Lounge on the Farm

Friday 9th July

Kent Youth Theatre – Drama Workshops @ Little Lounge

Kent Youth Theatre will be delivering a series of fun drama workshops for children this year which will include a variety of performance skills.
www.kentyouththeatre.co.uk

The Adventures of Colonel Crab and Captain Cockle!

Having been judges of superior sandcastles and defenders of the shrimp from the great seaweed infestation of 2009; Colonel Crab and his sidekick Captain Cockle have ventured to Kent to provide prestige small sandcastle flags to the most interesting people and things they discover on their adventures.

These silent roaming characters will be slightly surreal, humorous and attention grabbing; giving their sandcastle flags from anything from a small crying child to a delicious looking sandwich. Watch out for them on your travels!

Three Canterbury Tales by The Canterbury Players

Back at The Playhouse for 2010, Canterbury’s leading amateur dramatics group present short re-workings of three of Chaucer’s best-loved tales.
www.thecanterburyplayers.co.uk

Etheric Tales by Conversions Dance Theatre

Collaborating with The Dealers, this is an evocative piece of physical theatre mixing contemporary dance, storytelling, folk law, folk music and new music in this entirely newly devised fusion project.

Three excerpts from a larger scaled performance that will be ready for touring in 2011 are presented as the performers engage their audience in a new type of experience that helps to push dance, theatre and music to the limits of their conventional forms.

Passing on messages of hope against fear, isolation dissolved through support via mysterious means this production gets feet tapping, hearts soaring and minds whirring as we inspire imaginations, singing and dancing alike.

Danny's Incredible Balloon Show Danny

The Wild Balloon Tamer welcomes you to his strange and bizarre universe where surreal and stupid things happen. This is a crazy show with balloon nonsense, circus and comedy, ending with Danny climbing inside a gigantic balloon. Danny's Incredible Balloon Show creates an utterly joyous experience loaded with participation, surprises and laughs for all ages.

Warning: Features loud balloon pops!
www.circoridiculoso.co.uk

Saturday 10th July

Cosmic Shimmy – Adult Belly Dancing Workshops

Cosmic Shimmy will be delivering workshops on An Introduction to Belly Dancing and Belly Dancing Techniques so come and have a go!
www.anisabellydance.co.uk

Beyond Boundaries by eximo

The latest energetic fusion of street dance and live singing from Canterbury-based all-girl trio, eximo. For further info, please visit their web site.
www.eximouk.co.uk

Humorous Speeches by Canterbury Communicators

Canterbury Communicators is a local speaking club where people of all walks of life improve their public speaking and communication skills in a friendly and mutually supportive environment. Embracing our Playhouse 2010 theme of ‘Found & Framed’ Canterbury Communicators will present three comic speeches especially written for us!
www.canterburycommunicators.co.uk

Bingoing Crazy by Sarah Davies

An interactive play giving the audience the opportunity to explore the vagaries of loneliness, love, loss and losers, all through the medium of….BINGO!

Death of the Unicorn by Wet Concrete Theatre

Exploring the domestication of a creative mind within academic surroundings, we witness one woman's journey from the freedom of the playful garden of her imagination, through to the confinement and expectations of her pre-determined role within society.

Glad-Rags Physical Theatre

With a cheeky nod to all things vintage, Glad-Rags create quirky and engaging performances using a range of disciplines from Contemporary Dance to Physical Comedy and Multimedia. Glad-Rags are back at Lounge on the Farm this year with a brand new performance inspired by the photograph ‘Lost Persons Area’ by Elliott Erwitt.

Vintage Dancing Medley by The Hells Belles

The Playhouse is proud to present cabaret duo The Hells Belles this year - dancing their way through a range of periods from the 1930s -1950s.

Magic Show by El Baldiniho!

Jason Mannion performs illusions, mind reading, audience participation and comedy presentation as El Baldiniho.
www.rewardprojects.co.uk

Sunday 11th July

Kent Youth Theatre – Drama Workshops @ Little Lounge

Kent Youth Theatre will be delivering a series of fun drama workshops for children this year which will include a variety of performance skills.
www.kentyouththeatre.co.uk

New for 2010! PANeK Showcase Sunday

The Playhouse has the honour of being supported by PANeK this year and is proudly presenting an eclectic mix of local professional performers – both on the stage and roaming - throughout Sunday. This is really exciting stuff!

Performing Arts Network Kent (PANeK) supports the making of theatre and live performance in Kent. For further information, please visit
www.panek.org.uk

Take The Pose by What’s Coming out of the Box?

What’s Coming out of the Box ? has been newly created by Estelle Rosenfeld. Attracted by the meeting of visual theatre and performing arts, it uses puppetry in ‘total’ creation process: writing and directing, designing and making, performing. The current research focuses on using puppets in installations, art performance, photography, film and animation. We are especially interested in mixing these different media and playing with boundaries between performing and exhibition.

“Roll up! Ladies and Gentlemen, come and see the strangest thing!  Three puppets have jumped out of their sepia photograph and are giving you the chance to have your 1930s-style seaside picture taken with them.”

In Take the Pose, the three puppets are playing mischievously in front of a “beach scene” backdrop, with props around.

A fairground barker invites audience members to join the family group and have their picture taken with the puppets. But before they can pose for the snapshot, they need to look the part. Conveniently there are props and costume items to hand, symbolic of the period and context (straw hat, spats, bob-hair wig…). While they get ready, the fairground barker and the puppets offer help, give their opinions and hurry them along.

The barker then helps participants interact with the puppets and experiment with poses, until she says: “Take the pose” and takes their photo. Once the picture is taken, participants receive a postcard indicating a website from which they can download the image. During this time the fairground barker carries on interacting with the audience, organises a queue for the costumes, comments, make jokes, points at the puppets…

During the whole performance, there is a constant interaction between the fairground barker, the audience, the participants, the puppets and the puppeteer.
www.puppetsanddolls.org.uk

Wide Eyed Theatre – Storytelling Workshops

Back after successful workshops last year, Wide Eyed Theatre will be providing storytelling workshops. Each workshop is tailor-made in a journey that takes you from listener to teller. These include games, tell tales and created stories with the whole group for children and adults of any age! Wide Eyed Theatre is an East Kent arts company specialising in handmade storytelling. Wide Eyed formed to bring the ancient art and enjoyment of storytelling to new audiences through contemporary performances and workshops. Inspired by a love of stories from across the global and cultural spectrums, they endeavour to explore new ways of using this oral tradition to promote self-expression, imagination and learning. www.wide-eyed-theatre.co.uk

Dizzy O’Dare Presents…The Tiny Travelling Tightwire Show!

Dizzy O' Dare Presents… is a Medway based, contemporary circus company specialising in tightwire and aerial performance. The core members are Alana Jones and Michael Imerson.

Dizzy O’Dare Presents… has three main aims; to push artistic boundaries, to reinterpret the use of tightwire within circus and theatre, to push audience development. The ultimate aim is to encourage audiences to view circus in a new way and engage with them in a much more intelligent and emotional level.

Alana Jones is one of very few female tightwire walkers in Britain. She took her first degree in Dance Theatre at Laban, and her second degree in Circus Theatre at The Circus Space, specialising in tightwire. Alana teamed up with actor and musician Michael Imerson to explore more narrative ways of interpreting tightwire and circus for theatre.

Join the precession of “The Tiny Travelling Tightwire Show!” as it rolls into town! Poppet will show you the delights of her skills on the tightwire. But Poppet is shy and needs your help to encourage her to show off her skills! This is a fun and entertaining roaming tightwire show for all ages incorporating Poppet the puppet and Alana Jones, one of the leading tightwire artists in the UK. Dizzy O’Dare Presents… a Fuse Sparks Under 5’s Commission for Fuse Medway Festival 2010.
www.alana-jones-tightwire.com

Accidental Collective

Kent’s very own Accidental Collective will bring their latest durational project to The Meadows. The company are fascinated by boundaries and driven by a desire to push them. With a mission to create original, engaging, live events that question the assumed roles of performance, audience, art, fiction and reality this is an event not to be missed!
www.accidentalcollective.co.uk

Poetry to the People by Dan Simpson

Dan Simpson is a life-long poetry campaigner who aims to find the rhythm in rhetoric and put the poetry in politics whilst canvassing the people to get to the bottom of issues that effect us all like…"which ice-cream flavour really is the best?"

Operation Greenfield by Little Bulb Theatre

Somewhere in middle England four teenagers are preparing for judgement day with ladders, Elvis and forest fruits cordial. The Stockley Annual Talent Competition is nigh. Weaving fiction into the live gig structure, Little Bulb present an exploration of faith and music.

Little Bulb Theatre is an award-winning national touring company based in the South East of England. They are committed to developing devised and physical theatre performances which explore and illuminate the minute human details which, in a world so big, are easily swallowed up.

Combining innovative puppetry with high energy ensemble storytelling alongside beautiful imagery and homemade music, we aspire to create performances that with humour and sadness will touch, startle and entertain.
www.littlebulbtheatre.com

Tortoise by Shanty Fiasco (PANeK)

UKC Graduate Show

In a house on wheels that doesn’t move, nine characters hide from and exist outside of the ‘real’ world, giving spectators a glimpse into what happens when the desire to leave is squashed by the need to stay.

Hiding can be a revealing act. We will create a little bubble in which yesterday, today and tomorrow collide and intertwine. Songs from childhood clash with images of growing up and make-believe becomes a way of living. Food and dancing creates a festival mood, like no other celebration you’ve ever experienced. But not everyone is enjoying the party and wants to happily sail off into the sunset, some get tied down and ultimately have to cut the bonds of childhood, home and security to stop from drowning.
http://shantyfiasco.blogspot.com/

MAD Winners…

Also, recent Marlowe Artist Development (MAD) winners will be giving Lounge on the Farm a sneak preview of their work commissioned for the Herne Bay Festival and Whitstable Oyster Festival.

Galloping Cuckoos with HUGe Nest: 

Housed in their lifesize, fully mobile willow birdcage, four cuddly and huggable bird girls are searching for the perfect nesting site around the streets and sites of Kent and are on a mission to bring a smile to your face and, ultimately, hug you.  

Jacqui Johnston with Crystal Ball:

A young couple meet at a fairground and a deaf girl becomes enthralled by the music of a talented Jazz musician. The couple express themselves through movement, music and sign in this heart-warming duet of love and communication.

Watch out for these roaming performance pieces around the festival site on Sunday 11th July.