Heads Up Festival is delighted to announce two additions to the festival’s artistic programme for the 12th season of Heads Up, which will take place at various venues in Hull from March 27-30, 2019.
Race Cards (March 28-30 at Hull Central Library) takes place in a room containing 1000 questions about race, written by Selina Thompson in three sittings across 24 hours one weekend in Edinburgh. You’re invited to answer one of them.
Race Cards is a constantly evolving installation and archive that sees Thompson invite participants to supply their own answers to the many facets of race and racism in modern society.
Race Cards is described as “Thoughtful, generous, brave and unspeakably brilliant,” by critic Maddy Costa.
Is He On The Line…? (March 28 at Kardomah 94) is a new music theatre piece created by British visual artist Jez Dolan and Icelandic composer Ingibjörg Yr Skarphéthinsdóttir, commissioned in Iceland by Einkofi and premiered at Heads Up Festival.
Is He On The Line…? takes us on a journey that explores the suppression of sexuality, concealment, hidden secrets, the avoidance of language, and the importance of ‘what we don’t say’. Is He On The Line…? asks what it means to be a people without a history.
Four male voice singers work with original and verbatim English and Icelandic texts set against a projected environment created live using four overhead projectors, using low-tech equipment combining drawing and light, playing with colour and form and generating theatrical images in direct response to the live music.
Talking of his time in Iceland, Jez Dolan said: “What struck me the most about the landscape is the time periods which you see everywhere. From the shortest, most minuscule time to the vast ages which are impossible to sense in any other way than from eternity to eternity.”
This season’s artistic programme also includes The Paper Cinema’s Macbeth (March 29 & 30), Now Is The Time To Say Nothing (a collaboration between Syrian film-maker Reem Karssli, a group of young Londoners and artist Caroline Williams, on March 28-30) and Olivia Furber, Ramzi Maqdisi, 9T Antiope and Hannah Mason’s The Land’s Heart Is Greater Than Its Map (March 29 & 30).
This season also sees the first play by Hull filmmaker Dave Lee. Lee’s The Orchidian takes place on March 27.
The festival, delivered in partnership with Battersea Arts Centre and part of the Collaborative Touring Network, will also provide free workshops to schools and community groups in the city of Hull.
Following their critically acclaimed show The Paper Cinema’s The Odyssey, the company re-imagines Macbeth as a cautionary tale for our times. With typical charm, wit and invention the company will take the Hull Minster audience on a journey through rugged Scottish landscapes to encounter storms, battles, betrayal and murderous plot.
Shakespeare’s tragedy is brought to life as beautifully drawn puppets, evocative music, foley and cinematic projection combine in a captivating silent film created before your eyes.
Now Is The Time To Say Nothing, which will take place at Hull Central Library, is an interactive sound and video installation exploring the role of screens in observing global conflicts. The show is a provocation against armchair passivity.
Using stunning video and immersive sound, it follows the real story of Syrian artist Reem Karssli as she captures her daily experience of the Syrian conflict on camera. We see what emerges when she is contacted by a group of teenagers from the UK who want to see beyond the footage they’ve watched on their TVs.
Olivia Furber, Ramzi Maqdisi, 9T Antiope and Hannah Mason’s The Land’s Heart Is Greater Than Its Map is created with the support of Villa Waldberta and Meta Theater. Audiences are invited on an alternative guided tour of a city where the truth is stranger than fiction: you can see the sea but are forbidden to touch it, being honest is illegal and those with ancestors from the city are forbidden to enter it. This intriguing piece of work is presented in Kardomah 94.
Heads Up Festival is produced by E52 in partnership with Battersea Arts Centre.
More information at www.headsuphull.co.uk