Festival critic Michelle Dee’s closing Heads Up duty this season saw her exploring Will Dickie’s The Rave Space. After a hectic Heads Up schedule that has seen the Ensemble 52 led festival provide the theatrical highlights to the Wow (Women of the World) Hull Festival, with world-leading artists deliver a series of challenging workshops and curating […]
Festival critic Michelle Dee comes to terms with Shannon Yee’s Reassembled, Slightly Askew. “Shannon. Shannon. Can you hear me?” Many people recoil in horror when you begin to describe it. Before seeing Reassembled, Slightly Askew, I’d been carrying a phrase around in my head, something like, “people going to see Reassembled need their head testing.” […]
You may not have heard of the name Neil Shand, but if you were one of the millions who have enjoyed comedy shows, on radio and television, during the last fifty years, you are almost sure to have enjoyed his work. In a special one-off event introduced by filmmaker Dave Lee, Neil sat down with […]
With all the feminist power surging through the city centre at WOW Hull Michelle Dee headed into the Ferens Studio to find her own inner warrior at Blazon’s Icons, a contemporary re-telling of the Amazonian warrior myths. The term Amazonian warrior conjures up an image of a fiercely proud tribe of buxom fighting women, a bit handy […]
Festival blogger Michelle Dee renews her acquaintance with Theatre Ad Infinitum at Heads Up. Bucket List is an extraordinary tale set on the Mexico border which charts the untold repercussions of the NAFTA agreement; a government policy that opened up free trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico. Performed by one of the country’s […]
Alongside the specially chosen live performances Heads Up Festival also likes to offer workshops and classes while the companies and artists are here in Hull. Festival blogger Michelle Dee took her place alongside actors, dancers, choreographers and absolute beginners to embark on a journey of discovery. It is very rare to feel completely at one with your […]
As a crowd gathers in the west end of Hull, we find Michelle Dee drawn to a theatre space secreted away on a Hull estate to experience a puppet show pitting Shakespeare versus Molière. Presented and performed by collaborating companies Indigo Moon Theatre (UK) and Compagnie Via Cane (France) with (Anna Ingleby) and Jean-Frederic Noa […]
There are two things guaranteed to pull a Hull audience, writes Michelle Dee, and that is local heritage and local music. So it seems with a packed house for the final night of Heads Up before the festival looks to 2017. It’s Different Girls is a new musical about Hull group Mandy and the Girlfriends […]
You never see the twist coming, mark of a good storyteller that, writes Michelle Dee. On one side of Bellow Theatre’s Bare Skin on Briny Waters, is the rather fanciful ‘Sophie’ played by Maureen Lennon. Sophie is wrapped up in fabled tales of Scheherazade with a marriage steadily going south. On the other side sits […]
Which film would the third most performed playwright in the country pick as the one that has influenced him the most? The voice of Hull culture Michelle Dee went along to Kardomah 94 to find out. Apparently the smart money had been on Sharknado 2. I’m sorry shark fans but that was never going to […]