shortlisted for the Man Booker (Still Here). We Had It So Good, her new novel, tells of generational dreams and secret longings as a former acid-dropping Oxford grad confronts the fool’s paradise of his middle age. Naomi Alderman was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2010. Following her debut Disobedience, her glittering new novel The Lessons is a ‘modern-day Brideshead’, the story of a tight-knit Oxford crowd whose realities fall short of their dreams. 17

8 May

8–9 May Sun 8 May, 7pm Concert Hall, Brighton Dome £12.50, £17.50, £22.50, £30, £35 Festival Standby £10

Sun 8 May 12noon – 5pm Jubilee Square

Beethoven

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Brighton Festival Chorus Concert performance. Sung in German with commissioned narration by Simon Butteriss

Photo: Toby Adamson

Fidelio

The Boat Project is the Artists Taking the Lead commission in the South East.

Adam Fischer conductor

house Mon 9 May 8pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £6

Photo: Hugo Glendinning

When Florestan is unjustly imprisoned, his wife, Leonore, disguised as a man, joins the service of brutal prison governor Pizarro in a courageous attempt to rescue her husband. This simple premise forms the narrative backbone to Beethoven’s monumental two-act opera.

Photo: lukasbeck.com

Aung San Suu Kyi

house is an association of producers from across the South East. Together they are committed to raising the profile of the region’s artists, performers and theatre makers. This house platform – soon to become a biannual event – is an opportunity for a number of selected companies to present new ideas to new audiences. The evening consists of short performance extracts as well as the sharing of fresh thoughts for future work. Please check brightonfestival.org for more details.

Lucy Crowe soprano Andrew Staples tenor Malcolm Martineau piano

Fidelio – Beethoven’s only completed work in the form – was written at a time of political upheaval in Europe; it premiered in French-occupied Vienna on 20 November 1805. Its underlying message of right triumphing over might – made manifest in the resounding ‘victory’ chorus at the end of the opera – wasn’t lost on its audience of Napoleonic officers, and the opera was closed down within days. Today its thematic touchstones – wrongful incarceration, abuse of power and personal sacrifice – seem startlingly contemporary. Timeless and universal, it remains unmatched in the operatic canon for its political conviction and emotional intensity.

‘Concepts such as truth, justice and compassion cannot be dismissed as trite when these are often the only bulwarks which stand against ruthless power…’

Meet Lone Twin and a professional boat building team who are creating a beautiful 30ft sea-faring vessel from wooden objects donated from across the region. Donate your wood. Ideally a piece with a story that somehow features in your life. It might be quite mundane, it might be something quite extraordinary, and giving it away is actually difficult to do. View the boat taking shape on our live build shed web cam at theboatproject.com. This forms part of a wider project that will be unveilled at Brighton Festival 2012. Brighton Festival Platform

Cast includes: Florestan Roman Sadnik Leonore Janice Watson Rocco Matthew Best Marzelline Elena Xanthoudakis Narrator Simon Butteriss ‘Britain’s indisputably best period-instrument ensemble’ (The Independent) performs Beethoven’s epic paean to justice and liberty in this special concert performance.

The Boat Project

Three outstanding British artists come together for a celebration of the songs of Schubert and Beethoven. Described by The Telegraph as ‘an outstanding talent’ and The Times as ‘breathtakingly vivacious’, Lucy Crowe has already fulfilled the promise that the young ROSL Gold Medal winner showed back in 2005, with a raft of international concert and opera engagements. Tenor Andrew Staples performs here in the wake of a series of critically acclaimed appearances last season including Salome at the Royal Opera House – ‘impressive and touching as the suicidally infatuated Narraboth’ (The Times) – and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Garsington Opera. Mon 9 May 8pm Music Room, Royal Pavilion £30, includes interval wine in the Banqueting Hall

Accompanying them is Malcolm Martineau, a pianist of ‘outstanding musical intelligence and virtuosity’ (Sunday Telegraph).

10 May

10 May 5 X 5 (Loud & Clear) Co-produced by The Basement Tue 10 – Sat 14 May Timed appointments every 20 minutes 3.30pm – 7.50pm The Basement £20 Limited capacity: advance booking essential; over 18s only

Five performances. Five encounters. Five audience members. Fifty-five minutes. Join four other intrepid explorers (whom you may or may not know) on this shared journey into the unknown through seductive spaces and intimate scenarios. An Appreciation Brian Lobel Lobel leads his audience by the hand to discover something lost and something gained in this touching and revealing performance.

Mistermissmissmister Ana Borralho & João Galante This flirtatious performance provokes unexpected emotions, confronting the viewer with characters whose exposed bodies reveal an unsettling ambiguity. Please note that this experience features material of an explicit nature Hug Verity Standen Hug creates a passing moment of intimacy and reflection, tenderly and humorously touching on issues of body image, gender, shame and compulsion. The Minotaur Kindle Theatre An intimate dining experience, an edible narrative. A dish cooked and served to you by candlelight, a dinner inspired by ancient myth. On the menu tonight: Minotaur.

Sadie Jones and Mirza Waheed Hosted by Guardian Literary Editor Claire Armistead Tue 10 May 8pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50

How do writers fictionalise war and conflict – the triumphs and terrors of front-line battle as well as the psychological fallout on those left behind? Small Wars is the devastating follow-up to Sadie Jones’ Costawinning debut novel The Outcast. Set in the bloody battle of the Cyprus Emergency, it explores what happens when everything a man believes in – the army, his country, his marriage – begins to crumble… In his debut novel The Collaborator, London-based, Kashmir-born BBC editor Mirza Waheed tells the story of a teenage boy left behind to face the music when his four friends cross from their Kashmir village into Pakistan to engage the Indian army.

Photo: Justin Nicholas, Atmosphere Photography

Smalls Jenny Edbrooke Peek up Jenny’s voluminous skirt to experience an enchanting and amusing insight into the secret world of undergarments.

Circa

Circa Tue 10 – Sat 14 May 8pm Theatre Royal Brighton £8, £12.50, £17.50, £20 Festival Standby £10 Running time: 75mins Age 14+ Audio described performance Sat 14 May, 8pm Ask for details of Touch Tour prior to the show.

The ancient art of circus finds bold new expression in this acclaimed show from this exciting young Australian ensemble. Circa is a new production drawn from three of the company’s best-known works: The Space Between, by the light of stars that are no longer… and FURIOSO. Over 80 intense minutes, the seven performers move from highly connected acrobatic and tumbling sequences through fast-paced intricate scenes to a haunting finale. Shot through with Circa’s signature style – physical beauty, extraordinary circus skills and an immersive use of sound, light and projection – this ‘stripped back circus of the heart’ was the toast of Edinburgh Fringe 2010. It comes to Brighton Festival in a blaze of rave reviews and public acclaim, ‘redefining the limits to which circus can aspire’ (The Age, Australia). The company also presents a specially adapted matinee for families on Sat 14 May.

Family-friendly matinee Sat 14 May, 3pm £5, £10, £15 Running time 60mins

‘Not since … Les 7 Doigts de la Main’s Traces, has the UK seen a circus show quite so kneetremblingly sexy, beautiful and moving.’ **** The Guardian 21

10–11 May

11 May Peter Taylor

Talking to Terrorists In conversation with David Aaronovitch Tue 10 May 7.30pm Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £10 ‘As one has come to expect from Taylor, the research is meticulous, accurate and balanced.’ Irish Times

Terror is the watchword of our age. But what is the reality behind global terrorism? What drives terrorists to unspeakable acts? How do states counter them? Should governments talk to them? And what truth is there in the maxim: ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’? Peter Taylor – BBC investigative journalist and author of Talking to Terrorists – addresses these complex and controversial issues in this special event, recounting his personal experiences of war and conflict and drawing on 35 years of reporting terrorism from Northern Ireland to the Middle East.

The Pleasures and Politics of Food The Observer Food Monthly Debate Hosted by Jay Rayner How does food shape our lives? When food riots can bring down a government and speculators try to corner the market in staples, what does food security mean? Is local and organic still important? And after Scandinavia, what exciting flavours, trends and food cultures are next to discover? OFM columnist Jay Rayner hosts a lively discussion about the pleasures and politics of food with cooks and food writers Yotam Ottolenghi (also the Guardian’s ‘New Vegetarian’ columnist); OFM editor Allan Jenkins; Fuchsia Dunlop (author of Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China); and Tomasina Miers (writer and owner of Wahaca restaurants). Brighton Festival Platform

New Voices

Photo: Hayley Madden

Wed 11 May 8pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £6

Luke Williams, Naomi Woods and Stephen Kelman Hosted by Lisa Holloway From loves to losses, firsts linger longest in our memories. Three promising new authors read and discuss the inspiration behind their brilliant and bold debut novels. Williams’ cacophonous debut The Echo Chamber is an evocative tale of family and empire, Oxford and Lagos, and the impossible art of listening. With shades of A Clockwork Orange, Woods’ startling The Godless Boys is a violent and tender story of love, revenge and outlawed faith. Kelman’s Pigeon English is a spellbinding portrait of a young boy from Ghana trying to make sense of his new life in innercity London. Three new voices. Three breakthrough novels. Three future stars of the literary firmament.

Photo: Luk Monsaert

Wed 11 May 7.30pm Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £10

les ballets C de la B

Gardenia Wed 11 May, 8pm Concert Hall, Brighton Dome £7.50, £12.50, £15, £18.50 Festival Standby £10 Running time: 105mins

‘Gardenia is a moving piece … sometimes funny and above all tender … a very human picture of the transvestite world.’ Le Monde

UK Premiere Co-commissioned by Brighton Festival In this intimate portrait of identity and self-revelation an ensemble of ageing transsexuals and transvestites takes centre stage. Each with a trunk full of longing. Each with their own story: sometimes funny, sometimes overwhelming, always poignant. As they navigate the hinterland between masculine and feminine, truth and artifice, past and present, their personal dramas are played out in a bold and blowsy yet deeply tender mix of dance, song, theatre and cabaret. Inspired by the penetrating film Yo soy asi, in which the closing of a transvestite cabaret in Barcelona reveals the private lives of a memorable group of veteran artistes, Gardenia is a collaboration between Flemish actress/writer Vanessa Van Durme, directors Alain Platel (les ballets C de la B founder) and Frank Van Laecke, and composer Steven Prengels. A transformative tale of hope and cherished or lost illusions…

A co-commission with NTGent, La rose des vents (Villeneuve d'Ascq), TorinoDanza, Biennale de la danse de Lyon, Tanz im August (Berlin), Théâtre national de Chaillot (Paris), Centro Cultural Vila Flor Guimarães, La Bâtie-Festival de Genève and Festival d’Avignon

12–13 May

13–14 May Fri 13 May, 10pm by candlelight St Bartholomew’s Church £15

FatCat 130701 Showcase

In association with The Great Escape and FatCat Records

In this audio-visual showcase featuring lead artists of 130701 – the broad-reaching, post-classical imprint of the Brighton-based FatCat record label – BAFTAnominated composer Max Richter performs his haunting score to his Wayne McGregor/Royal Opera House collaboration, infra. He shares the bill here with Dusseldorf-based ‘prepared piano’ player Hauschka – whose forthcoming FatCat release is an orchestral take on techno and house pieces; and US pianist/ film composer Dustin O’Halloran. The evening also includes a screening of excerpts from Bill Morrison’s found-footage documentary The Miners’ Hymns, scored by Icelandic composer/producer Johann Johannsson.

Thomas Tallis

Spem in Alium – Forty Part Motet Purcell Singers To complement Janet Cardiff ’s The Forty Part Motet installation at Fabrica (see p.8), London’s leading chamber choir, the Purcell Singers, perform Thomas Tallis’s Renaissance choral masterpiece Spem in Alium live in an intimate candlelit setting. Photo: Patrick Allen

Thu 12 May 7.30pm St Mary’s Church Kemptown £18.50

Max Richter, Hauschka, Dustin O’Halloran

Photo: Nina Large

Trevor Pinnock and Friends Thu 12 May 8pm St George’s Church Kemptown £17.50 £12.50 (restricted view) £5 sound only

Trevor Pinnock harpsichord

‘Baroque music unfolded all its magic … Pinnock totally lives in his music and communicates an infectious delight in playing.’ Basellandschaftliche Zeitung.

The Gramophone Prize-winning harpsichordist and conductor leads a small hand-picked ensemble of chamber musicians and soloists in a celebration of the baroque. Trevor Pinnock has pioneered performance on historical instruments for over 30 years, most notably with the English Concert, the baroque orchestra he formed in 1972.

‘The Purcell Singers are an exemplary group, perfectly balanced, warmly focussed and totally committed…’

Purcell Excerpts from The Fairy Queen Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 BWV1050 Bach Orchestral Suite No. 2 BWV1067 for Flute and Strings Bach Harpsichord Concerto in D minor BWV1052

Gramophone Magazine

2 Rien Merci

Gramoulinophone Sideshow strangeness and fairground eccentricity await all those who enter the Gramoulinophone.

Photo: Dirk Lindner

In Conversation Fri 13 May, 2pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £10 24

Outside their curiously off-kilter contraption – big top-cum-gramophone-cum-hurdy-gurdy – three bowler-hatted misfits shuffle into view. Slightly haggard and decidedly dusty, they round up passersby with the promise of rare marvels and mechanical treats. The door opens, the mystery of the unknown beckons and the audience enters. A lamp is lit and the show begins…

Photo: Jean-Pierre Estournet

Shadowsphere Concert Thu 12 May, 8pm Concert Hall, Brighton Dome £15 (£6 top-up on your Great Escape wristband) Standing/seated event

With the absurd charm and offbeat humour that has become the calling card of these French street theatre supremos – think Tom Waits does vaudeville on the set of Belleville Rendezvous! – Gramoulinophone has the surreal glimmer of a half-forgotten dream.

The next day, Shadow will step out of the sphere to lift the lid on his inspirational career, discussing his work to date – from his debut album Endtroducing to the DJ Hero franchise – and explaining how the Shadowsphere was both conceived and realised. In association with The Great Escape

The concert also features Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere Mei alongside more contemporary choral pieces by the charismatic Lithuanian composer/conductor Vytautas Miškinis, Henryk Górecki and Arvo Pärt.

Sat 14 May, 12pm, 2.30pm & 5pm Sun 15 May, 11am, 2pm & 4.30pm Pavilion Gardens, FREE

DJ Shadow DJ Shadow has always experimented in the field of music and audio-visual technology. Last year he debuted a new performance experience that reimagined the potential of live visuals, bringing the video backdrop front of stage in three dimensions with the Shadowsphere. Now, the Californian hip-hop pioneer finally brings this awe-inspiring live show to Brighton – for one night only.

According to popular mythology Spem in Alium was written for Elizabeth I’s 40th birthday in 1573 – 40 parts for 40 years. Performed by eight choirs of five voices in a horseshoe formation, its effects are extraordinary: from the haunting simplicity of the solitary lines that open the piece to the sheer audacity of its polyphonic invention.

2 Rien Merci is invited as part of the ZEPA network, supported by the Interreg IVA France (Channel) England cross-border programme (see page 70). 25

14 May

14 May Peut-être Theatre

Draw Me A Bird Sat 14 & Sun 15 May 11am & 2pm Sallis Benney Theatre Adults £7 Children £5 Family ticket £22 (2 adults, 2 children) Age 6+

British Theatre Guide

Sufjan Stevens

One young bird loves the songs of a Paris street musician so much that when all the others fly away for the winter she stays behind. Cold, hungry and lonely, how will she survive? Following the sell-out tour of The Bug and The Butterfly, Peut-être Theatre invites you to Draw Me a Bird, an uplifting tale of friendship and survival.

Four Quartets

On his latest album The Age of Adz – his first full length collection of songs since 2005’s civic pop opus Illinois – American songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sufjan Stevens trades in the acoustic guitars and banjos for an electronic sound collage of drum machines and analog synths. Loops, samples, and digital effects gurgle and hum beneath a wash of brass, strings, woodwind and a lush choir of backing voices to create a rich tapestry of electronic pop songs.

Sat 14 May 8pm St Nicholas’ Church, Dyke Road £17.50

The Age of Adz – though loosely inspired by the apocalyptic visions of American Creole artist Royal Robertson – is a marked departure from the conceptual underpinnings and narrative drive of much of Stevens’ earlier work – from Enjoy Your Rabbit (2001) to Illinois. The result is an album that is more vibrant, more primary, more introspective and more candid than anything he’s done before.

‘Music heard so deeply/that it is not heard at all, but you are the music/while the music lasts.’ In association with The Great Escape

Dance-inspired music theatre for children and their grown-ups about a little bird in a big city.

Jacques Prévert (Autumn Leaves; Les Enfants du Paradis) was one of France’s best-loved poets and screenwriters. With fresh new translations of his poems, an original score (fusing birdsong with French folk music), live drawing and bags of ‘crazy physicality’, Draw Me a Bird flies sky high care of resident Brighton Festival company Peut-être Theatre. Another soaring success in imaginative and immersive young people’s theatre!

‘…a thing of wonder. Peut-être Theatre raises the bar of children’s theatre in concept, design, and execution…’

Sat 14 May 8pm Concert Hall, Brighton Dome £22.50 (£6 top-up on your Great Escape wristband) Standing/seated event Festival Standby £10

written by Rachel Barnett, directed by Daphna Attias with music by Yaniv Fridel World Premiere Commissioned by Brighton Festival

T. S. Eliot Four Quartets

Stephen Dillane Heath Quartet Katie Mitchell director Vicki Mortimer designer T. S. Eliot Four Quartets performed by Stephen Dillane Beethoven String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132 Great works invariably stand alone. Yet occasionally two towering artistic achievements find common ground. Such a meeting is made manifest in this pairing of T. S. Eliot’s epic poem Four Quartets followed by a performance of Beethoven’s late great String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132. Beethoven composed the latter in the winter of 1824. More than a century later, in 1931, T. S. Eliot said of it that: ‘there is a sort of heavenly, or at least more than human gaiety … which one imagines might come to oneself as the fruit of reconciliation and relief after immense suffering. I should like to get something of that into verse before I die’. The result is Four Quartets, alongside The Wasteland, Eliot’s undisputed masterpiece. In it the poet sought to get ‘beyond poetry, as Beethoven, in his later works, strove to get beyond music’.

15 May

16–17 May Burma Soldier

Charles Linehan Company

Directors: Nick Dunlop, Annie Sundberg, Ricki Stern. 2010. 70mins. (Cert. 18) Sun 15 May 1pm Duke of York’s Picturehouse £6 – £13

In association with CineCity

Mon 16 May 8pm Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £12.50, £15 Festival Standby £10

Myo Myint served in the Burmese army. Discharged after losing a leg and an arm in a minefield, he became a supporter of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and started giving speeches outside military bases. He was jailed for 15 years, suffering mistreatment and torture. Burma Soldier is the powerful story of this former soldier and junta member who risked everything to become a prodemocracy activist.

‘As Linehan has proven for over a decade now the best things often come in the least hyped packages’ The Observer

Sun 15 – Tue 17 May The Basement For programme details see brightonfestival.org

In association with CineCity

From a mass fancy dress Lawrence of Arabia at Alexandra Palace to Banksy’s premiere of Exit Through the Gift Shop in a dank tunnel beneath Waterloo Station, a grass roots movement of clandestine cinema events has been wrestling the movie-going experience back from the multiplex. Now, Brighton Festival and CineCity go underground with a pop-up cinema installation at The Basement, screening a selection of previews hot off the festival circuit and staging unique one-off events reflecting themes of liberty, freedom of speech, exile and celebration.

Photo: Pari Naderi

Pop-Up Cinema

In association with South East Dance

Grounds open from 12noon for picnicking. ‘The most accomplished pianist of the new generation’ Wall Street Journal

Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 21 in C Op. 53 Waldstein Brahms 4 Ballads Op. 10 Schoenberg Sechs kleine klavierstücke Op. 19 Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor Op. 111 The Grammy-nominated Norwegian pianist performs two landmark Beethoven sonatas in an intimate solo recital. Written in the summer of 1804 for patron and friend Count Ferdinand von Waldstein, Beethoven’s Sonata No. 21, Op. 53 is one of the cornerstones of the composer’s great middle period. A homage to this formative friendship, it dramatically developed the sonata form. Yet if the ‘Waldstein’ sets the benchmark, the Op. 111, Beethoven’s last sonata, wholly redefines it; indeed, its second movement was so bold and daring that it rendered the need for a third quite obsolete!

Felix Broede

‘A pianist of magisterial elegance, power and insight’ (New York Times), Leif Ove Andsnes has curated and performed seven Carnegie Hall Perspectives concerts; recorded more than 30 discs; and won no less than four Gramophone Awards. 28

Charles Linehan is celebrated for the eloquence and elegance of his understated choreography. Here, he presents two new works for his acclaimed company. The Fault Index is a celebration of isolated events, a series of connected and unconnected incidents presented in a different order for each performance. At its heart are three ensemble pieces that weave together disparate and independent choreographic elements in a percussive and spirited tour de force. The Clearing features four dancers including long-term collaborators, Rahel Vonmoos and Greig Cooke, with a commissioned score by Richard Skelton. Slow transformations evolve within a complex weave of interlocking melodies, off-rhythms and beautiful sonorities. Charles Linehan trained at the Rambert Academy and performed in contemporary companies throughout Europe. He won the Jerwood Award for Choreography 1998, was resident choreographer at The Place Theatre, London and was resident choreographer in Munich in 2006.

What Next?: The Future of Burma

Leif Ove Andsnes piano Glyndebourne Recital Sun 15 May 3pm Glyndebourne Opera House £12.50, £22.50 £27.50, £32.50

The Fault Index The Clearing

Tue 17 May 7.30pm Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £10

with Mark Farmaner, Peter Popham, Sue Lloyd-Roberts, Zoya Phan & Robert Gordon chaired by Polly Toynbee What does the future hold for Burma? What are the next moves for Aung San Suu Kyi and her followers? Will freedom and democracy ever be within reach? And what can and should the rest of the world do? Festival chair Polly Toynbee hosts a passionate discussion examining the challenges facing Burma. Mark Farmaner is Director of Burma Campaign UK. He has visited Burma on numerous occasions and spoken worldwide on its plight. Journalist, novelist and Independent foreign correspondent Peter Popham has just written a new biography of Aung San Suu Kyi – The Lady and the Peacock. An award-winning foreign correspondent for BBC World Affairs, Sue Lloyd-Roberts has reported undercover from Burma and across the region. Zoya Phan is a Burmese author and spokesperson for the Burma Campaign. Her remarkable personal story is told in a separate event on 20 May (see p39). Robert Gordon was Ambassador to Burma, 1995 – 1999.

17 May

17 May Told by an Idiot and Drum Theatre Plymouth

And the Horse You Rode In On A sequence of serious follies Co-commissioned by Brighton Festival A well-known rabbit attempts to stop an alien blowing up the earth. In a Berlin café a professor pleads with her student not to commit an atrocious act. And in an infamous London department store the weirdest ever episode of Are You Being Served? is about to begin. And the Horse You Rode In On is a dark, funny and deeply disturbing look at the lengths to which people will go for their beliefs and how powerless we are to stop them. Inspired by Hitchcock’s Sabotage, and the writings of Günter Grass, this sinister comedy of ineptitude takes Told by an Idiot’s distinctive style in a new and unsettling direction.

Photo: Euan Myles

Told by an Idiot will be in residence throughout week two of Brighton Festival with a programme of related events: Post-Show Event Dispensing with a traditional discussion format, Told by an Idiot gives you – the audience – the chance to explore the creative process by actually taking part. Led by members of the company, you are invited to join in with simple practical exercises and games which offer an insight into the ‘way of the idiot’. Wed 18 May

Traverse Theatre Company

Midsummer [a play with songs] by David Greig and Gordon McIntyre. Tue 17 – Sat 21 May Tue & Wed, 8pm Thu & Fri, 9.30pm Sat, 7pm Theatre Royal Brighton £5, £10, £12.50, £15 Festival Standby £10 Running time: 100mins

It’s midsummer’s weekend in Edinburgh. It’s raining. Two thirty-somethings are sitting in a New Town bar waiting for something to turn up. He’s a failing car salesman on the fringes of the city’s underworld and she’s a high-powered divorce lawyer with a taste for other people’s husbands. She’s out of his league and he’s not her type at all. They absolutely should not sleep together. Ever. Ever. Which is why they do.

‘Exhilarating…you float out laughing as if you’ve just swallowed sunshine on a spoon.’ **** The Guardian

‘Warm-hearted, beautifullysculpted musical romantic comedy.’

Midsummer [a play with songs] is the story of Bob and Helena and a great lost weekend of bridge burning, car chases, wedding bust-ups, bondage miscalculations, midnight trysts and horrible hungover self-loathing misery. Featuring Cora Bissett and Matthew Pidgeon as the ill-advised love match, Midsummer is a quirky, charming love story by one of Scotland’s leading playwrights, David Greig, and top Edinburgh singer/songwriter, Gordon McIntyre, of the band ballboy.

Tue 17 – Sat 21 May 8pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £15 Festival Standby £10

‘The questioning intelligence they bring to their work is admirable and uncommonly powerful.’ ***** The Times

The Scotsman A Told by an Idiot and Drum Theatre Plymouth production Commissioned by the Barbican and Brighton Festival

Serious Follies Working with the same ideas, inspiration and source material, a group of young performers collaborate with Told by an Idiot to create their version of And the Horse You Rode In On. This ten minute companion piece precedes the main show. Fri 20 May Artist Workshop This intensive workshop for professional theatre practitioners explores Told by an Idiot’s unique approach to creating comedy. Sat 21 May 11am – 5pm Founders Room, Brighton Dome £20 (£30 including main show and panel discussion) Upsetting the Balance Panel Discussion A debate on the boundaries and censorship of comedy featuring a panel of figures from comedy, journalism and politics. Sat 21 May 5.30pm £8.50 (FREE to ticket holders) 31

17–18 May

18 May Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet Mozart Fantasie in F minor KV608 Reicha Quintet in B major Op. 88 No. 5 Ligeti 6 Bagatelles Francaix Quintet No. 1

‘…superlative music making … The Berliners were dazzlingly virtuosic.’ The Australian

Two decades after Mozart composed his 1791 Fantasie in F minor, KV608 – originally for mechanical organ and later transcribed for wind quintet – Bohemian-born composer Anton Reicha began work on what would arguably become the apex of the form – his 24 wind quintets. A century later György Ligeti reworked a collection of 12 early piano pieces (1951-53) for the wind quintet, creating six lively bagatelles, shot through with the spirit of Bartok, Kodály and the folk traditions of his longlamented homeland, Hungary. Contemporaneously, neoclassical French composer Jean Francaix stamped his signature wit on the virtuosic yet playfully humorous Quintet No. 1 (1948).

Photo: Peter Adamik

Tue 17 May 8pm Music Room Royal Pavilion £30, includes interval wine in the Banqueting Hall

Three centuries of sublime wind quintet repertoire from ‘arguably the best ensemble of its kind in the world’. (Manchester Evening News)

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

10 Ways to Die on Stage Edward Rapley Co-produced by The Basement Wed 18 & Thu 19 May 7.30pm The Basement £10, or buy both for £20

Co-produced with The Basement

The first of two stunningly performed, funny and profound works that use physical humour to explore what makes us who we are… Welcome to the world of Edward Rapley, a landscape of balloons and paddling pools, childhood memories and adult loss. Fusing stand-up and storytelling with dance, live art and clowning, 10 Ways to Die on Stage brings one man’s life, full of hopes and failures, into sharp yet bewildering focus.

The Art of Laughter Jos Houben Co-produced by The Basement Wed 18 & Thu 19 May 9pm The Basement £15, or buy both for £20 ‘If there’s a more inspired contemporary physical comedian – I don’t know of him.’ The New Yorker 32

Do we have the choice whether to laugh or not? This is the core question behind Jos Houben’s multi award-winning one-man show. In this hilarious and thought-provoking performance lecture Houben (a founder member of Complicite) locates our funny bones somewhere close to the heart of what it means to be human.

Apocrifu UK Premiere Wed 18 May 8pm Concert Hall, Brighton Dome £7.50, £12.50, £15, £18.50 Festival Standby £10 Running time: 85mins

‘His silky intermingling of hybrid movement forms an emotionally intense theatre.’ New York Times

‘brave, thrilling, elliptical … modern dance has few more extraordinary journeys.’ ***** Daily Telegraph on Sutra

The former les ballets C de la B dancer turned international choreographer investigates the ubiquity of the written word in this powerful work for three dancers and polyphonic choir. In Western thought, much religious practice and our knowledge-driven society, written language is often seen to hold supremacy over the body. Does this leave us open to manipulation and control? To a contagion of infectious thought? Performed to the haunting polyphonic choral music of all-male Corsican ensemble A Filetta and played out in a dance dialogue that is at turns earthbound and ethereal, Apocrifu takes the sanctity of ‘the word’ to task. Challenging ‘great truths’ and re-evaluating apocryphal texts, it is also a celebration of the beauty of bodies in movement. ‘Part contortionist, part visionary, part poet’ (The Independent), Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is a multi award-winning Belgian dancer/choreographer. Previous collaborations include Zero Degrees with Akram Khan (2005), and the monks of the Shaolin Temple and sculptor Antony Gormley for the creation of Sutra (2008).

18 May

19 May

Giant Sand and Devon Sproule Photo: Michael Woods

Thu 19 May 8pm Concert Hall, Brighton Dome £16, £18 Festival Standby £10

Carol Ann Duffy Wed 18 May 8pm Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £10

Britain’s Poet Laureate reads from and discusses her work in this enlightening and intimate celebration of her craft. Carol Ann Duffy is one of Britain’s most successful contemporary poets, enjoying the rare feat of critical acclaim and wide popular appeal. Her collections include Standing Female Nude (1985), Meantime (1993), which won the Whitbread and Forward Poetry prizes; and Rapture, winner of the 2005 T. S. Eliot Prize. Both literary and playful, serious yet mischievous, her work touches on all facets of human life and emotion from issues of gender and identity to contemporary culture. Duffy is also an award-winning playwright, writer of picture books for children and Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.

‘A mythical American cowboy spray-painted in strange, muted shades. Think art school Neil Young, or Lou Reed wandering the Mojave desert.’

In a one-off music special, Brighton Festival heads out west for some off-road adventures in alt-country noir and folk-roots Americana… For almost three decades Howe Gelb and his Arizona desert dwellers Giant Sand have been treading their own wayward path. In that time Gelb’s dust-blown marriage of country, rock, blues, garage, lo-fi, jazz, gospel and psychedelia has graced some 25 albums, including Giant Sand’s latest, Blurry Blue Mountains. Their left-field prairie visions have inspired an alt-country revolution and opened up new musical horizons for the likes of M. Ward, Grandaddy and Bon Iver. Four years after her breakthrough album – 2007’s mellifluous Keep Your Silver Shined – Virginia-based songstress Devon Sproule returns with her latest, I Love You, Go Easy, recorded with Toronto trio The Silt. The record is her most ambitious and eclectic yet, spanning jazz-inflected country to a sparser and more experimental pop sensibility. When not studio bound, Sproule is a compelling live performer, having shared the stage with Woodstock legend Richie Havens, Lambchop front-man Kurt Wagner and queen of country blues Lucinda Williams.

Boston Globe on Howe Gelb

‘Sproule’s songs ooze the atmosphere of balmy Virginia days.’ The Observer 34

19 May

19–20 May Christopher Maltman baritone Joseph Middleton piano Thu 19 May 7.30pm Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £15, £20 Festival Standby £10

Photo: Pia Clodi

Photo: Burma Campaign UK

‘Maltman’s wide-ranging voice, offering a huge variety of colour and dynamics, sought out a new wealth of subtle meanings.’ The Guardian

The Lady Of Burma

Signed performance Fri 20 May

‘A clever, effective script that requires little in the way of prior knowledge of Burma to thoroughly entrance you.’

Richard Shannon’s celebrated play – based on the inspirational true story of the Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi – is revived exclusively for Brighton Festival with an updated script specially commissioned to include the momentous events of 2010. This powerful solo performance – starring Liana Gould and directed by Owen Lewis was a sell-out success during its inaugural runs at London’s Old Vic and Edinburgh Fringe; and at its original UK tour (2009). It captures both the political reality of military rule and the personal struggle of Burma’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning, democratically elected leader through fifteen years of house arrest. Regardless of what you know or think about Burmese politics, it is a compelling hymn to the resilience of the human spirit in the quest for freedom.

‘Personal and political have rarely been so ferociously connected… Gould delivers with incendiary force.’ The Times 36

Co-produced by The Basement Fri 20 & Sat 21 May 7.30pm The Basement £15 Limited capacity, advance booking essential

A co-production with Louise Chantal and Seabright Productions in association with Burma Campaign UK

Presented by two of Spain’s most renowned and innovative performers 35 Minutes is a dazzlingly simple yet fantastically rich performance about time infused with irreverent humour and subversive charm. In Time After Time Live Artist-cum-beat poet Drew Taylor presents a witty reflection on the durability of living, the valuable lessons learnt from Cyndi Lauper and the unavoidable effects of the strange stuff that exists between now … and now!

Cheap Lecture/Cow Piece Jonathan Burrows & Matteo Fargion Co-produced by The Basement Fri 20 & Sat 21 May 9pm The Basement £15

Metro

Join ‘the world’s most perfect baritone’ (Philadelphia Inquirer) and his acclaimed young accompanist for a journey through the enduring art of lieder. First, south to Venice and a selection of song cycles spanning the Byronic (Schumann and Schubert) to the belle époque of Reynaldo Hahn. Then, due north for Schubert and Mahler’s Rückert Lieder, two song cycles, written almost a century apart, yet sharing the same literary source. Since winning the 1997 Cardiff Singer of the World Lieder Prize, Maltman has forged a formidable career in opera, concert performance and recital. Recently described in The Times as ‘the cream of the new generation’, Joseph Middleton enjoys a varied career as a chamber musician and accompanist to internationally established singers of the opera world as well as rising young stars.

35 Minutes Los Torreznos Time After Time Drew Taylor

by Richard Shannon Co-produced by Brighton Festival Thu 19 & Fri 20 May 7.30pm Theatre Royal Brighton £5, £10, £12.50, £15 Running time: 75mins

Fauré Cinq Mélodies de Venise Op. 58 Schumann Two Venetian songs from Myrthen Op. 25 Schubert Gondelfahrer D809 Mendelssohn Venetianisches Gondellied Op. 57 No. 5 Hahn Venezia – Six chansons en dialecte vénitien Schubert Three Rückert Lieder Schubert Drei Lieder (Metastasio) D902 Mahler Rückert Lieder

Set to music and replete with ever more unexpected digressions, Cheap Lecture is a rhythmic, philosophical and humorous spoken rant about empty hands, time, repetition and dancing. It is accompanied here by The Cow Piece, a chaotic meditation upon dance, music and mortality. ‘Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion have created a performance that dances in your head.’ De Morgen, Belgium 37

20 May

20–21 May Fri 20 May, 7.30pm Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £10

Little Daughter Zoya Phan One woman’s extraordinary story of survival to become the voice of a nation enslaved. Zoya Phan grew up in a small Karen village in the heart of the Burmese jungle. Her mother was a former guerilla and her father a leader of the Karen resistance. However, at the age of fourteen an idyllic childhood was shattered when her village was destroyed by the Burmese army and she and her family had to run for their lives. In an epic personal voyage she travelled from being hunted in the jungle to becoming the spokesperson for the Burma Campaign. In this special event from the team behind Brighton’s annual City Reads, Zoya speaks to award-winning human rights investigative journalist, Sue LloydRoberts, about her remarkable life. The evening includes a reading from her autobiography Little Daughter and a short film about Burma plus Q & A. Produced by Collected Works

Fri 20 May 8pm Concert Hall, Brighton Dome £20, stalls standing/seated £15, £22.50, circle seated Festival Standby £10

Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Max Romeo and Adrian Sherwood Rebel Music

Sat 21 & Sun 22 May, 11am & 2pm The Old Market. £10 (1 adult free with every child ticket). Age 5+ Compagnia TPO

Widely attributed with pioneering the dub revolution, Grammy-winning veteran Jamaican producer, mixer and songwriter Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry – aka The Upsetter – has spearheaded many roots and reggae milestones in his enduring career. Bob Marley, Junior Byles, Junior Murvin, The Heptones, The Congos and Max Romeo all burned bright courtesy of the trademark Perry sound – earthy and eccentric; dub-heavy and groove-laden. Here, Perry teams up with iconic reggae singer Romeo, with whom he wrote and recorded the epochal 1976 album War In a Babylon. Released at a time of violent political uprising in Jamaica, it caught the spark of revolt and social unrest with its defiant rallying cries and spiritual anthems such as the apocalyptic title track, the stirring One Step Forward and the militant Chase The Devil. It transformed Romeo into an international star and cemented Perry’s reputation as reggae’s answer to Joe Meek, Phil Spector and Brian Wilson, rolled into one. Adrian Sherwood is a groundbreaking British dub and reggae producer and founder of the influential On-U Sound label. His Pressure Sounds label introduced dub legends like Lee Perry, King Tubby and Augustus Pablo to a whole new generation.

Play Please! UK Premiere Part performance, part installation, part collaborative composition, Play Please! is the ultimate interactive experience for young children (and their families). Step into a world of light, movement and music. Clap, dance, spin, jump, sing and shout! As you draw with light and play with sound your gestures and your impulses trigger patterns and images, composing and creating the performance environment around you. With the help of live actors, your fellow playmates and state-of-the-art technology, your body and your natural curiosity set in motion a unique, fully immersive sensory wonderland… So if you’re ready, it’s time to Play Please… Play Please is devised by Italian company TPO, internationally renowned for its interactive theatre of the senses. In association with Crying Out Loud and The Old Market

21 May

This page – All events Sat 21 May, 12noon – 5pm; Old Paddling Pool Site Check chalk board for individual event times on the day; FREE

The New Writing South Lecture

Mark Smith & Rachel Gadsden with Deaf Men Dancing

Playing with Fire

Alive!

21 May

delivered by Mark Ravenhill Sat 21 May 2pm Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £8.50

What does it mean to be truly alive? To celebrate the wonder and miracle of our shared humanity? Through dance, image, sound and spoken word, Alive! gets right to the heart of the matter. When four ‘suits’ find themselves caught up in a carnival parade they cast off the trappings of their corporate culture and get down to the business end of being in their skins. A dynamic collaboration between choreographer Mark Smith and four of his male dancers (Deaf Men Dancing), and visual artist Rachel Gadsden, this antidote to our economic woes is an energising and liberating affirmation of the corporeal joy of being Alive!

Controversial and influential playwright Mark Ravenhill draws on his works, writings and passion for the arts to deliver the first New Writing South Lecture. Ravenhill gave British contemporary theatre a short sharp shock with his now infamous debut Shopping and Fucking back in 1996. Since then he has probed the fault lines of modern consumer culture in a string of often visceral theatre works including Handbag (98), Some Explicit Polaroids (99) and the epic war cycle Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat (08). He is also a regular arts commentator, journalist and occasional librettist.

Commissioned by Without Walls. Co-commissioned by Greenwich + Docklands International Festival and Dada-South (in association with Up-Stream symposium showcasing contemporary art by disabled and deaf artists; see page 71)

Graeae

The Iron Man by Ted Hughes

Exploring the (false?) security of the domestic interior and providing a fresh perspective on public spaces, these two sitespecific works place performance in the settings of our daily lives.

Sat 21 & Sun 22 May 12noon – 8pm £5 (or buy both for £17) Secret location announced on booking… Timed appointments every 20 minutes; only one audience member at a time; advance booking essential.

I Came By Myself to a Crowded Place – Me and the Machine

Image: Daniel Syrett

Inside Out

Commissioned by Without Walls and Greenwich + Docklands International Festival Supported by Arts Council England

Bad Taste Cru

Tribal Assembly

Co-produced by The Basement

Physical theatre and dynamic hip-hop dance fuse as this champion B-boy cru plays out a story of four very different lives and their places in society. Originally from Northern Ireland, but currently based in Newcastle upon Tyne, BTC came together as a graffiti/skate cru in urban Omagh, a town more famous for its turbulence and violent past than its hip-hop scene. They discovered B-boying in the late 1990s and have been dancing ever since. A self-confessed collective of ‘B-boys, skaters, writers, MCs, friends, film-makers, outcasts, geeks and weirdos’, their common bond is their love of hip-hop culture and the power of dance.

A telescope set high above a city street lures the audience to pry into an unfolding drama. As the street is re-imagined and re-choreographed, becoming the stage for an ambiguous conspiracy, a mysterious, invisible character accompanies you through an atmospheric and immersive experience.

Commissioned by Without Walls

Tiburon Tigre (Tiger Shark) – Quim Pujol

Red Herring

That’s The Way To Do It!

UK Premiere Co-produced by The Basement

What would happen if Punch and Judy broke free of their booth? Havoc on the high street? Social unrest? Mass rebellion? And the rest! That’s The Way To Do It! is a raucous outdoor comedy – an alternative take on an age old institution that sees our lovable rogues run amok in these anxious, credit-crunched times. Brought to you by a dream team of performers and outdoor theatre makers this playful, knockabout satire is underpinned by timely concerns on ethical behaviour and censorship. That’s The Way To Do It! will also be performed on Sun 22 May.

What happens if you are gay and you are born to a fascist family? What did Hitler’s artwork look like? What did he think about advertising? Such are the strange and disturbing questions that bubble to the surface in this intimate act of short story telling – beyond which the tiger shark lurks, ready to bite… Image: Pau Ros

Sat 21 & Sun 22 May 6.45pm, 8pm & 9.15pm £15 (or buy both for £17) Secret location announced on booking… Limited capacity: (8 audience members at a time); advance booking essential.

In Ted Hughes’s modern-day fairytale – adapted by Paul Sirett for this bold new outdoor theatre production – the unexpected arrival of the Iron Man casts a shadow of fear across a small farm community. But when an enormous dragon from outer space threatens to annihilate the planet, it is the Iron Man who comes to the rescue. Against the backdrop of celestial soundscapes, a deaf and disabled ensemble spin stories using integrated BSL and audio description while operating largerthan-life puppets. The Iron Man is a colossal narrative that emerges from the shadows and takes to the air.

Commissioned by Without Walls Produced by Time Won’t Wait

21 May

21 May Sat 21 May 6pm Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £10

‘Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.’

John Milton, 1644

Article 19 – Freedom of Information and the Right to Know with Julian Assange (live or on-screen), Mark Stephens, Geoffrey Robertson QC, Sue Stapley and Dr Martin Moore Julian Assange – founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks – is joined by a selected panel for an in-depth analysis of free speech. This fundamental freedom is recognised under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is enshrined in human rights law around the world and is an integral component of democracy. Yet voices are silenced, dissent crushed, and means of expression and dissemination derailed by agencies of power and governance every day. Joining Julian to discuss this pressing issue are Mark Stephens, partner at Finers Stephens Innocent, Assange’s lawyers; Geoffrey Robertson QC, Julian’s leading counsel at Doughty Street Chambers; Sue Stapley, BBC TV programme maker turned politician, broadcaster and solicitor; and Dr Martin Moore, Director of the Media Standards Trust.

Fanfare Cioca ˘rlia vs Boban Marcovic Balkan Brass Battle

For Alfonso: A Wilde Evening at the Royal Sat 21 May Theatre Royal Brighton 9.45pm £5, £10, £15 Running time: 60mins

‘Bette Bourne… rich, raw and wonderfully funny…’ Daily Telegraph

by Neil Bartlett with Bette Bourne (and guests…) World Premiere Commissioned by Brighton Festival In 1888, Oscar Wilde published a children’s story called The Remarkable Rocket, about a firework who fails to understand the true nature of love. On 27 September 1894, he took a boy called Alfonso Conway (whom he’d picked up on Worthing Pier) back to a hotel room in Brighton. Six months later, Alfonso was in a solicitor’s office, being forced to give evidence against the man who’d treated him to a very special night out.

Photo: Johan Persson

This new production by acclaimed playwright, director and novelist Neil Bartlett (The Maids – BF 2007; The Girl I Left Behind Me – BF 2010) has been created especially for the irrepressible Bette Bourne, founder member of legendary drag theatre troupe Bloolips and star of Mark Ravenhill’s recent portrait, A Life In Three Acts. Witty, provocative – and for one night only – For Alfonso imagines the words first spun for Oscar’s children in their Chelsea nursery being whispered in the ear of a very different kind of boy… 42

Sat 21 May 7.30pm Concert Hall, Brighton Dome £20, stalls, standing/seated £15, £22.50 circle, seated Festival Standby £10 After party Komedia £6 in advance £8 on the door

Plus Marko Marcovic Orchestra

Two titans of Gypsy music go head to head in a Balkan brass encounter of epic proportions. Following in the great tradition of brass battles from Eastern Europe to New Orleans, this event will showcase the vitality, humour and passion that has come to signify the music of a people in exile. Over the last decade Fanfare Cioca˘ rlia have risen from rural Romanian obscurity to international fame as one of the world’s most explosive Gypsy bands, helping to fuel a global beats revolution with their dizzying blend of Roma funk and high velocity dance music. Meanwhile Serbian trumpeter Boban Marcovic and his Orchestra – survivors of the Yugoslav civil war and undisputed heavyweight champions of the famed Guca Brass Festival – have carved out a world-conquering reputation for their fast and furious Balkan grooves, immortalised in the seminal soundtracks to Emir Kusturica’s maverick films. Also features DJ Sacha Dien and young gun Marko Marcovic, the fastest trumpet in town. A turbocharged showdown between two irrepressible Gypsy giants. Light the taper, and step well back…! After party at Komedia with DJ Sacha Dien and Nico de Transilvania playing an electrifying set of Balkan and Gypsy sounds. 43

22 May

22 May Asa Briggs

A Charleston Festival event

Murder She Wrote

in conversation with Professor Michael Farthing, Vice Chancellor of the University of Sussex

P. D. James Sun 22 May 12noon Charleston £12

Sun 22 May, 2.30pm Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £10

P. D. James personifies the public writer, with a status that transcends her popular and prolific crime fiction featuring Adam Dalgliesh, the cerebral, poetry-writing gentleman detective. Her mysteries take place against a backdrop of the UK’s bureaucracies and dissect the fatal follies of human institutions, a subject close to home for the former Home Office and NHS civil servant. She has served as a magistrate, governor of the BBC, a member of the Arts Council, on the board of the British Council and as President of the Society of Authors. She counts among her dedicated readership Festival Guest Director Aung San Suu Kyi.

The eminent historian discusses his personal experiences as part of the famous Enigma codebreaking team at Bletchley Park during World War II. Briggs is one of Britain’s most respected historians and the author of the seminal trilogy: Victorian People, Victorian Cities and Victorian Things. Lesser-known is his time at Bletchley. Briggs didn’t tell his wife about his wartime career until the 1970s and his parents died without ever knowing the truth. Now he finally tells the full story in a meticulously researched and revelatory account of life in Bletchley’s iconic Hut Six, where men like Briggs, Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman helped shape history.

charleston.org.uk

People’s Choice Debate

There Was a Child

Chaired by Polly Toynbee Sun 22 May 12noon Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £4 (FREE to ticket holders of What Next?: The Future of Burma p.29)

Climate change? The big society? Globalisation? Economic meltdown? Which issues concern you the most when considering the complexities and challenges of 21st-century living? Brighton Festival invites you to help shape one of its keynote events by choosing the motion for debate and discussion. Propose the subject of your choice and make your views really count by simply visiting brightonfestival.org. The winning motion will be announced online. In response the Festival team will convene a panel of experts in the field. Together, they will discuss and debate the chosen subject at this oneoff event, with the chance for you to have your say.

Sun 22 May 3pm Concert Hall, Brighton Dome £10, £15, £20, £25, £30 Festival Standby £10

Elgar’s Cello Concerto is one of the defining moments of the English repertoire and one of the most popular cello concertos ever written, capturing the public imagination with its brooding lamentation and uniquely English brand of nostalgia. Where Elgar’s concerto is valedictory and elegiac, Jonathan Dove’s modern oratorio – a tribute to, and celebration of, a friend’s son, Robert van Allan, who died tragically young – is truly transformative. Inspired by the works of Wordsworth, Keats, Whitman and Emily Dickinson, and invoking the spirit of Britten and Vaughan Williams, the result is a joyous and heartfelt ode to childhood.

‘Sparkling new talents who demonstrate the richness, energy and confidence of the poetic voice in our multicultural country.’ Carol Ann Duffy 44

Five exceptional new poets read from their latest work in this special event to celebrate the new Bloodaxe anthology TEN. The poets come from a diverse range of backgrounds – with roots in Guyana, Trinidad, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Jamaica, Saudi Arabia and Ghana. What they share is their craft – powerful, moving and truly exceptional poetry. Together they offer undeniable proof of the range and diversity of voices in contemporary British poetry today.

Robert van Allan. Photo: Clive Barda

Sun 22 May 2pm Founders Room, Brighton Dome £8.50

Simon Halsey conductor Joan Rodgers soprano Guy Johnston cello Ben Johnson tenor Elgar Cello Concerto Jonathan Dove There Was a Child

5 New Poets Seni Seneviratne, Shazea Quraishi, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Rowyda Amin and Denise Saul. Hosted by Bernardine Evaristo

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Brighton Festival Chorus

‘Well chosen words, pointed notes, fervent performers. Impossible not to be moved.’ The Times on There Was a Child 45

22–24 May

23 May International PEN and Jericho House Theatre Co

Writing Freedom Sun 22 May 6.30pm Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £10

A spoken word celebration of one of our most fundamental freedoms – the right to write… Around the world writers are struggling to speak out against the silencing threats of censorship and oppression. For ninety years, the writers’ organisation PEN has been fighting for the freedom to write, and the freedom to read at home and abroad. Now, in a timely event, devised in partnership with Jericho House Theatre Company (Fallujah, Katrina), today’s authors – including critic, broadcaster and writer Bidisha – draw on the words of those who have led PEN’s fight over the last century (from H. G. Wells to Monica Ali) to retell its story. Brighton Festival Platform

Working Title Mon 23 May 8pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £6

Want to keep in step with the South East’s vibrant dance scene? Then make a date for this special dance platform event, profiling up-and-coming choreographers from across the region. South East Dance has selected a group of emerging local choreographers to present their work-in-progress. Three performances will be followed by facilitated audience feedback sessions led by South East Dance to support the artists in developing their work. This gives you the chance to join the discussion and contribute your own thoughts on what you’ve seen.

Co-presented with South East Dance

Burma VJ: Reporting From a Closed Country Director: Anders Ostergaard. Denmark 2008. Cert 12a. Tue 24 May 6.30pm Duke of York’s Picturehouse English and Burmese with English subtitles £6 – £13

Armed with pocket-sized video cameras, a tenacious band of Burmese reporters face down death to expose the repressive regime controlling their country. Compiled from shaky handheld footage, acclaimed film maker Anders Ostergaard’s Burma VJ pulls us into the heat of the moment as the video-journalists themselves become the target of the Burmese government. The film plays like a thriller, and is all the more frightening because it is real. Contains violence and disturbing images.

John Cale & Band Émigré/Lost & Found Mon 23 May 8pm Concert Hall, Brighton Dome £18.50, £22, £25 Festival Standby £10

Brighton Festival Exclusive

John Cale – composer, producer, songwriter and founder of the Velvet Underground – performs a one-off concert in direct response to themes of this year’s Brighton Festival – exile and home. John Cale grew up in South Wales, holed up listening to world radio, yearning for new horizons. Music became the language of escape, the ticket to those far away places that inhabit childhood dreams. Then, having spent more than half a life abroad – on the road from Amman Valley to Antarctica – there comes a thread of discontent … a pull back homewards. Some of the most personal songs in the John Cale canon – written during these 40 years of wanderlust – have, at their heart, a longing for home. Now, Cale has looked back over his extensive catalogue and created a special set of these songs exclusively for Brighton Festival. John Cale is one of the most influential music innovators of the last 40 years. He was a primary creative force behind the Velvet Underground, has produced artists from the Stooges and Patti Smith to Squeeze and is a long-standing collaborator with Brian Eno. His solo career has spanned post-classical and avant-garde to contemporary rock.

In association with CineCity

24 May

25 May Tue 24 – Thu 26 May, 7.30pm Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £15, £17.50; Festival Standby £10 Running time: 105mins

A Charleston Festival event

Wed 25 May 3.30pm Charleston £12

Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes

Monsters and Prodigies UK Premiere

The castrati – boys castrated before puberty in the service of art – were the superstars of the 18th century. Operas were written for them and many commanded vast fees, though their origins often lay in poverty.

Photo: ITV plc

Baroque opera meets history of ideas in this elaborate and witty musical take on the castrati enigma.

This delirious mix of circus lampoon and academic treatise, sublime music and extreme physical comedy, stars a hoof-stomping centaur, Siamese twins and even Napoleon Bonaparte! Each plays their part in revealing the inherent contradictions and peculiar whims of these ‘monstrous angels’ – at once artistic prodigies and beautiful freaks.

The Book of Books Melvyn Bragg Four hundred years old and still one of Britain’s biggest exports, the King James Bible has a history as turbulent as the stories it contains: the 300 year fight to get it translated; the grisly deaths of many of the scholars involved; the drama of the Reformation and the extraordinary life of William Tyndale. Today, even those unfamiliar with the Authorised Version will use many of its 257 phrases in everyday conversation. Melvyn Bragg discusses the impact of the King James Bible on everything from the development of democracy to the rise of early modern science.

charleston.org.uk

Mulatu Astatke Wed 25 May 8pm Komedia £18.50

A wild ride from the opulent extremes of the Baroque to 20th-century reason – from ‘bel canto’ to techno – Monsters and Prodigies is an off-thewall satire on our doomed pursuit of perfection. Also catch companion piece El Gallo (see p.53), the second production from Claudio Valdés Kuri’s acclaimed Mexican theatre company during Brighton Festival 2011.

Vibraphone and keyboard player, master arranger and bandleader Mulatu Astatke is one of the all-time greats of Ethiopian music and the creator of his own original art form – Ethio-jazz. He pioneered his signature fusion of Western jazz and traditional Ethiopian melodies in New York in the late 1960s. He returned to ‘Swinging Addis’ at the end of the decade where he became a pivotal figure in its music evolution. In recent years he has found a whole new audience care of the soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch’s cult film Broken Flowers and the phenomenal success of the Ethiopiques CD series. He performs here on the back of his recent studio release, last year’s Ethio-jazz workout Mulatu Steps Ahead.

Claudio Valdés Kuri is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte – FONCA. In Spanish with English surtitles

Mahan Esfahani harpsichord

‘A brilliantly conceptualized, ravishingly performed ensemble piece … a grand diva with the soul of a circus clown.’

Bach Goldberg Variations BWV988 Wed 25 May 8pm Music Room, Royal Pavilion £30, includes interval wine

Supported by The Anglo Mexican Foundation

Photo: marcoborggreve.com

LA Times

‘The harpsichord comes out of hiding… magnificent.’ Daily Telegraph

Bach’s Goldberg Variations is one of the towering achievements of Western music culture. From Glenn Gould’s sensational 1955 debut through to Andras Schiff, this epic series of transformations fashioned around a simple, unadorned aria, has become the benchmark for keyboard players across the world. Here the ‘exceptionally gifted’ (The Times) Iranianborn harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani takes the Goldberg back to its roots. With the distinctive textures and glistening harmonics that define the harpsichord sound, and his own trademark mix of ‘sensitivity and vibrancy’ (Early Music Today), Esfahani brings a rare authenticity to Bach’s most refined of works. 49

25 May

25–26 May The End – Michael Pinchbeck

Laurie Anderson

Delusion

Co-produced by The Basement Wed 25 & Thu 26 May 7.30pm The Basement £10

Concert Thu 26 May, 8pm Concert Hall, Brighton Dome £20, £25, £28.50 Festival Standby £10 Running time: 120mins

Michael is 34, tired and old. Ollie is 24 and has hopes and dreams. They are trying to work out where they stand. Their relationship is falling apart. They have never worked together before. Now they’ll never work together again. Inspired by the stage direction in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale – ‘Exit pursued by a bear’ – The End explores departures, absence and loss.

Death Is Certain – Eva Meyer-Keller

In Conversation Wed 25 May, 8.30pm Concert Hall Auditorium £10 (limited capacity)

Co-produced by The Basement Cherries have tender skin, meat and a kind of bone inside them. Their juice is red like blood. When you treat them like humans sometimes treat other humans, then they become almost human themselves. In a humorous and strangely moving exploration of death, German performer and artist Eva Meyer-Keller discovers increasingly imaginative ways to harm 40 cherries – from hanging and burial in concrete to electrocution.

by Simon Gray

In association with Theatre Royal Brighton

The Wire’s Dominic West is rapier-tongued lecturer Ben Butley in this 40th-anniversary revival of Simon Gray’s classic 1971 play.

straight.com, Vancouver

Butley is having a monumentally bad day. So bad, he’s making sure everyone else has a worse one. His estranged wife has taken up with the most boring man in London. His beloved protégé has found a new benefactor. And in an unprecedented act of betrayal even the English department’s resident failure has a book deal. Butley’s trusty arsenal – withering irony, spite and gleeful troublemaking – have never failed him yet. Might they finally prove to be the weapons of his own tragic self-destruction? Butley premiered in Harold Pinter’s award-winning 1971 production starring Alan Bates at London’s Criterion Theatre. Forty years on, West – known to many as troubled Baltimore cop Jimmy McNulty from HBO’s The Wire – takes the lead in this razor sharp and darkly comic assault on the soft underbelly of academia.

Brighton Festival Platform

The Growing Room Wed 25 May 8pm Pavilion Theatre £6

Photo: Greg Allum Photography

‘Simon Gray asked me to direct Butley in 1970. I found its savage, lacerating wit hard to beat and accepted the invitation… it’s a remarkable creation…’ Harold Pinter

In Conversation

‘Smart, funny, emotionally engaging, and flat out beautiful – in short everything you’d expect from an artist of Anderson’s stature and reputation.’

Butley Wed 25 – Sat 28 May 7.45pm Sat matinee, 2.30pm Theatre Royal Brighton £24, £27, £29, £33 £39.50

Laurie Anderson

As writer, director, visual artist and vocalist Laurie Anderson has created groundbreaking works that span the worlds of art, theatre and experimental music. Join her for a rare and intimate inconversation in the Concert Hall Auditorium.

Photo: Tim Knox

Wed 25 & Thu 26 May 9pm The Basement £10

Told through sound, image and text, Laurie Anderson’s latest music-theatre performance is a personal meditation on life, language, memory and identity. Conceived as a series of short mystery plays, Delusion segues between violin, visuals, electronic soundscapes and spoken vignettes. Together they create a mosaic of symbols, stories and memories, which jump cut between trademark Anderson dualities – the everyday and the mythic, the word and the dream. Inspired by the breadth of Balzac, Ozu and Laurence Sterne, and evoking ghost ships and golems, ancestry and the afterlife, at the heart of Delusion is the belief that words and stories can create the world as well as make it disappear.

The Growing Room was supported by Arts Council England, The Nightingale Theatre and Brighton Festival

by Rachel Blackman for Stillpoint directed by Emma Kilbey, produced by Lucy Moore At last year’s Brighton Festival Fringe, Stillpoint’s solo show Steal Compass, Drive North, Disappear won the Fringe Review Award for ‘Outstanding Theatre’. It was the second part in a trilogy – preceded by 2008’s The Art of Catastrophe and concluded in this year’s final instalment The Growing Room. As a handful of characters with interconnected lives strive to transcend their limitations in order to make something grow, the play becomes a love letter to humanity’s capacity to keep hope alive. All three works are being staged sequentially in May (see stillpointtheatre.co.uk), culminating in this premiere Platform performance of The Growing Room. 51

27 May

26–27 May

Academy of St Martin in the Fields

Thu 26 May, 6pm; Fri 27 May, 6pm; Sat 28 May, 1pm & 6pm Sun 29 May, 1pm & 6pm. St Nicholas Rest Garden Adults £14, Children £8, Family ticket (2 adults, 2 children) £40 Shakespeare’s Globe on Tour

As You Like It This year a troupe of travelling players from Shakespeare’s Globe breathes new life into As You Like It for Brighton Festival’s perennial date with the Bard.

Photo: Matthew Andrews

Performed on an Elizabethan-style stage, this lively production celebrates the incomparable delights of love, running the gamut of pastoral romance: cross-dressing and love-notes; poetry and brilliant conversation; gentle satire, slapstick and passion.

Photo: Marc Hom

Rosalind, daughter of a banished Duke, loves Orlando; but her usurping uncle banishes her from court. Disguised as a boy, she seeks out her father and his friends in the Forest of Arden. Here she meets Orlando again and, under the guise of a young man, counsels him in the art of love…

Bring a picnic and cushions for the ultimate alfresco Shakespeare experience.

‘Summer is all the sweeter for a Shakespeare road trip’ Daily Telegraph

Fri 27 May 8pm Concert Hall, Brighton Dome £10, £15, £22.50 £27.50, £32.50 Festival Standby £10

Ian Brown conductor

‘The greatest American violinist active today.’ Boston Globe on Joshua Bell

Described by the composer as a ‘strange flight of fancy’, Brahms’ last major orchestral work arrived with little precedent – a double concerto for violin and cello. It was premiered on 18 October 1887 with long-term friend Joseph Joachim and cellist Robert Hausmann as soloists. Here it takes flight courtesy of Musical America’s 2010 Instrumentalist of the Year, Joshua Bell, and Steven Isserlis, perhaps Britain’s most highly respected solo cellist. They are brought together in the esteemed company of the ASMF, an ensemble with ‘an aura possessed by no other British orchestra’ (The Times).

‘The music world – and music itself – is infinitely richer for the presence of Steven Isserlis.’ Gramophone Magazine

Thu 26 May, 8pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50

Jon Ronson – The Psychopath Test He skewered the War on Terror in The Men Who Stare at Goats. He embarked on adventures with extremists in Them. Journalist, documentary maker and humourist Jon Ronson shares the truths he unearthed about madness and power in his latest investigative escapade. In this new book Jon meets, among others, the influential psychologist who developed the industry-standard Psychopath Test and who is convinced that many influential CEOs and politicians would qualify! Armed with his new-found powers to ferret out high-flying psychopaths, Jon heads into the corridors of power and uncovers an unsettling industry of madness.

Photo: Kevin Davis

In conversation with Dr Katy Shaw

Photo: Diana Matar

The Troubled Man – Henning Mankell

Photo: Lina Ikse

The concert opens with Haydn’s Symphony No. 13 in D major, written in 1763 for the orchestra of the composer’s new patron, Prince Esterhazy, and precedes the Brahms with perhaps the best loved of all Mendelssohn’s symphonies, the ‘Italian’ (1833). At the behest, first of his father and then the great German poet Goethe to step out into the world, the 21-year-old Mendelssohn embarked on his grand tour in 1829. His sojourn to Italy lasted a year and a half and, on completion of his symphony, he declared that the whole nation – ‘its people, its landscapes, its art’ – was in it.

Hosted by Guardian Literary Editor, Claire Armistead Fri 27 May 8pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50

A Charleston Festival event

Haydn Symphony No. 13 in D major Mendelssohn Symphony No. 4 (‘Italian’) Brahms Concerto for Violin and Cello

Mohsin Hamid and Hisham Matar

Fri 27 May, 3.30pm Charleston £12

Mankell’s lugubrious Swedish detective, Inspector Kurt Wallander, is one of the most impressive creations in contemporary crime fiction. A fitting finale to the Wallander mysteries, The Troubled Man leads him down dark avenues involving espionage, the Cold War and political scandal. Mankell devotes much of his free time to working with AIDS charities in Africa, where he is Director of the Teatro Avenida in Mozambique. He has been honoured for his major contribution to literature and to the practical exercise of conscience. Six Wallander novels have been adapted into BAFTA Award-winning BBC television series. charleston.org.uk

Principal sponsor: Siemens

Joshua Bell violin Steven Isserlis cello

Two distinctive and compelling authors discuss fiction that explores themes of identity, home and exile from a personal perspective. Moth Smoke – Mohsin Hamid’s follow-up to the Man Bookershortlisted The Reluctant Fundamentalist – is a luminous portrait of modern Lahore: a melting pot of frustrations, insecurities and unbridled aspiration. In Anatomy of a Disappearance, the latest novel from Man Booker-shortlisted Hisham Matar (In the Country of Men), the life of a young Cairo boy is turned upside down with the sudden death of his mother and his all-consuming, yet divisive love for his new stepmother. 53

27–28 May

27 May Fri 27 May, 7.30pm for 7.45pm start Gathering at Victoria Gardens FREE Générik Vapeur

Drôles d’Oiseaux UK Premiere It’s carnage on the streets! A convoy of white cars are bound together like pearls on a string. A farmer’s tractor bears the strain and urges them on their incongruous journey. Boiler-suited house painters ride the roofs wielding the tools of their trade. Live rock music drives the procession onwards with edgy industrial energy.

Photo: Fraide Raynaud

En route, paintbrush battles transform the snaking car train into a slapdash rainbow of shocking hues. Destination reached, the metallic canvases are hoisted high and hung to dry like multi-coloured birds on a wire. Finally, this improbable sculpture becomes the centrepiece of a luminous spectacle of paint, fire, music and mayhem. The installation is then on display until Sun 29 May on The Level.

Sat 28 May, 8pm for 8.30pm start Gathering at Crew Club, Coolham Drive FREE

Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes

El Gallo

Générik Vapeur

Bivouac Bivouac takes the streets hostage in a nomadic nighttime escapade of truly surreal proportions. In the second of two outdoor events from Générik Vapeur, a wandering tribe of blue men stomp their way across the city brandishing steel oil drums. As they emerge from the shadows in search of a place to gather everything in their wake becomes a living stage set of smoke and flame. Then, just as they find their elusive goal, they vanish once more into a rock ‘n’ roll roar.

Photo: Fraide Raynaud

This celebrated show has ignited major cities across Europe, and now it’s Brighton’s turn to become Générik Vapeur’s private playground as they reclaim its open spaces for their renowned brand of street art alchemy.

Générik Vapeur is invited as part of the ZEPA network, supported by the Interreg IVA France (Channel) England cross-border programme (see page 70). Marseille’s Générik Vapeur is one of France’s premier street theatre producers and one of the ZEPA network’s two associate companies. Over 24 years they have performed to some three million spectators, travelled one million km, exploded twenty tonnes of powder and been twice round the world in magnetic tape! If you can’t wait until the Festival, their journey of the ZEPA region begins in March 2011 in Newhaven (zapart.co.uk). They return to Brighton in 2012 with newly commissioned ZEPA supported production Waterlitz. 54

Sat 28 May, 7.30pm Sun 29 May, 3pm & 7.30pm Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £12.50, £15 Festival Standby £10 Running time: 80mins In Spanish with English surtitles

‘This is an opera with its own personality. It says a lot, teaches more. Love it.’ Pablo Espinosa, La Jornada

A co-commission with Coordinación Nacional de Teatro INBA Conservatorio Nacional de Música INBA Festival de México en el Centro Histórico Festival Internacional Música y Escena UNAM Supported by The Anglo Mexican Foundation

UK Premiere Co-commissioned by Brighton Festival Actions and sounds speak louder than words in this ‘opera for actors’ from Mexico’s leading contemporary theatre company. As a composer, director and six singers rehearse for an impending choral competition, their wildly diverse backgrounds and abilities, conflicting desires and aspirations push them to their limits and into unforeseen encounters. As they abandon their inhibitions they find themselves teetering on the edge: somewhere between desperation and euphoria. Sung in a made-up ‘gibberish’ language and performed with a visceral physical energy, El Gallo is a meeting of minds between Mexican wunderkind Claudio Valdés Kuri (director) and British composer Paul Barker. Presented by an international cast with string octet, it is a darkly humorous dialogue between opera and theatre, improvisation and vocal experimentation. Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes was founded by Claudio Valdés Kuri – member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte (FONCA) – in 1997. Former productions include The Grey Automobile (2003), and 2005’s Monsters and Prodigies – performed alongside El Gallo at this year’s Brighton Festival (see p.48). The group’s extensive range of multidisciplinary training, research and risk-taking defines a signature creative process that seeks out new ground for contemporary theatre making.

28 May

28 May A Charleston Festival event

Sat 28 May, 9pm for 9.30pm start Wild Park FREE

House of Exile Evelyn Juers and Gillian Slovo Sat 28 May 12noon Charleston £12

As The World Tipped

Two violent epochs; two true stories of the high price paid for a commitment to human rights. In The House of Exile – a story of love, loss and war – Evelyn Juers recounts the life of Heinrich Mann, political activist and writer, forced into exile after his books were burned in Nazi Germany. Writer Gillian Slovo, daughter of anti-apartheid pioneers Ruth First and Joe Slovo, has personal experience of the cost of commitment to a cause. Her father went into exile; her mother was imprisoned and murdered. In her memoir, Every Secret Thing, she tells of her parents’ struggle and the emotional havoc it wreaked. Gillian Slovo is President of English PEN. charleston.org.uk

A Wired Aerial Theatre Production Written and Directed by Nigel Jamieson This extraordinary outdoor performance turns the tables on aerial theatre as we know it and confronts one of the pressing issues in human history… The Copenhagen Conference on climate change is under siege – by paperwork! As the secretariat battles with mounting submissions, it is unaware that its world is – quite literally – hurtling towards disaster. The performance space tilts, turns and tips, sending aerialists tumbling across a dramatic filmscape of a world in turmoil… Then, as the performers struggle to retain control of their environment, the show becomes a dynamic metaphor – for hope and positive change in response to a crisis of our own creation.

Izzeldin Abuelaish

I Shall Not Hate Sat 28 May 3pm Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £8.50

‘This story is a necessary lesson against hatred and revenge.’ Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Laureate

In conversation with writer and broadcaster Simon Fanshawe

Written and directed by Nigel Jamieson, one of the world’s leading creators of outdoor spectacle, and featuring the breathtaking performers of the UK’s Wired Aerial Theatre, As the World Tipped is an urgent, wry and powerful exploration of new frontiers for performance and the world we share.

How does one man find the strength and humanity to forgive the unforgivable? Izzeldin Abuelaish is a Palestinian doctor, born and raised in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. On 16 January 2009, during the Israeli incursion into Gaza, he witnessed the death of his three daughters by shellfire. His response, moments after the attack, was to broadcast live on Israeli TV, calling for peace and reconciliation. This selfless stand made waves across the Middle East and beyond, leading to a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. Join this inspirational speaker and tireless peace campaigner as he tells his remarkable story. Candoco and Scarabeus

Photo: José Garlan

Sat 28 & Sun 29 May 3pm & 5pm Old Paddling Pool Site FREE

Commissioned by Without Walls

A cry for freedom and the longing for homeland are at the heart of this aerial dance theatre show inspired by the Minotaur and Icarus legends. Imprisoned by swathes of fabric within a giant dome, two performers act out a breathless duet. Intertwined, then separate; opposite, then shadow, they fly together and pull apart in an emotionally charged aerial encounter. The Minotaur rages against her cage; Icarus ascends to fly. But ultimately each is doomed to share the other’s fate. This unique collaboration unites Candoco Dance Company, Scarabeus and writer Nicky Singer (Feather Boy; Knight Crew). Fusing myth, music, text and integrated aerial dance, Heartland retells the oldest of tales in a dynamic new language.

Photo: Richard Dean

Heartland

Co-produced by Without Walls A Tipping Point/Without Walls co-commission Commissioned by Brighton Festival, Norfolk & Norwich Festival and Fira Tàrrega Made in Liverpool with the support of Liverpool City Council Co-commissioned by Greenwich + Docklands International Festival, Mintfest, Stockton International Riverside Festival and XTRAX Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England

28–29 May

28–29 May Bane 3 Bane 3 Sat 28 May 8pm & 9.30pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £12.50 Running time: 60mins Bane Trilogy Sun 29 May Bane 1 – 6pm Bane 2 – 7.45pm Bane 3 – 9.30pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome Each part, £12.50 See all three, £30

A one-man show written and performed by Joe Bone World Premiere Brighton Festival Commission Hired hand Bruce Bane steps out in the latest instalment of Joe Bone’s high-octane one-man film noir parody. And this time he’s shooting first and asking questions later. Having escaped the clutches of Shelby Carpenter in his first outing (Outstanding Theatre Award-winner, BF Fringe 2009) our tireless antihero returned in March this year with more shadowy encounters of the hard-boiled kind. After pitting his wits against an army of new adversaries, he skipped town double quick, leaving a trail of collateral damage and the mother of all cliffhangers in his wake… Now Bane is back, working the mean streets of pulp fiction once again in another frenetic showdown. Playing all the parts (and then some!), Joe Bone brings this quick-fire comedy to boiling point with just his body, his voice and a live guitar soundtrack from one-man Morricone, Ben Roe.

Bane Trilogy

‘A brilliant hour of comedytheatre … widescreen thrill with zero props.’

Missed the first two episodes? Then catch all three Bane adventures back to back in an all-day epic.

Supper Club’s Greatest Hits – Various Artists Co-produced by The Basement Sat 28 May 7.30pm The Basement £15

The Passion of Joan of Arc with live score by Adrian Utley (Portishead) & Will Gregory (Goldfrapp) Sun 29 May 8pm Concert Hall, Brighton Dome £15, £18.50 Festival Standby £10

Freedom Picnic What better way to bid adieu to this year’s Festival than a Freedom Picnic, an alfresco celebration of liberty for all. Bring food, bring friends, bring family, bring umbrellas of all colours … and bring your Festival to a resounding close in true Brighton style!

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 film classic gets a 21stcentury makeover with a new live score by members of Portishead and Goldfrapp.

Written by Adrian Utley and Will Gregory and performed live by an eclectic group of musicians – including Utley, Gregory, six electric guitars, choir, percussion, horns and keyboards – the score provides a fitting new soundscape for this silent movie milestone.

Featuring: Anniversary – an act of memory at 3pm A recitation from memory, in the voices and languages of Brighton & Hove, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948. Artist Monica Ross and her co-recitors* become a collective embodiment of the Declaration, transforming it into a riveting and poetic act of performance and witness. *If you would like to join Monica to learn and recite one or more of the Articles from the Declaration in your own language please email rebecca.fidler@brightonfestival.org.

Supported by The Brighton & Hove Adult Learning Group

Charles Hazlewood conductor

Long considered a masterpiece of silent cinema, Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc tells the story of the Maid of Orleans from her inquisition to execution and martyrdom. Based on the historical transcripts of the actual trial, and boldly experimental for its time, it is a haunting tale of courage, faith, conscience and redemption.

The Guardian on Bane 1

Sun 29 May From 2pm Queens Park, (Old Bowling Green) FREE

Over the past three years, Supper Club has established itself as a unique Brighton institution and a popular hangout for hipsters and culture vultures seeking the unexpected. Artists from across the UK and beyond have presented a rich concoction of bite-sized performances, interventions, installations, video art and left-field music. Now, for Brighton Festival, The Basement’s Supported Artists present their hand-picked highlights from previous Supper Clubs in a night of experimental eccentricity and intoxication.

Commissioned by Colston Hall

‘The film ends with an extraordinary sequence that recalls the shower scene in Psycho … the way the excellent ensemble takes us to its finale, raising dynamics as well as the score’s dissonance, ensures its horror continues in the mind long afterwards.’ **** The Guardian 59

Mornings After

Lunchtimes

Artists in conversation

All events Founders Room, Foyer Bar, Brighton Dome 11am FREE (ticketed) The Foyer Bar will be open for coffees and pastries

Photo: Koen Broos

Richard Hahlo (Hydrocracker) – The New World Order Actor and company director in conversation with Philip Morgan, discussing Hydrocracker, their revival of Harold Pinter’s New World Order and site responsive theatre. Tue 17 May Told by an Idiot Discuss their Brighton Festival residency and the road to creating And the Horse You Rode In On. Wed 18 May Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui – Apocrifu The Flemish/Moroccan dancer and choreographer in conversation. Thu 19 May

Photo: Pia Clodi

Christopher Maltman Voice of a generation and awardwinning British baritone in conversation. Fri 20 May

Mon 9 May 6pm Founders Room FREE (ticketed) Prince Regent – a Brighton & Hove hero?

Presented by VisitBrighton

Neil Bartlett Acclaimed Brighton-based director author and performer in conversation with broadcaster Amy Lamé about his new production For Alfonso. Mon 23 May Claudio Valdés Kuri (Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes) Founder and director of renowned Mexican company Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes discussing Brighton Festival premiere performances, Monsters and Prodigies and El Gallo. Wed 25 May Mahan Esfahani An Iranian-born musician who was the first harpsichordist to be named a BBC New Generation Artist in conversation. Thu 26 May

Tue 10 May, 1pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50

Who is the ‘Hero of Brighton & Hove’? – you decide! What constitutes a ‘hero’? Brighton & Hove has a long and colourful history of residents – from the Prince Regent to Fat Boy Slim – who have shaped the city in their own way and could be considered ‘city heroes’. At this fun, challenging and interactive debate session, leading figures from the city today champion their own personal ‘hero’ through impassioned citations. Then you decide the winner!

‘A light, agile mezzo of great charm and elegant intelligence…’ The Times

Wed 11 May, 1pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre Members of Shakespeare’s Globe touring company discuss the perils and pleasures of taking the Bard on the road. Fri 27 May Générik Vapeur Marseille’s Générik Vapeur are one of France’s premier street theatre companies. Members of their company will be joined by partners from the ZEPA network. Sat 28 May

Copenhagen Chamber Ensemble Vivaldi Concerto No. 6 in G RV107 Telemann Quintet in G from Tafelmusik 1733 Handel Suite in D arr. by Steen Lindholm Bach Sinfonia in F BWV1071 With its unusual combination of instruments – flute, oboe, cello, violin and harpsichord – this Scandinavian chamber group embraces both early and modern repertoire, performing a diverse and exploratory programme from well-known baroque works to specially composed pieces by the cream of today’s Nordic and Danish school.

Photo: José Manuel Bielsa

Children’s Theatre – A place on the International Stage? Directors and creatives from Unpacked and Peut-être Theatre Companies in conversation with Pippa Smith, Brighton Dome Children’s Programmer. Mon 16 May

Mon 9 May, 1pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50

Photo: Jill Furmanovsky

After catching a performance, enjoying a concert or engaging with a debate, how often have you left itching to know more? What was the impetus, the inspiration, the inclination behind the event? What were the challenges, the pitfalls, the orchestrations and aspirations? Now is your chance to find out. Each Morning After session presents a key member of an event’s creative or technical team in conversation with a special host. So for the how, when, what and why of all your Brighton Festival favourites, it’s time to re-live the night before, the Morning After…

‘Gorokhov is one of those rare artists who combines a natural communicative skill with awesome technical command.’ Classic FM Magazine

Wed 18 May, 1pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50

In association with Royal Overseas League

Clara Mouriz mezzo–soprano Joseph Middleton piano Haydn Arianna a Naxos Schubert Metastasio Settings Rossini Regata Veneziana Hallfter Tres Canciones Portuguesas In the wake of her Independent Opera/ Wigmore Hall Voice Fellowship and the recent release of her debut CD, this young Spanish mezzo-soprano performs here with accompanist Joseph Middleton, recently described by The Times as the ‘cream of the new generation’.

Leonid Gorokhov cello Laura van der Heijden cello and piano Telemann Canonic Sonata in A minor for two cellos Bach Suite in D minor Locatelli Sonata for cello and piano Boccherini Sonata for two cellos in F major After becoming the only Russian cellist to be awarded the Grand Prix and the First Prize of the Geneva Concours (1986), Leonid Gorokhov performed internationally with his mentor Lord Menuhin. Here he is joined by fellow cellist/pianist Laura van der Heijden.

Finzi Quartet Mendelssohn String Quartet in A minor Op. 13 Ravel String Quartet in F First prize winners in the 2010 ROSL competition, the Finzi Quartet was formed under the guidance of the late Christopher Rowland at RNCM, and mentored by Günter Pilcher of the Alban Berg Quartet in Siena and Madrid. Having been selected by the Tillett Trust and the Park Lane Group, 2009/2010 saw the Quartet’s debut at both the Wigmore Hall and the Purcell Room to critical acclaim and a recording of Sir John Tavener’s Towards Silence.

Lunchtimes

Photo: Grant Hiroshima

Works by Tarrega, Granados, Llobet, Albeniz, Theodorakis and Domeniconi

‘…superbly inflected, impeccably judged … a giant tapestry of sound combining luminous melancholy and bravura energy.’ The Times

Following a string of major awards (including the Julian Bream Prize) and a recent recording contract with Deutsche Gramophone, this Montenegran guitar virtuoso is ‘destined to become one of the great classical guitar legends of our time’ (Singapore LIVE).

Fri 20 May, 1pm Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £7.50, £10

Stephen Hough piano

‘The most perfect piano playing conceivable.’ The Guardian

Supported by June Crown

Sat 21 May, 1pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50

Photo: Dan Hannen

Miloš Karadaglic ´ guitar

Photo: Sussie Ahlburg

Thu 19 May, 1pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50

Lunchtimes

Beethoven Piano Sonata in C sharp minor Op. 27 No. 2 Moonlight Janácˇek Piano Sonata No. 1. X. 1905 (from the street) Scriabin Piano Sonata No. 5 Scriabin Piano Sonata No. 4 in F sharp Op. 30 Four-time Grammy nominee, eight-time Gramophone Award-winner and recipient of the 2010 Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award, Stephen Hough was recently nominated by The Economist as one of 20 living polymaths alongside Umberto Echo, Noam Chomsky and Michael Ignatieff. Catch the virtuoso pianist here in a rare and intimate lunchtime recital.

Philip Higham cello Bach Cello Suite No. 3 in C BWV1009 Britten Suite No. 3 for solo cello, Op. 87

‘Higham’s passionate connection with the piece, his total technical command of its virtuosic demands, were outstanding.’ The Guardian

Philip Higham’s ‘breathtakingly accomplished and moving performance’ (Herald, Scotland) of Bach’s cello suites at last year’s Lammermuir Festival in Scotland was widely recognised as one of its standout moments. Here the young Edinburgh-born cellist – recent winner of the International Bach Competition in Leipzig (2008) and the Lutoslawski Competition in Warsaw (2009) – treats Brighton’s lunchtime recital audiences to a little of the same.

Mon 23 May, 1pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50

Jerwood Young Artists at Glyndebourne

‘One of the most interesting young quartets I have heard in recent years.’ The Strad Magazine

Brighton Dome’s resident string quartet made its Festival debut in 2010. Following its performance of Beethoven Op. 132 on 14 May, here it performs one of the late great Beethoven quartets, premiered in Vienna in 1826 by the Schuppanzigh Quartet, complete with the Große Fugue, Op. 133. The Heath Quartet was formed in 2002 at the RNCM under Dr Christopher Rowland; it won first prize and the Audience Prize at the 2008 Tromp International Competition in Eindhoven and took second prize at the Haydn International Competition in Vienna a year later.

Wed 25 May, 1pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50

Aquinas Piano Trio

‘Accomplished, artistic, assured – these three words alone would warrant the Aquinas Piano Trio its triple-A rating.’ The Plymouth Herald

This rising young trio was launched in 2009. All three players are established solo artists in their own right and have vast experience of the chamber music repertoire. Between them, they have an outstanding array of awards and achievements and have performed with the country’s leading orchestras all over the world. They are featured artists for the Concert Promoter’s Network and they recently released their debut CD, featuring Ravel’s Trio and Saint-Saens’ Trio No. 2.

Thu 26 May, 1pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50

Alexander Karpeyev piano

Fri 27 May, 1pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50 ‘A superb pianist’ New York Times Photo: Marco Borggreve

Photo: David Illman

Heath Quartet

In association with Kirckman Concert Society which acknowledges support from the Lankelly Chase Foundation

This special lunchtime concert is given here by two of this year’s Jerwood Young Artists. Selected from the acclaimed Glyndebourne Chorus, the two singers will perform a recital programme including operatic excerpts from across the repertoire. As part of Glyndebourne’s commitment to supporting the development of young singers, the international opera company has been working with the Jerwood Charitable Foundation for several years to provide innovative training and performance opportunities.

Tue 24 May, 1pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome £8.50

Beethoven String Quartet in B flat major Op. 130 Beethoven Große Fugue Op. 133

Mozart Piano Trio in B flat major K502 Mendelssohn Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor Op. 49

Beethoven Piano Sonata in E flat Op. 27 No. 1 Schumann Humoreske Op. 20 Liszt Rhapsodie Espagnole After graduating from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory this young Russian pianist won a scholarship to London’s Guildhall. A major international prize-winner, he was awarded the Worshipful Company of Musicians silver medal in 2008. Recent highlights include consecutive performances of Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto in Wells and Exeter Cathedrals.

Shai Wosner piano Handel Suite in B flat major HWV434 Knussen Variations Op. 24 Beethoven Variations on an Original Theme Op. 34 Brahms Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel Op. 24 Acclaimed in America as an artist who ‘will be spoken of as one of the greats’ and celebrated by The Guardian for his ‘great delicacy and a skittish sense of fun,’ the young New York-based pianist – recently featured among Gramophone’s ‘One to Watch’ artists – performs three sets of variations from three different musical eras – classical, romantic, and contemporary – plus Handel’s first harpsichord suite. 63

26 Letters Sun 8 May 2pm Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome £5 Age 9+

Sat 21 May 10.30am Jubilee Library £5 Age 3-6

Sat 21 May 12.30pm & 2.30pm Jubilee Library £6 (admits 1 adult and 1 child) Age 2-5

Sun 22 May 10.30am Jubilee Library £5 Age 3-6

26 Letters Derek Landy – Skulduggery Pleasant Join Derek Landy for another rip-roaring murder mystery as he unleashes Mortal Coil, the latest instalment in his dead famous Skulduggery Pleasant series – guaranteed to contain at least 40% humour, 50% action, and 100% thrills… Landy’s sharply dressed, wisecracking skeleton detective burst onto the scene in 2007’s eponymous debut (winner of last year’s prestigious Irish Book of the Decade). Since then he’s stepped out in five genre-busting comic-horror adventures. Don’t miss this bone-rattling spot of literary skulduggery.

Interactive Storytelling and Drawing with Guy Parker-Rees

Sun 22 May 12noon Jubilee Library £5 Age 11+

Jill Hucklesby – Writing Workshop

Sun 22 May 2pm Jubilee Library £5 Age 3-6

Interactive Illustration with Bruce Ingman

Fri 27 May 5pm Sallis Benney Theatre £5 Age 9+

Chris Bradford – Samurai vs Ninja!

Fri 27 May 7pm Sallis Benney Theatre £20 Age 16+

Book Camp for Adults

Sat 28 May 10am Sallis Benney Theatre £5 Family event

Nick Sharratt

From a Jungle Dance to Ants in Your Pants!, this event with awardwinning illustrator Guy Parker-Rees will get the little ones moving! Children will help Guy create a new character, produce their own animal drawings and then join in with an interactive storytelling session and some hilarious animal movement and noise games.

Happy Birthday Peepo! This lively, interactive event for young toddlers celebrates the 30th anniversary of Janet and Allan Ahlberg’s classic picture book. As curious readers seek out the next scene, there’s baby: waking in his cot, playing in the park and getting a goodnight kiss. The book’s glorious rhymes and rhythms are brought to life in this fun-packed hour of songs, games and peeping good fun with professional storyteller Justine de Mierre.

Poetry and Storytelling with Sean Taylor Riddles, poems and storytelling abound as this award-winning author drops by for a fun-filled hour of delirious wordplay. In Sean Taylor’s topsy-turvy world monsters do homework (When a Monster Is Born), crocodiles out-hop kangaroos (Crocodiles Are the Best Animals of All) and beanbag frogs burn the midnight oil (The World Champion of Staying Awake). Learn to write poems and experience some live storytelling fun in this exciting, interactive workshop for young children.

Join Brighton’s own Jill Hucklesby for a special writing workshop based on her teen novel If I Could Fly. Calypso Summer is on the run – from something terrible, though she’s not sure what. All she knows is that to survive she must keep running and not get caught. Now it’s your turn – to create your own runaway adventure. But who will it feature? Where will it unfold? And what will your hero/heroine be running from? With group discussion, storytelling games, character development and hands-on hints to help hone your writing style.

Enjoy an afternoon of picture book fun with award-winning author and illustrator Bruce Ingman. Watch his stories come to life and then learn how to become an illustrator with imaginative drawing activities. A former student of the great Quentin Blake, Bruce hit the jackpot first time, winning the Mother Goose Award for his debut picture book When Martha’s Away.

Learn what it takes to become a young samurai and discover the mystic secrets of the deadly ninja with Chris Bradford. Before becoming the best-selling author of the Young Samurai series Chris earned his black belt in Tai-jutsu, the secret fighting art of the ninja. He has also trained in judo, karate, kickboxing and samurai swordsmanship. Witness an authentic samurai sword display, listen to some all-kicking, all-punching storytelling, and challenge the ninja, if you dare…

Want to write for children but can’t get off the starting blocks? Or done and dusted but not sure how to breach the publishing citadel? This three-hour masterclass demystifies the grown-up business of getting ahead in the children’s book world. Julia Churchill (Greenhouse Literary Agency) and Leah Thaxton (Senior Publisher at Egmont – one of the UK’s leading children’s book publishers) offer inside intel, practical advice and indispensable anecdotes on everything from agents (and how to get one) to preparing match-fit manuscripts.

Have you ever seen a shark in the park? Or had to save the world from an attack by planet pea? Meet the characters who have done all this and more with the brilliant Nick Sharratt! Watch Nick draw live and help him invent a whole new poem as the creator of Eat Your Peas and Shark in the Dark invites you to join him for all manner of fun and frivolity. Boogieing an optional extra!

26 Letters Sat 28 May 12 noon Sallis Benney Theatre £5 Age 5+

26 Letters Anthony Browne Meet Children’s Laureate Anthony Browne at this interactive family event about looking, drawing and dreaming. Help him play his famous Shape Game and hear about his latest picture book, Me and You. Anthony is the multi-talented creator of Gorilla, Willy the Wimp, The Shape Game and Silly Billy. He was the first UK illustrator to win the coveted Hans Christian Andersen Award in half a century!

Aliens, Robots and Elephantmen – Telling Stories with Pictures with Chris Riddell, Paul Collicutt and Boo Cook Today comics and graphic novels are finally getting the kudos they deserve, and illustrators can now freely move between the traditional picture book and multi-panel art… Or can they? Are the skills required the same? Do the rewards of one form outweigh the other? And how might you begin to make your mark as a graphic novelist? Join Chris Riddell (The Edge Chronicles; Alienography); Paul Collicutt (Robot City Adventures) and Boo Cook (2000AD; Elephantmen) for lively discussion and kinetic drawing. Chaired by Stephen Bamford of Dave’s Comics.

Queen of Hearts Children’s Book Quiz

Sat 28 May 2pm Sallis Benney Theatre £5 Age 8+

Martin Brown – Horrible Histories

Sat 28 May 4pm Sallis Benney Theatre £5 Age 10+

Charlie Higson’s History of Horror

Adopt an Author

Charlie Higson loves all things horror. Join him here as he shares this gruesome passion and gets under the skin of his heart-stopping zombie-thriller series The Enemy. Charlie – best-selling author, TV actor and comedian – has also written the phenomenally successful Young Bond books and is performer/co-creator of The Fast Show and Bellamy’s People, inspired by his award-winning spoof radio series Down the Line. For a horribly good hour of grisly storytelling, check in your goose-bumps at the door.

Brighton Festival’s Adopt an Author scheme links school classes with children’s authors to promote literacy, encourage writing and make the most of ICT. In this, the project’s eighth year, classes from four local schools have teamed up with four well-known authors: Moulsecoomb Primary with Guy Bass (Dinkin Dings and the Frightening Things); Balfour Junior with Alan Durant (Bad Boys football series); Coldean Primary with Tanya Landman (Poppy Fields mysteries); and Cottesmore St Mary’s RC Primary with Alex Milway (the Mousehunter trilogy). Each project culminates in a special Festival event/party produced exclusively for the participating school and adoptee. If your school would like to take part in next year’s scheme please contact hilary.cooke@brightonfestival.org

Sat 28 May 6.30pm Sallis Benney Theatre £5 Age 12+

Anthony Browne in conversation with Joe Browne: Mainly for Grown-ups

Join Martin Brown, illustrator of Horrible Histories, the world’s best-selling history series for children, and learn how to draw all the nasty bits of history – the Horrible way! Martin will show you stepby-step how he creates his illustrations and brings history to life with witty cartoons. The Groovy Greeks? The Awesome Egyptians? The Gorgeous Georgians? All horribly here… It’s art with the nasty bits left in!

Join the current Children’s Laureate, much-loved illustrator Anthony Browne and his son, Joe Browne, as they discuss the memoir Playing the Shape Game. With classics such as Voices in the Park, Willy and Hugh and Gorilla to his name, expect insight into Anthony’s childhood, his training, and his career as an artist. Iconic and inimitable – father and son should not be missed!

Sun 29 May 2pm Sallis Benney Theatre £5 Age 12+

Sun 29 May 4pm Sallis Benney Restaurant £6; Family ticket £20 (2 adults, 2 children) Age 7+

Prize-giving reception: Sun 22 May 12.30pm Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome

‘Human beings the world over need freedom and security that they may be able to realise their full potential.’ Aung San Suu Kyi

There are curious conundrums aplenty as the Queen of Hearts takes her throne for the topsiest, turviest children’s book quiz in all Wonderland. Her Royal Uppitiness will be on hand to oversee the book-based questions and keep the flamingos in check. Remember, there’s tea, sandwiches, cake and plenty of prizes. So if you think you can keep your head with such tempting treats in store, make haste for the nearest rabbit hole…

Peacock Poetry Prize Are you aged between 11 and 26? Have you ever thought about what it means to be free? Free to choose, free to think, free to write? If you would like to respond to the ideas of Brighton Festival’s Guest Director – in your own words – then get writing and enter this special Brighton Festival poetry competition on the theme of Liberty. For Brighton & Hove and Sussex residents only. No entry fee. Maximum three poems (up to 40 lines each) per entrant. All poems must be accompanied by an entry form (see brightonfestival.org for forms and competition rules). The Peacock Poetry Prize is produced by Brighton Festival and Brighton Hove & Sussex Sixth Form College (BHASVIC). 67

Diary Genre Key

Visual Arts & Film Books & Debate Classical Music Contemporary Music Dance & Circus Outdoor Theatre Kids Mornings After Lunchtimes 26 Letters

Venue Key The Basement TB Brighton Town Hall BTH Charleston Festival CF Concert Hall, Brighton Dome CH Concert Hall Auditorium CHA Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome CE The Crew Club, Whitehawk CC Duke of York’s Picturehouse DYP Fabrica F Founders Room FR Glyndebourne Opera House G Jubilee Library JL Jubilee Square JS Komedia K Music Room, Royal Pavilion MR The Old Market OM The Old Municipal Market OMM Old Paddling Pool Site OPP Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome PT Pavilion Gardens PG Queens Park QP Sallis Benney Theatre SBT Sallis Benney Restaurant SBR St Ann’s Wells Gardens StA St Bartholomew’s Church StB St George’s Church StG St Mary’s Church StM St Nicholas’ Rest Garden StNR St Nicholas’ Church StNC Theatre Royal Brighton TR University of Brighton UB Victoria Gardens VG Wild Park WP

Throughout the Festival

Tue 10 May

Kutlug˘ Ataman 12noon–7pm, p.6-7 OMM

Clara Mouriz & Joseph Middleton 1pm, p.61 PT

Janet Cardiff 12noon–7pm, p.8 F Lynette Wallworth 12noon–7pm, p.9 UB

Sat 7 May Children’s Parade 10.30am, from Sydney Street, p.10 Chouf Ouchouf 6pm, p.13

The Three (dis)Graces 6.30pm, 8pm, 9.30pm, p.12 TB

5 x 15 7.30pm, p.20

Jardin Flambeau 8.30pm–10.30pm, p.15 StA

Everything Looks Beautiful in Slow Motion 9pm–midnight, p.10

Sun 8 May

5x5 (Loud and Clear) 3.30pm–7.50pm, every 20mins, timed appointments, p.20 TB

The New World Order 7.15pm & 9.30pm, p.11 BTH

Sadie Jones and Mirza Waheed 8pm, p.20 PT

33 Revolutions per Minute 3pm, p.17 PT Linda Grant and Naomi Alderman 5pm, p.17 PT Chouf Ouchouf 6pm, p.13

Sufjan Stevens 8pm, p.26

Four Quartets 8pm, p27 StNC

Beethoven Fidelio 7pm, p.18

Jackie Kay and Helen Oyeyemi 8pm, p.16 PT Jardin Flambeau 8.30pm–10.30pm, p.15 StA

The Art of Laughter 9pm, p.32 TB

Pleasures and Politics of Food 7.30pm, p.22 CE

Gramoulinophone 12pm, 2.30pm, 5pm, p.25 PG

Stephen Hough 1pm, p.62 PT Christopher Maltman 11am, p.60 FR

The New World Order 7.15pm, p.11 BTH

The New World Order 7.15pm & 9.30pm, p.11 BTH

Pop-Up Cinema p.28 TB

Mon 16 May

5x5 (Loud and Clear) 3.30pm–7.50pm, every 20mins, timed appointments, p.20 TB

Unpacked Theatre and Peut-être 11am, p.60 FR

The Lady of Burma 7.30pm, p.36 TR

Charles Linehan Company 8pm, p.29 CE

35 Minutes/Time After Time 7.30pm, p.37 TB

Tue 17 May

And the Horse You Rode In On 8pm, p.31 PT

DJ Shadow – Shadowsphere 8pm, p.24 CH Trevor Pinnock and Friends 8pm, p.24 StG TR

Fri 13 May

Copenhagen Chamber Ensemble 1pm, p.61 PT

DJ Shadow In Conversation 2pm, p.24 PT

Everything Looks Beautiful in Slow Motion 9pm–midnight, p.10

Fri 20 May

Thu 12 May

Mon 9 May

house 8pm, p.19 PT

Burma Soldier 1pm, p.28 DYP

5x5 (Loud and Clear) 3.30pm–7.50pm, every 20mins, timed appointments, p.20 TB The New World Order 7.15pm & 9.30pm, p.11 BTH Circa 8pm, p.21

Everything Looks Beautiful in Slow Motion 9pm–midnight, p.10

Zoya Phan 7.30pm, p.39

Richard Hahlo 11am, p.60 FR The New World Order 7.15pm, p.11 BTH What Next? Future of Burma 7.30pm, p.29 CE Midsummer 8pm, p.30

And the Horse You Rode In On 8pm, p.31 PT Berlin Wind Quartet 8pm, p.32 MR

Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Max Romeo and Adrian Sherwood 8pm, p.38 CH Cheap Lecture/Cow Piece 9pm, p.37 TB Midsummer 9.30pm, p.30

Sat 21 May Interactive Storytelling 10.30am, Jubilee Library, p.64 JL Play Please! 11am & 2pm, p.39 OM

Wed 18 May

Alive! 12noon–5pm, p.41 OPP

Finzi Quartet 1pm, p.61 PT Told By An Idiot 11am, p.31

The Iron Man 12noon-5pm, p.41 OPP Tribal Assembly 12noon–5pm, p.41 OPP

The New World Order 7.15pm & 9.30pm, p.11 BTH

That’s The Way To Do It! 12noon-5pm, p.41 OPP

10 Ways to Die on Stage 7.30pm, p.32 TB Midsummer 8pm, p.30

Carol Ann Duffy 8pm, p.34

I Came By Myself to a Crowded Place 12noon–8pm, Secret Location, p.40

The New World Order 7.15pm, p.11 BTH

Sat 28 May Nick Sharratt 10am, p.65

Balkan Brass Battle 7.30pm, p.43 CH

House of Exile 12noon, p.56

Aquinas Piano Trio 1pm, p.63 Melvyn Bragg 3.30pm, p.49

For Alfonso 9.45pm, p.42

The End 7.30pm, p.50

Sun 22 May

Mahan Esfahani 8pm, p.49

Thu 26 May

People’s Choice Debate 12noon, p.44 CE

Alexander Karpeyev 1pm, p.63 PT

El Gallo 7.30pm, p.55 Butley 7.45pm, p.50

CHA TB

Mahan Esfahani 11am, p.60

Murder She Wrote – PD James 12noon, p.44 CF Interactive Illustration 12noon, p.65 JL That’s The Way To Do It! 12noon-5pm, p.41 OPP Peacock Poetry Prize 12.30pm, p.67 PT

As You Like It 6pm, p.52

There Was a Child 3pm, p.45 CH Writing Freedom 6.30pm, p.46 CE Tiburon Tigre/Quim Pujol 6.45pm, 8pm, 9.15pm, Secret Location, p.40 The New World Order 7.15pm & 9.30pm, p.11 BTH

Mon 23 May Neil Bartlett 11am, p.60 FR

StNR

Bane 3 8pm & 9.30pm, p.58 PT As the World Tipped 9pm, p.57 WP

Aliens, Robots and Elephantmen 10am, p.67

SBT

Freedom Picnic 2pm, p.58 QP Heartland 3pm & 5pm, p.56 OPP El Gallo 3pm & 7.30pm, p.55

Jon Ronson 8pm, p.52

Bivouac 8pm, p.55

As You Like It 1pm & 6pm, p.52 StNR

Queen of Hearts 4pm, p.67

Laurie Anderson 8pm, p.51 Death is Certain 9pm, p.50

CH TB

Fri 27 May Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre 11am, p.60 FR Shai Wosner 1pm, p.63 PT

SBR

Bane Trilogy: Bane 1 6pm, p.58 PT Bane Trilogy: Bane 2 7.45pm, p.58 PT Bane Trilogy: Bane 3 9.30pm p.58 PT The New World Order 7.15pm, p.11 BTH The Passion of Joan of Arc 8pm, p.59 CH

Henning Mankell 3.30pm, p.52 CF Samurai vs Ninja! 5pm, p.65 As You Like It 6pm, p.52

SBT

StNR

Book Camp for Adults 7pm, p.65 SBT

Jerwood Young Artists at Glyndebourne 1pm, p.62 PT

The New World Order 7.15pm & 9.30pm, p.11 BTH

John Cale and Band 8pm, p.47 CH

Drôles d’Oiseaux 7.30pm, p.55 VG

Working Title 8pm, p.46 PT

Sun 29 May

Monsters and Prodigies 7.30pm, p.48 CE Butley 7.45pm, p.50

5 New Poets 2pm, p.44 FR

The New World Order 7.15pm & 9.30pm, p.11 BTH

The End 7.30pm, p.50

SBT

The New World Order 7.15pm & 9.30pm, p.11 BTH Supper Club 7.30pm, p.59

Death is Certain 9pm, p.50

I Came By Myself to a Crowded Place 12noon–8pm, Secret Location, p.40

Anthony Browne & Joe Browne 6.30pm, p.66 SBT

Laurie Anderson In Conversation 8.30pm, p.51 JL

SBT

Charlie Higson 4pm, p.66

The Growing Room 8pm, p.51 PT

Jill Hucklesby 12noon, p.65

Martin Brown 2pm, p.66

Heartland 3pm & 5pm, p.56 OPP

Mulatu Astatke 8pm, p.49

Play Please! 11am & 2pm, p.39 OM

As You Like It 1pm & 6pm, p.52 StNR I Shall Not Hate 3pm, p.56

Monsters and Prodigies 7.30pm, p.48 CE Butley 7.45pm, p.50

Anthony Browne 12noon, p.66 SBT

The New World Order 7.15pm & 9.30pm, p.11 BTH

Cheap Lecture/Cow Piece 9pm, p.37 TB

SBT

Générik Vapeur 11am, p.60

Claudio Valdes Kuri 11am, p.60 FR

35 Minutes/Time After Time 7.30pm, p.37 TB

Asa Briggs 2.30pm, p.45

Mohsin Hamid and Hisham Matar 8pm, p.54 PT

Burma VJ 6.30pm, p.46 DYP

Wed 25 May

Poetry and Storytelling 10.30am, p.64 JL

Midsummer 9.30pm, p.30

Leif Ove Andsnes 3pm, p.28 CH

Everything Looks Beautiful in Slow Motion 9pm–midnight, p.10

And the Horse You Rode In On 8pm, p.31 PT

Draw me a Bird 11am & 2pm, Sallis Benney, p.27 StB

Circa 8pm, p.21

Lucy Crowe, Andrew Staples and Malcolm Martineau 8pm, p.19 MR

Everything Looks Beautiful in Slow Motion 9pm–midnight, p.10

10 Ways to Die on Stage 7.30pm, p.32 TB

Academy of St Martin in the Fields 8pm, p.54 CH

Heath Quartet 1pm, p.63 PT

Monsters and Prodigies 7.30pm, p.48 CE

And the Horse You Rode In On 8pm, p.31 PT

The New World Order 7.15pm, p.11 BTH

Everything Looks Beautiful in Slow Motion 9pm–midnight, p.10

Chouf Ouchouf 7pm, p.13

Christopher Maltman/Joseph Middleton 7.30pm, p.37 CE

Sun 15 May

Max Richter, Hauschka, Dustin O’Halloran 7.30pm, p.24 StM

The Three (dis)Graces 6.30pm, 8pm, 9.30pm, p.12 TB

Tiburon Tigre/Quim Pujol 6.45pm, 8pm, 9.15pm, Secret Location, p.40 The New World Order 7.15pm & 9.30pm, p.11 BTH

Giant Sand and Devon Sproule 8pm, p.35 CH

The New World Order 7.15pm & 9.30pm, p.11 BTH

Midsummer 7pm, p.30

The Lady of Burma 7.30pm, p.36 TR

Leonid Gorokhov & Laura Van Der Heijden 1pm, p.61 PT

Everything Looks Beautiful in Slow Motion 9pm–midnight, p.10

Article 19 6pm, p.42

Miloš Karadaglic´ 1pm, p.62 PT

The New World Order 7.15pm & 9.30pm, p.11 BTH Circa 8pm, p.21

Mark Ravenhill 2pm, p.40

Thu 19 May

Wed 11 May

Gardenia 8pm, p.23

Hero of Brighton and Hove 6pm, p.60 FR

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui 11am, p.60 FR

Circa 8pm, p.21

Lone Twin Boat Project 12noon–5pm, p.19 JS

Derek Landy 2pm, p.64

Talking to Terrorists 7.30pm, p.22 CE

Circa-Family Matinee 3pm, p.21 TR

New Voices 8pm, p.22

The Owl and the Pussycat 11am, 1pm, 3pm, p.16 SBT

Philip Hensher and Louise Doughty 1pm, p.17

Gramoulinophone 12pm, 2.30pm, 5pm, p.25 PG

Tue 24 May

Happy Birthday Peepo! 12.30pm, p.64 JL Philip Higham 1pm, p.62 PT

The Art of Laughter 9pm, p.32 TB

The New World Order 7.15pm, p.11 BTH

5x5 (Loud and Clear) 3.30pm–7.50pm, every 20mins, timed appointments, p.20 TB

Asian Dub Foundation 8.30pm, p.14 CH

Apocrifu 8pm, p.32

Sat 14 May Draw me a Bird 11am & 2pm, p.27 SBT

Everything Looks Beautiful in Slow Motion 9pm–midnight, p.10

The New World Order 7.15pm & 9.30pm, p.11 BTH

And the Horse You Rode In On 8pm, p.31 PT

5x5 (Loud and Clear) 3.30pm–7.50pm, every 20mins, timed appointments, p.20 TB

Circa 8pm, p.21

Lady of No Fear 1pm, p.12 DYP

Spem in Alium – Forty Part Motet 10pm, p.25 StB

Butley 7.45pm, p.50

Beyond Brighton Festival ZEPA

Brighton Festival Fringe

– Zone Européenne de Projets Artistiques (or European Zone of Artistic Projects).

Sat 7 May – Mon 30 May | Tickets – brightonfestivalfringe.org.uk | 01273 709709 The world’s third largest fringe festival celebrates its fifth anniversary as an independent company in 2011. It will feature hundreds of events from top comedy acts to classical music, family shows to cutting edge theatre, at over 200 venues. Come and sample the programme at Fringe City (free outdoor festival) on New Road, Brighton every Saturday of the Fringe!

A European network supported by the crossborder co-operation programme INTERREG IVA FRANCE (CHANNEL) ENGLAND The streets are alive!

Brighton Festival brightonfestival.org Hat Fair, Winchester hatfair.co.uk

Check us out on zepa9.eu On Fri 27 and Sat 28 May 2011 ZEPA is presenting, with Brighton Festival and Zap Art as host partners, a symposium at Brighton Dome where the members of ZEPA and other key partners will meet in order to mix it up and produce an intoxicating brew of cross-cultural cross-fertilization for everyone’s future entertainment.

SeaChange Arts, Great Yarmouth outtherefestival.com Southampton City Council/ Nuffield Theatre nuffieldtheatre.co.uk

Photo: Edmund de Waal

The ZEPA Network

Culture Commune, Loos-en-Gohelle culturecommune.fr

Thu 12 – Sat 14 May | Tickets – escapegreat.com/buytickets; brightonticketshop.com

Le Fourneau, Brest lefourneau.com

Europe’s leading event for showcasing new talent from around the world. TGE is aimed at new music fans and industry professionals and takes place in Brighton every May with over 15,000 visitors and 3,000 delegates. A variety of insightful industry talks, debates, networking sessions and keynote interviews run alongside performances from over 300 new local and international artists, themed parties and club nights in over 30 different venues.

Artists Open Houses

Weekends Sat 7 – Sun 29 May | aoh.org.uk | housefestival.org

Le Hangar, Amiens w2.amiens.com/ artdelarue

Zap Art Brighton zapart.co.uk

Listen, discuss and be inspired at the Charleston Festival. Subjects include fiction, biography, travel, history, current affairs and art, plus a Faber Academy Writing Workshop. Speakers include: Joanna Trollope, Edward St Aubyn, David Nicholls, Ann Patchett, Edmund de Waal, Evan Davis, Niall Ferguson, A. C. Grayling, Simon Sebag Montefiore and Emma Bridgewater. Shuttle bus service from Brighton and Lewes.

The Great Escape

Atelier 231, Sotteville-lès-Rouen atelier231.fr Photo: Mike Burnell

Between us we will be enriching you with workshops, performances, opportunities to meet people and share experiences across borders and above all the chance to share in the magic.

Where books, ideas and creativity bloom Fri 20 May – Sun 29 May | charleston.org.uk | for brochures call 01323 811626

Photo: Jerry Webb

Brighton Festival is delighted to be part of an international collaboration between five UK and four French street theatre and outdoor arts producers and festivals.

Charleston Festival Photo: Jean-Pierre Estournet

Over the next two years from Newhaven to Amiens, Cornwall to Brittany, Brighton to Sotteville-lès-Rouen, and areas in between, the strange, miraculous, mysterious and frankly odd will be populating the streets.

Celebrating its 30th year, with 1,300 artists and 250 venues, Open Houses offer a great opportunity to meet artists and buy directly from them. Celia Davies is 2011 advisory curator for partner festival HOUSE which shows contemporary experimental work from leading local artists at venues citywide, including The Regency Town House (pictured) featuring ‘HOUSE Open’ with work by selected Open House artists, and Open House pioneers Ned Hoskins and Harvey Daniels.

Radical Bloomsbury Burma Campaign Imagine being given three minutes to leave your home. Imagine if your young child was forced to join the army. Imagine living in constant fear of arrest and torture. Imagine your five-year-old daughter raped by soldiers. The people of Burma don’t have to imagine these things. For them this is reality. Now imagine being able to help put an end to all of this. You can. Take Action – use our action postcard or support Burma Campaign UK at burmacampaign.org.uk

‘Please use your liberty to promote ours’ Aung San Suu Kyi 70

The Art of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, 1905 – 1925 Until Sun 9 Oct | £6 full, £5 conc, under 15s FREE B&H Resident (with proof of address) £3 | Foundation members free The unconventional household established by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant at their Charleston home was often depicted in their paintings. The exhibition looks at the contribution they made to the development of 20th-century British painting, exploring their relationship with the avant-garde and new developments in European art.

Dada-South presents Up-Stream – An Accentuate Project Tue 24 – Thu 26 May | dada-south.org.uk

Supported by Dada-South, Accentuate, The Legacy Trust, Arts Council England and SEEDA

Showcasing the very best of contemporary art by disabled and deaf artists, presented across Brighton. Featuring Noemi Lakmaier, Gary Thomas, Juan delGado, Freewheelers Theatre Company, Project Art Works, Colin Hambrook, Sally Booth, Oska Bright Film Festival, Charlie Swinbourne and Jon Adams. The celebration kicks off with Sense of Freedom by Deaf Men Dancing at the Pavilion Theatre on 24 May, 7.45pm, tickets £15. 71

Getting Around