The Basement Sep - Dec 2009 Programme

Brighton Station

The Royal Pavilion

OLD STEINE

WEST ST

PA VI

LI O

N

PA RA D

E

NEW RD

JUBILEE ST

REGENT ST NORTH ST

GRAND PARADE

KENSINGTON ST

QUEENS RD

NORTH RD

CHURCH ST

RICHMOND PL

SYDNEY ST

TRAFALGAR ST

GRAND JUNCTION RD

Map by localhoneydesign@hotmail.com Brighton Pier

JUBILEE SQUARE The Basement manages and presents events in Jubilee Square, Brighton’s newest and most exciting outdoor venue. The space is ideal for a diverse range of cultural activities including live performance, street theatre, music, community events and outdoor screenings. The square has a footfall of over 20,000 per day, an area of 19m x 23m and is available for hire 7 days a week. Licence permits activity until 11pm.

24 Kensington Street Brighton BN1 4AJ Telephone: 01273 699 733 Email: info@thebasement.uk.com www.thebasement.uk.com

Supported by:

Charity No: 1116008 Designed and produced by MINT (01273) 261166

www.mintcreative.com

PROGRAMME SEPTEMBER – DECEMBER 2009

welcome

SEPTEMBER

This autumn we have sinister storytelling, two grown men pretending to be Wham! pretending to be pilots and the legendary David Hoyle. We’re even infecting Christmas with our particular brand of wonkiness: why not have your Christmas party whilst being entertained by a hilariously twisted contemporary panto.

So as the nights start drawing in, it’s a great time to disappear underground and find something out of the ordinary.

I look forward to seeing you

plus John Player & Mute Swimmer

Berlin’s Fee Reega sings songs that tell about feelings she used to have, wants to have, probably will have soon or imagines one could have. In 2009 she recorded her first EP at home and released it on Woodland Recordings.

Dorothy Max Prior (Dorothy’s Shoes) presents: Set in the heart of Brighton’s North Laine, The Basement has several unique and atmospheric spaces under one roof. The spaces are ideal for devising, producing and showcasing experimental theatre, Live Art and performance. It is also the perfect backdrop for exhibitions seeking the opposite of a white wall gallery space. Its underground location makes it ideal for focussed seminars, workshops and meetings, with a difference. With exposed brickwork and iron beams, The Basement is a blank canvas with an edgy industrial feel.

BASEMENT BORDELLO Date: Doors: Tickets:

Type PR and Slowfoot Records present:

ROBERT LOGAN plus Gagarin & The Vainglories

With a total capacity of over 250, The Basement provides a unique setting in which to experience performance, socialise and hold events. The venue can be hired in its entirety or on a space-by-space basis.

Robert Logan is an exciting young producer/musician whose nascent career has already seen him collaborate with the likes of Grace Jones and Brian Eno, and co-write the score for the Oscar winning documentary feature ‘Taxi to the Darkside’.

For venue information and hire fees please contact info@thebasement.uk.com or call 01273 699733

Sat 26th September 7.30pm £7 (£5 concessions)

Distorted dances, subversive puppetry, mellifluous music, mesmeric moving image…

The Basement also has a fully licensed bar serving speciality beers, wine and ciders. A menu of tasty tapas will also be available at events marked with a fork .

All food an drink is sympathetically priced and sourced in accordance with The Basement’s ethical ethos.

“The Basement has been a wonderful, engaging, supportive and creative environment, and a friendly place in which to test the waters and push the performance envelope” Charlotte Vincent & Liz Aggiss Helen Medland Artistic Director

FEE REEGA Date: Sat 19th September Doors: 8.00pm Tickets: Suggested donation £5.

After a hectic summer in which The Basement has been a hive of activity, with dozens of artists devising, refining and rehearsing new work, we’re delighted to be back with our Autumn/Winter programme. We think it’s our best yet, with a fantastic mix of new performance, experimental theatre and music.

Here at The Basement, we like work that ignores easy categories and concentrates on saying something urgent, edgy, challenging, passionate, funny or unexpected. From leading national and international artists, to the best of a new generation presenting new work in our Foundation programme we aim to move, intrigue and sometimes slightly disturb our audiences.

Type PR and Woodland Recordings present:

Date: Doors: Tickets:

Thurs 17th September 8.00pm £6 (£5 concessions) on the door

Enter a ghost-world Palace of Fun in which the boundaries of performer and audience are disrupted. Trip into The Ballroom That Time Forgot and be drawn into the dance. Slip into The Sideshow for flickering films and shadowy performance vignettes.

Expect a cornucopia of live events that honour and usurp the traditions of popular entertainment, curated by a team of artists joined by a selection of very special guests.

With a distinctive mix of human frailty and software precision, Gagarin has been making music on the edges of the musical galaxy with the likes of Nico, John Cale and Pere Ubu. The Vainglories (aka Gillian Allder) create songs with haunting piano leads over the concise laptopgenerated atmospheres.

box office: 01273 699733

OCTOBER

White Rabbit presents:

ARE YOU SITTING COMFORTABLY? TABOO!

The Gilded Palace of Sin & Ark PR present:

Date: Doors: Tickets:

EILEN JEWELL plus Rob Lutes

Hot on the heels of a sell-out season in London Town, we bring you an evening of original storytelling in the White Rabbit’s candlelit warren. Part fifties tearoom, part deranged children’s party, we will tickle your fancies with spanking new stories still sticky with ink, joined by local writers and rule breakers, to explore October’s theme: TABOO! We invite you to enjoy FREE cakes, sweets, treats, games, competitions and prizes, or p’raps you would prefer to purchase one of our “Teapot Cocktails” and other bar beverages?

Date: Tues 6th October Doors: 8pm Tickets: £8 advance from Rounder, Resident, Punker Bunker and online at www. wegottickets.co.uk Eilen and her astonishing band return to Brighton looking for another sell-out show. Her voice is reminiscent of everyone from Loretta Lynn to Billie Holliday, and her band put on a ferocious live show. Country, honky-tonk, soul and (even) British Invasion inform Eilen’s wonderful songs.

For Fans Of: Loretta, Gillian Welch, Dusty Springfield.

Follow the bunny... down, down, down…

The Gilded Palace of Sin presents:

“Jewell is showing she can wander with the best of them, and write riveting song-stories about her adventures along the way” - No Depression

MARK EITZEL

www.eilenjewell.com

Date: Thurs 8th October Doors: 8:00pm Tickets: £9 advance from Rounder, Resident and Punker Bunker and also online at wegottickets.co.uk

White Rabbit are Bernadette Russell, Paschale Straiton and Gareth Brierley

plus Franz Nicolay (The Hold Steady)

As both a solo artist and as front-man of American Music Club, Mark Eitzel’s place in history is assured as one of the great American songwriters and one of its most compelling, mould-breaking singers. He nails every emotion, and – particularly when singing live - throws every emotion into his performance. Mark will be accompanied

by Marc Capelle (AMC/Virgil Shaw) on piano.

Franz Nicolay is probably best known as the accordian/ keyboard-playing dude with the impressive moustache in The Hold Steady. He also plays in cult vaudeville-punk outfit, World Inferno Friendship Society. www.myspace.com/markeitzel

box office: 01273 699733

Wed 14th October 7.30pm £6 (£4 concessions)

Type PR and Slowfoot Records present:

SNORKEL plus Bela Emerson & Richard Miles with Guests Date: Doors: Tickets:

Thurs 15th October 8.00pm £6 (£5 concessions)

Avant-collective Snorkel explore the nether regions between the groove and free improvisation with subaquatic observations of dub, jazz, afro-beat, krautrock and electronica.

Bela Emerson & Richard Miles create atmospheric improvised music. With Miles on guitar, bass and electronics, Emerson combines electric cello with loops and effects, constantly exploring the boundaries of the instrument’s place in contemporary music.

box office: 01273 699733

EVERYTHING MUST GO Or, The Voluntary Attempt to Overcome Unnecessary Obstacles Beady Eye / Kristin Fredricksson Date: Doors: Tickets:

Fri 16th October 7.30pm £6 (£4 concessions)

Winner of Total Theatre Award and Arches Brick Award, Edinburgh 2009.

An athletic-puppetic duet between father and daughter.

Cinefilm, clowning, puppetry and hurdling are used to explore a father’s life – from dosshouse childhood to dancing on graves. In this meditation on love, loss, memory and play, we see Dad training for the Olympics by day and dragging up by night. With age his money-saving schemes become increasingly elaborate, from the secrets of free water to newspaper-stealing shoes. But eventually everything must go.

‘Fredricksson evokes her father so vividly and unsentimentally that by the end you feel like you know him; and for a moment or two, after the stage has gone black, you’ll grieve his passing as if he were an old friend.’

The Scotsman

box office: 01273 699733

Type PR and Woodland Recordings present:

THE FOX AND THE BRAMBLE plus Rowan Coupland (Static Caravan) and Woodpecker Wooliams

SUPPER CLUB SPECIAL: FORTUNES OF WHITE NIGHT

Date: Sat 17th October Doors: 8.00pm Tickets: Suggested donation £5

Date: Doors: Tickets:

Sat 24th October 6.00pm - 4.00am FREE!!!

The Fox and the Bramble create lo-fi bedroom songs veering from delicate finger picking to shouty mayhem.

This duo from Oxford come armed with guitars, a ukulele named ‘Eliza Little’, a banjolele called ‘Ebenezer’ and a selection of toy instruments.

Cooked up especially for White Night, Supper Club presents a night of chaos.

Having taught himself an array of instruments as a teenager, Rowan Coupland creates intricate and heady collections of lullabies, squawks, hollers, violins, bells, guitars, harps, accordions, clarinets and a self-policing gospel choir. Woodpecker Wooliams is Brighton-based multi instrumentalist Gemma Williams. Her music is sublime, pastoral and characterized by an enchanting voice.

Concocted from the most exciting new performance in the country by Basement Supported Artists Janine Fletcher, Avis Cockbill, Victoria Melody and Luan Blake, Supper Club is fast building a reputation as a night not to be missed.

Leave your expectations at the door. They won’t help you here. Indulge yourself in a frenzy of live performance intoxication, a 10-hour odd-athon for the fortunate few. With music, live art, video art, invisible art, explosive art, art that makes you go ‘what the hell was that?’ and art that shouts ‘Don’t just sit there, DO something’, Supper Club Special demands your presence.

You won’t know what’s on the menu until it’s served… ‘…the combination of something to nibble with a keenly priced bar and some of Brighton’s more interesting culture vultures makes for quite a temptation’ The Brighton Source, December 2008

box office: 01273 699733

Dorothy Max Prior (Dorothy’s Shoes) presents:

BASEMENT BORDELLO Date: Doors: Tickets:

Sat 31st October 7.30pm £7 (£5 concessions)

NOVEMBER

South East Dance presents:

STRIPTEASE Pere Faura Date: Doors: Tickets:

Dorothy’s Shoes and her Gentlemen Friends, Champagne Charlie and Burlington Bertie, invite you to The Basement Bordello, a ghost-world Palace of Fun in which the boundaries of ‘performer’ and ‘audience’ are disrupted as the space is animated by a cornucopia of live events that honour and usurp the traditions of ‘popular entertainment’.

Thurs 12th November 7.30pm £8 (£6 concessions)

Heidi: I wanted to tell a story. I had always thought that just to strip didn’t make sense, there has to be some sort of a reason.

Dixie: Just pretend you’re making a movie; don’t look at the audience... Then, on your bow, blow them kisses.

Enter The Ballroom That Time Forgot and be drawn into the dance. Slip into The Sideshow for flickering films and shadowy performance vignettes. Take time out in Bar Staad to be tempted by Bad Stock Productions’ menu of ‘cabaret noir’ musical interludes and pertinacious puppetry.

Magic moments guaranteed.

Co-Programmed by South East Dance and The Basement, Faura’s performance/lecture/video is a striptease to the artistic gaze and the sexual gaze. Faura won the ITS Festival Choreography Award and is resident choreographer at the Frascati Theater, Amsterdam.

DAVID HOYLE’S TOTAL ABASEMENT Date: Fri 30th October Doors: 7.30pm Tickets: £8 (£6 concessions) This show contains explicit material David Hoyle provides solace for debtors, dropouts, derelicts, deviants, drunks, the disturbed, the disempowered & the generally disgruntled. We welcome you to the caring sharing community of The Basement where everyone is respected, valued and inspired to make the most of what they’ve got.

‘Raw, sometimes a bit frightening, but also thrilling in its look-no-hands recklessness… Hoyle is a beguiling mix of savagery and vulnerability. I didn’t know whether I wanted to take him home and cuddle him, or erect a barbed wire fence around him with large sign saying: Dangerous. May bite. Take out a subscription.’

The Guardian on Magazine “A Genius” Time Out

box office: 01273 699733

White Rabbit presents:

ARE YOU SITTING COMFORTABLY? GHOSTS! Date: Doors: Tickets:

Wed 11th November 7.30pm £6 (£4 concessions)

Midwinter: the wolves are at the door, Jack Frost is nipping at your fingertips, and the veils twixt this world and the shadow world have grown thin. And we have grown FAT! Come on in, out of the cold, and join our evening of original storytelling in the White Rabbit’s candlelit warren.

Part fifties tearoom, part deranged children’s party, we will chill your spines with freshly exhumed stories from beyond the grave, joined by local writers (and resident spooks), to explore November’s theme: GHOSTS! Enjoy FREE cakes, sweets, treats, magic spells and prizes, or p’raps you would prefer to purchase one of our “Teapot Cocktails” and other bar beverages?

box office: 01273 699733

Type PR and Slowfoot Records Present:

CRACKLE plus Grasscut and Guests Date: Doors: Tickets:

SUPPER CLUB Date: Doors: Tickets:

Sat 14th November 7.30pm £6 (£4 concessions)

The Basement’s Supported Artists present a night of art chaos.

See music, film art, performance art, installation art, visual art, invisible art, good art, shit art, explosive art…expect to indulge yourself in a frenzy of art intoxication, expect it all and possibly nothing at all.

Deep beneath (and at times through) the streets of Brighton, a crack team of The Basement’s artists curate the best of new and experimental arts / live music from the UK. They plot a Saturday night for you and your friends. But you won’t know what’s on the menu until it’s served… ‘…the combination of something to nibble with a keenly priced bar and some of Brighton’s more interesting culture vultures makes for quite a temptation’ The Brighton Source, December 2008 Supper Club is curated by Avis Cockbill, Luan Blake,Vicky Melody and Janine Fletcher

box office: 01273 699733

Thursday 19th November 8-11pm £5 NUS/£6 on the door

Crackle is an off-kilter collaboration between bass player Nick Doyne-Ditmas and drummer Frank Byng. The duo reference a wide range of traditions and practices, moving between analog and digital, acoustic and electric, lo-fi and hi-fi.

Signed to Ninja Tune Grasscut is Andrew Phillips and Marcus O’Dair. Having played audiovisual shows at Tate Britain, the ICA, Koko, Cargo and the Duke of York’s arthouse cinema, as well as numerous festivals, this duo mix sweeping melody, epic build, rain, dislocation, glitched-out psych-pastoralism, beauty and beats.

THE PILOTS Reckless Sleepers Date: Doors: Tickets:

Fri 20th November 7.30pm £8 (£6 concessions)

This isn’t the first time this has happened.

We’ve done this before. Many times. We’re professionals. I know what I’m doing and he knows what he’s doing. And what we’re supposed to be doing isn’t this and what we promised you in the publicity or in the brochures or whatever isn’t what we’re doing now...

Two men are pretending. Two men are pretending to be pilots. Two men are pretending to be George Michael and Andrew Ridgely in the Club Tropicana video. Two men are pretending to know what they’re doing. The Pilots follows a flight path from arrival to departure on a journey into uncharted territory. Reckless Sleepers mark 20 years of making cutting edge contemporary performance by going back to the beginning. A theatre. An audience. Two men pretending.

Don’t miss this unique performance experience somewhere between a rehearsal and a re-enactment. Two men. Two ladders. Two laptops. Two microphones. Two speakers. Trying to work out where they are in the world and on the page, how you spell Dr. Zhivago, how you dance to David Bowie, how you rig a lantern, and how you write a Dear John letter. Please help them to find out what their motivation is…

box office: 01273 699733

DECEMBER

FOUNDATION

SITTING BEAR & THE MAN IN THE MOON’S REFLECTION: A PUPPET SHOW FOR GROWN UPS

POST SHOW PARTY SHOW

Inconvenient Spoof

Michael Pinchbeck

Date: Doors: Tickets:

Date: Doors: Tickets:

Thurs 26th November 7.30pm £5 (£3 concessions)

Award-winning writer and performance maker Michael Pinchbeck takes his parents, Tony and Vivienne, on tour to recreate the post-show party where they met in 1970 after an amateur dramatic production of The Sound of Music.

Mixing text from the past and present with movement to the real-time soundtrack of The Sound of Music, The Post Show Party Show asks what is present and what is absent, what is professional and what is amateur.

Set in a strange netherworld where ruptures between thought-worlds propel a young bear on odd encounters with the wrath of a massive frog army, a shimmering water moon man, and airborne adventures with of an alcoholic balloonist.

Sense you not the brewing storm? The winds of change will sweep a plague of godliness all o’er this land. And they shall curse in blackness their temptation to peep up the skirts of the Lord’s intentions. And happen it will, once… in a blue moon. A work in progress that is quite far-gone.

A funny show.

Dorothy Max Prior (Dorothy’s Shoes) presents:

BASEMENT BORDELLO Date: Doors: Tickets:

Sat 28th November 7.30pm £7 (£5 concessions)

Dorothy’s Shoes and her Gentlemen Friends, Champagne Charlie and Burlington Bertie, invite you to The Basement Bordello, a ghost-world Palace of Fun in which the boundaries of ‘performer’ and ‘audience’ are disrupted as the space is animated by a cornucopia of live events that honour and usurp the traditions of ‘popular entertainment’.

Enter The Ballroom That Time Forgot and be drawn into the dance. Slip into The Sideshow for flickering films and shadowy performance vignettes. Take time out in Bar Staad to be tempted by Bad Stock Productions’ menu of ‘cabaret noir’ musical interludes and pertinacious puppetry.

Magic moments guaranteed.

box office: 01273 699733

Thurs 3rd December 7.30pm £6 (£4 concessions)

Produced by Spiel and supported by Dance4 and Springdance, The Post Show Party Show was selected for the British Council’s Edinburgh Showcase 2009.

SUPPER CLUB Date: Doors: Tickets:

Sat 5th December 7.30pm £6 (£4 concessions)

The Basement’s Supported Artists present a night of art chaos.

See music, film art, performance art, installation art, visual art, invisible art, good art, shit art, explosive art…expect to indulge yourself in a frenzy of art intoxication, expect it all and possibly nothing at all.

Deep beneath (and at times through) the streets of Brighton, a crack team of The Basement’s artists curate the best of new and experimental arts / live music from the UK. They plot a Saturday night for you and your friends. But you won’t know what’s on the menu until it’s served… ‘…the combination of something to nibble with a keenly priced bar and some of Brighton’s more interesting culture vultures makes for quite a temptation’ The Brighton Source, December 2008 Supper Club is curated by Avis Cockbill, Luan Blake, Vicky Melody and Janine Fletcher

box office: 01273 699733

UR E YO MAK OUP GR KING BOO W NO

JINGLE BOLLOCKS! Christmas parties are not all the same... ... drinks, dinner, a twisted panto and the time honored tradition of photocopying body parts…

Date: Fri 11th, Sat 12th & Sun 13th December Aperitifs at 7.30pm, Bar & DJ until 2.00am Tickets: £49, book now to ensure your place. 5% off groups of 10, 10% off groups of 20 For your festive delight The Basement has distilled the very finest bits of Christmas into a night to remember.

Bang for your buck! You will get...

❄ Free glass of bubbly on arrival ❄ Exceptional 2-course meal with wine from Brighton’s legendary Secret Restaurant ❄ Panto! A distinctly left-field offering from the fabulous Manchester-based performance company Until Thursday ❄ Sideshows & Casino hosted by a bevy of handpicked oddballs, eccentrics and performers ❄ Party with cracking DJs providing guaranteed dance floor fillers Not bad, huh?

Don’t miss out, due to limited capacity. Call your friends and colleagues and make a night of it

Festive Tapas M

CHRISTMAS DINNER A CONTEMPORARY PANTOMIME Until Thursday Uplifting, hilarious and sometimes downright ridiculous, this contemporary and wonderful romp is for anyone who wants something unexpected from their Christmas stocking.

Christmas Dinner! sees a contemporary twist on the great institution of the traditional family panto. All our colourful favourites are here – the pantomime dame, the principal boy and the wicked tyrant – but as you’ve never seen them before.

enu

Some of our fa vourite season al and festive fo served tapas st od, yle – we’ll send all of these to your table w hile you enjoy the party!

Wild Rabbit an d Truffle Terrin e with Jerusalem Artichoke Gambas with N utty Tarragon Butter and Pros ecco Caramelised Pa rsnips with Dressed Fine G reen Beans (v) Rosemary, Thym e Roasted Pota toes and Garlic, Sard inian Style (v) Oxtail and Veni son Slow Cook ed Stew with Brandy an d Dark Chocol ate Baked French Gnocchi in a Ro quefort Cream (v) Home Pickled Beetroot with a Hot Horseradi sh Dip (v) Mussels and H alibut Cooked in a Wine, Lime, Garlic an d Parsley Crea m Crusty Farmho use Breads with Aioli and Olives (v) Fig, Almond an d Pedro Ximen ez Chocolate Terrine with a Shot of Sloe G in MA Two bottles of KE wine will be pr Y GRO OUR ovided free per table of 10 BOO UP KI N NOW G