Jellyfish Returns for London-wide Student Theatre Festival

jellyfish

In a land where dinosaurs still roam the Earth, where the nights are stormy and the 3G slow, a grandson stays up with his grandfather as the old man prepares to pass on to the next life. Except this isn’t your usual grandparent/grandchild relationship. Throw in an immortality myth, some psychological bullying and the grotesque treatment of a pickled egg and you’ll start to get a bit closer to the twisted world of Jellyfish. Written by Drama finalist and Royal Court writing programme alumnus Reece Connolly, the play will be heading to the London Student Drama Festival (LSDF) on 5th March.

Reece is a prolific playwright within the QM community, having put on five plays since starting his degree in 2013, including selling out multiple nights at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe with QMTC venture A Fistful of Hunny. Emily Collins (English and Drama finalist and Associate Director at Theatre N16) directs, following on from successes at The Old Red Lion, Theatre N16 and Camden Fringe. With stellar performances from Jack Ridley and Sam Woodyatt, and technical and production help from Patrick Balcombe and Georgia Moorhouse, this strong team are hoping to triumph at this year’s LSDF.

Founded in 2013, LSDF is an annual event that brings together student plays from across London’s universities and aims to shed light on the wealth of theatrical talent amongst students in the capital. Jellyfish will be representing Queen Mary at this year’s event, competing for the chance of being invited to perform at The Pleasance a week later. Various prizes will be up for grabs, with the winners decided by the theatre professionals that make up the judging panel.

According to Reece, Jellyfish is the ideal representative of QM theatre to take to LSDF. ‘It’s classic QMTC in a miniature, crystallised form – darkly comic, traditional yet subversive, a little daring, a bit sweaty, and a lot sweary.’

‘I think its strength lies in its subtlety – it’s a real time straight-through locked room piece about two people talking, elevated by great performances and inspired direction, so it’s giving us a real chance to shine, gimmick-free.’

After a sellout preview in the Pinter Studio, the team would love to get the same strong support as they move away from QM turf. Follow the link below to grab tickets and make sure you book for the Saturday. The Jellyfish returns. You don’t want to miss it.

https://www.studentcentral.london/activities/londonstudentdramafestival/

Take the Initiative and Hit Re: Play

Put together by a collection of QM finalists, Re: Play showed off the promising work being created by students studying in the drama department. With two of the three performances initially created as part of taught practical modules, it proved the scope and quality of student work at Queen Mary is not meant for good grades but bigger things. Although tonight’s performance was firmly on QM turf in the Pinter, it could form a foundation for external showings of work in the future. Using the scratch performance development technique used by organisations such as Battersea Arts Centre, the aim of the night was to collect feedback for the ongoing development of each work. This proactive and practical approach to the development of a piece is key for many professional theatre companies, so getting started whilst still at university with all the resources that come with it is a potentially massive boost for the creative process.

replayOpening the evening were Theatre Counterpoint with Don’t Turn The Lights On, a piece exploring adolescence and gender norms through a combination of games and repetition performed by Jay Walker and QMTC production manager Mira Yonder, and directed by Dadiow Lin. Claiming to use ‘analysis of musical structure as dramaturgy for the composition of devised theatre’, Theatre Counterpoint’s rhythmic musicality proves promising and it will be interesting to see how the piece develops in the future. There are some really lovely moments aesthetically, with clever use of repeated movement, light and projection. Their message can be a little heavy handed in some of the dialogue, however with a little refining this should be a really exciting piece deserving of many a Fringe stage.

Next up was Box by Keita Ikeda, originally devised as part of the Beyond Acting final year module. Keita’s technological wonder Boxy may just be a cardboard box with an expression projected onto it, but that doesn’t stop you from feeling a bit devastated when it gets ripped into tiny pieces. ‘He can’t feel anything, he’s just a box’ says Keita as he stabs him repeatedly with a knife, but oddly enough we the audience feel something. A clever exploration of sentience and the portrayal of emotions onstage, Box has got some serious legs.

Closing the night were former GPP group FeminArt with their piece Kitchen Art. Martha Rumney, Olga Kravchenko and Mira Yonder’s grotesquely sexual housewives compete to be the most domestic and seductive. It’s comic and somewhat unsettling, their forced smiles burning into your retinas as the sexy domestic goddess stereotype becomes subversively obscene. It doesn’t seem to have changed hugely since they performed it as part of GPP last year, but it is undoubtedly strong so it will be interesting to see how they will expand upon next.

A fantastic way to show and develop creative work away from the classroom setting, Re: Play proves itself to be a great example for other student performance makers at QMUL to follow. It just goes to show, if you’ve got a piece that you’ve created within or outside of class it doesn’t have to be doomed to live on only through your grade transcript. Take the initiative and hit replay.

“Womanhood in all its forms was flaunted”: An Evening of Feminist Performance

Upon entering the endearingly dilapidated Limehouse Town Hall there’s already a buzz of anticipation in the air. QM finalists Pussy Patrons have attracted quite the crowd for their specially curated evening of Feminist performance, a Cabaret of Cunts involving puppetry, spoken word, music and of course, the Pussy Patrons themselves.

Originally coming together as part of GPP (Group Practical Project) in second year, Pussy Patrons have continued to develop their work as a performance troupe, refining and expanding upon the Cabaret’s original form. Compered by Elyssa Livergant’s glamorous alter ego Polly Parton (sister to Dolly), the night wasn’t just about the performances on show. A series of speakers talked about the work of Irish abortion rights collective Speaking for I.M.E.L.D.A., QM graduate Emer Morris’ upcoming verbatim performance about the Focus E15 Mothers, and the activist group Sisters Uncut. All were inspiring and empowering causes, adding to the melee of brilliant women coming together to make it an evening to remember.

Kicking off the first half was poet Leanne Moden, with her witty, touching poems about sex, the female body and opportunity setting the tone for an inspiring evening of women being brilliant. Next up, Bristol’s Tight Theatre performed an excerpt of their Edinburgh Fringe piece PUSSY, exploring sexuality and sexualisation in a whimsical physical theatre style that is distinctly their own. They engage with topics of masturbation and shaming as well as with Beyonce’s more problematic lyrical past with a deftness and comic timing that didn’t compromise the sincerity of the issues they were tackling. I would definitely recommend checking them out when they next visit London. Folk duo Molly and Jess ended the first half with hauntingly beautiful harmonies and forthright lyrics about the historical oppression of women, and Kate James Moore of Commedia Puppets brought a touch of playfulness to her feminist puppetry reworking of Hamlet, Ophelia’s Garden for those who ventured downstairs during the interval.

With a focus on the female body in all its glorious messiness (fortunately they put down a tarpaulin first), Pussy Patrons took to the stage in the second half for a glorious and at times downright disgusting show of feeling like a woman. With a little help from their old friend Shania Twain and a whole host of other pop culture references, body shaming and objectification were exposed, pubes celebrated and pussies proudly patroned. Comedy, spoken word, dance, song, the Cabaret of Cunts has it all, tied up nicely with an emotive core proving why we still need feminism today. The audience reaction said it all, with half the audience giving them a standing ovation before the performance had even finished.

The night ended with a party, reinforcing the celebratory nature of the Cabaret of Cunts. Yes serious issues were tackled, but more than that, womanhood in all its forms was flaunted in a fiesta of femininity. It wasn’t just about the Pussy Patrons, it was for patrons of pussies everywhere.