Five shows to see during week six of VAULT Festival
A political thriller, a solo storytelling show, a piece of "documentation theatre", and more...
Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a weekly newsletter about theatre written by me, Fergus Morgan.
Until mid-March, this newsletter is focusing on VAULT Festival. Every Monday, I am sending out issues featuring five shows worth seeing at VAULT that week - this is the sixth of those - and on Fridays, I am sending out your regular, in-depth interviews, plenty of which will focus on artists performing at VAULT, too.
A quick reminder that you can support this newsletter by becoming a paid subscriber for just the price of a cup-and-a-half of coffee a month, via the button below. If you want to find out more about The Crush Bar - including promo opportunities - then click here. If you are interested in promo opportunities around VAULT, then click here.
That’s all for now. More from me at the bottom, but first: five shows to see at VAULT Festival this week!
Poison, Hate and Vitriol - Chalk Line Theatre
Chalk Line Theatre is the emerging, Luton-based company that shot into the spotlight with their 2018 debut show Testament, then followed it up with acclaimed productions of Amy Guyler’s The Nobodies in 2021 and Davinia Hamilton and Marta Vella’s Blanket Ban in 2022.
Run by co-artistic directors Vikesh Godhwani and Sam Edmunds, Chalk Line Theatre has established a reputation for innovative stagings tackling hard-hitting socio-political subjects – male mental health, Malta’s ban on abortion, and more. The company is a former winner of the New Diorama and Underbelly’s prestigious Untapped Award and an associate at The Lion and Unicorn Theatre.
Poison, Hate and Vitriol is Chalk Line Theatre’s new show. Written by Guyler again and directed by Godhwani, it is a political thriller that sees Guyler and Anish Roy – star of Karim Khan’s hit play Brown Boys Swim – play a couple who create a hate-stirring online avatar, only for it to reveal the cracks in their marriage. It runs at VAULT for seven shows this week, starting tomorrow.
The Long Run - Katie Arnstein
Katie Arnstein is the theatremaker who created the autobiographical storytelling trilogy It’s A Girl!, and its three installations Bicycles and Fish, Sexy Lamp and Sticky Door, all of which were hits at previous VAULT Festivals, the Edinburgh Fringe, and elsewhere.
The Long Run is her new show. Written and performed by Arnstein and directed by VAULT Festival’s own head of programming Bec Martin, it runs for seven performances this week, starting tomorrow. And, apparently, every audience member gets a sweet on arrival, although this is unverified.
The show – according to the blurb – is about a cancer diagnosis, a chance encounter, and Arnstein’s attempt to run a marathon for charity. You can get tickets via the button below.
No I.D. - Tatenda Shamiso
First performed as a work-in-progress at last year’s inaugural Peckham Fringe, then again as part of Theatre Peckham’s Young, Gifted and Black in October, No I.D. is a solo show from theatremaker and musician Tatenda Shamiso. Directed by Sean Ting-Hsuan Wang and designed by Claudia Casino, it sees Shamiso relate his own experience of navigating Britain as a black, transgender immigrant, from the annoying issues that pop up at the post office to the giant difficulties of managing his own gender transition in the healthcare system.
A graduate of Goldsmiths with roots in California, Belgium, Zimbabwe and Switzerland, Shamiso is one of this year’s VAULT Five – an annual group of emerging artists, supported by the festival with mentorship and meet-ups, alumni of which include the theatremakers Tabby Lamb and Gemma Barnett – and a rising star of London’s theatre scene. As well as making his own work, he assisted Rebecca Frecknall on the Almeida Theatre production of A Streetcar Named Desire and Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu on Robert O’Hara’s Bootycandy at the Gate Theatre.
“It’s not documentary theatre,” Shamiso says of No I.D. “It’s more documentation theatre. It’s about the surreal way you have to prove and perform your own identity just to get your basic rights in these bureaucratic systems, which aren’t that keen on recognising people of colour in the first place. It’s about what happens when the passport doesn’t match the person. It’s absurd and emotional, and I am really excited to show it to as wide an audience as possible.”
This is promotional content.
Caligula And The Sea - Yuxuan Liu
Yuxuan Liu is an early-career director, based in London. A graduate of East 15 and Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, he is a member of this year’s VAULT Five – like Tatenda Shamiso above, and Beth Bowden in last week’s issue – and the director and lead artist on Caligula And The Sea.
The show is, according to the blurb, “a fantastical, dramatic, gripping and not-so-historically-accurate retelling of the tales of the infamous young Roman emperor, Caligula” that “examines themes of power, friendship, masculinity and the environment.”
Designed by Fiona McKeon and with dramaturgy from Jacey Casel, it sees Noah Silverstone play Caligula, Felix Ryder play Cassius Chaerea, an army officer and the emperor’s eventual assassin, and Riko Nakazono play the god Neptune, with whom Caligula unwisely enters into a rivalry. It runs for seven shows this week, starting tomorrow, and you can get tickets via the button below.
Clementine - Rosalie Minnitt
Clementine is a character-driven solo show written and performed by London-based comedian Rosalie Minnitt. An underground hit at the Edinburgh Fringe last year – quite literally underground, in fact, as Minnitt performed in a cave – it introduces audiences to Lady Clementine, a Regency-ish era woman catastrophically unlucky in love, who sets off on an adventure in search for her latest beau, Sir Bradley, after he goes mysteriously missing.
Minnitt – an alum of the Durham Revue and the VAULT Young Company, writer for CBBC and recipient of this year’s Luke Rollason Memorial Memorial Bursary – first conceived of Clementine via video sketches during lockdown, then developed the character into an hour-long show, which she performed in Brighton, Cornwall, and Edinburgh last year. Now, she is bringing the show to VAULT for two performances this Friday and Saturday evening, ahead of another run in Brighton this May.
Directed by Tristan Robinson and Alison Middleton, with music from Honor Halford-MacLeod, Clementine echoes Minnitt’s comedy inspirations It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Mighty Boosh, and more. “I just think that people being ridiculous is really funny, basically,” she says. “I’d love for people to come and see the show at VAULT. I’d love for people to get to know who I am as a performer. And I’d love to keep working with Lady Clementine, and create more comedy characters, too.”
This is promotional content.
That’s it for now. One final reminder about the various ways you can support this newsletter: you can share it with anyone you think might be interested, you can become a paid subscriber using the button at the top, or you can get in touch with me about using it for promotional purposes.
That’s all. Thanks for reading. If you want to get in touch for any reason, just reply to this email or contact me via Twitter - I’m @FergusMorgan. See you on Friday!
Fergus