NEWS: Amplify Festival 2024 line-up announced

The packed line-up offers something for everyone; from family-friendly comedy and folklore, to cutting edge work-in-progress and exciting headline shows from established artists.

Amplify Festival gives local artists and audiences the opportunity to come together and celebrate and invest in local talent.

 The annual festival, now in it’s sixth year, features artists from across the wider Midlands region and includes new work, work-in-progress and scratch productions, workshops for artists and networking for theatre-makers. The Festival has expanded to run across six days this year and features 16 different artists.

The Festival begins with the Nottingham Playhouse Writers Group showcase, presenting script-in-hand extracts from plays developed over the last nine months in a programme led by Nathan Ellis. These extracts will be directed and performed by local artists, a real showcase of Midlands talent.

Running during half-term, the Festival has three shows for children and their families: Curious Investigators (3-7 years), and Robert (1849) and Snare and Feral which are both suitable for 8+.

There is plenty to entertain the grown-ups, from Nottingham Playhouse Associate Artist Laura Turner’s Body or Soul, where a woman – and the audience – face a moral dilemma; to fascinating double- and triple-bills of work-in-progress shows, from tackling disability rights and class within Shakespeare to the perils of modern dating. Access such as BSL interpretation, captioning and audio description will be provided for many of the performances.

Beccy D’Souza, Artist Development Producer, said:

“This year’s Festival provides a real opportunity for audiences to invest in local artists and their work. We are platforming several work-in-progress performances, working with artists to make the shows accessible to as wide an audience as possible. These artists are making new work with limited resources, and in many cases will be performing it for the first time, so are keen to gauge audiences’ responses and receive feedback to inform their next stages of development. There’s a huge diversity of experience across the programme, and with most tickets priced under £10 our hope is that will be reflected in our audiences too.”

Many of this year’s shows will also feature as part of the Queer Up Duck! Festival for LGBTQ+ artists and audiences across Nottingham.

Adam Penford, Artistic Director, said:

“Amplify Festival is going from strength to strength. Giving a platform to local emerging theatremakers to showcase their work to the public and other artists is a vital part of why Nottingham Playhouse exists. And in addition to that, we all get to experience some really new and exciting work in its infancy, and that is a real privilege.”

Nottingham Playhouse’s Amplify artist development programme has over 800 members, and offers support through free workshops, mentoring, one to one sessions, co-working days and use of space at the Playhouse. Led by Beccy D’Souza, the programme continues to expand its reach and has a real impact on artists’ careers.

MONDAY 21 OCTOBER

Nottingham Playhouse Writers Group Showcase

7.45pm

The Nottingham Playhouse Writers Group showcase, presenting script-in-hand extracts from plays developed over the last 9 months in a programme led by Nathan Ellis. These extracts will be directed and performed by local artists, a real showcase of Midlands talent.

TUESDAY 22 OCTOBER

Curious Investigators (age 3-7)

11.30am and 3pm

Company:  Curious Investigators

Scribble and Clipboard have a job to do: sort the recycling. But Scribble keeps finding new things to investigate. When she discovers a mysterious egg hidden in the rubbish, the pair need the audience’s help to rescue an unborn chick. Can we save the precious egg from a smashing? And what will we discover along the way?

WEDNESDAY 23 OCTOBER

Fixing (part of Queer Up Duck!)

5.45pm

Writer: Matt Miller

Some boys grow up to like mending cars. Some grow up not to be boys at all. Can car repair teach us anything about how to maintain a relationship?

Through storytelling and drag, Fixing will explore Matt’s relationship with their dad, and the classic car they never repaired together.

Bare Bones

7pm

Company: Three Compost Bins

A semi-autobiographical show about an early-twenties woman diagnosed with bone cancer thrust back into the real world. Bare Bones navigates relationships, womanhood, reproduction, self-worth, bodily autonomy, and mortality. With a brand spanking new disability to top it all off, it’s the oft-forgotten little ‘ancer’ that follows the Big C.

Body or Soul (part of Queer Up Duck!)

8.20pm

Writer: Laura Turner for Fury Theatre

A young woman faces a choice: sell out on her principles and work for a capitalist conglomerate or use OnlyFans to fund her business ambitions. This play explores both choices to ask not only what should she do – but what would you do?

THURSDAY 24 OCTOBER

The Distance (part of Queer Up Duck!)

6.20pm

Writer: Ben Norris

When the school playing fields are too frozen for football, Chris is forced to do cross-country. Everyone else hates it, but something in Chris is ignited.

Inspired by writer-performer Ben Norris’s experiences as a teenage GB athlete, The Distance is part play, part extreme workout – a sweat-drenched exploration of ambition, identity and letting go.

He’s been running his whole life. There’s a lot of catching up to do.

Amplify Shakes It Up: A work-in-progress double bill

8.15pm

Exit Pursued by DWP

Writer: Laura Goulden

Dear Shakespeare Enthusiast, thank you for your feedback, but where does it explicitly say that Hamlet/Ophelia/Malvolio/Juliet/Bolingbroke/Puck – insert everyone here (minus Richard III) – is not Disabled?

Be part of this early work-in-progress dissecting how nondisabled people have claimed 99% of Shakespeare’s characters.

Pick a play, experience the poetry, and be part of reclaiming these classic characters as their feisty, defiant, harrowing, sexy, strong, funny, disabled and deaf selves.

Below Decadence (part of Queer Up Duck!)

Writer: Simon Marshall

 ‘Below Deck’ meets ‘The Tempest’, ‘Below Decadence’ tells Sebastian’s story in search of power, wealth and influence as he navigates mega-yachts and the mega-rich. Part stand-up comedy, part character monologue, ‘Below Decadence’ asks what’s a white lie to the filthy rich? And what’s too far for a villain?

FRIDAY 25 OCTOBER

Robert (1849) (age 8+) (part of Queer Up Duck!)

1.30pm, 2pm, 3.30pm, 4pm

Writer:  Daniel McVey

Robert longs for the ocean, so much so that he became a cartographer and spends his days walking and drawing the coastline. But the sea is a long way from his Midlands home, and on one particular walk he is forced to question where it is he truly belongs.

Join us for a unique sensory folktale experience about the Midlands and the pull of the world outside of what you’ve always known. Using multi-sensory methods of storytelling, this show is a gentle ode to the known and the unknown, made for small groups.

The Snare and Feral (age 8+)

2.30pm

Writer: Jonathan Ip

Beyond the lands of the living, four creatures sing songs in a tavern of the dead. Each night, they dream of who they were when they were alive. Every day, they rehearse the show they are always preparing, in the hopes that one day their audience will arrive.

Did I Mention I’m Adopted?

6.30pm

Writer: Michelle Mother Hubbard

Did I mention I’m adopted? … Michelle Mother Hubbard in conversation with the first blood relative she ever managed to miraculously trace, ‘Dawn’.

An evening of conversation spliced with reflective poetry. It’s complicated, it’s mixed, it’s multi-layered, with twists and turns. It’s actually quite unbelievable to be honest! There are tears and laughter. There’s magic and surprise. There are questions and answers, and more questions … and they still can’t believe it ever happened, even now! So how and where exactly did they find each other?

We Are Who We Are: A work-in-progress triple bill

8.30pm

Finding the 1 .. 2 .. 3 ..

Writer: Ishi Khan

A scratch solo piece exploring love and relationships, with clowning.

I Remember Everything

Writer: Linh Huynh

A 100% success rate on dating apps? Quỳnh’s got her type down to a T – toxic, traumatic, and tragically distant … Time to swipe local!

A hilarious and heartfelt journey through modern interracial dating, cultural acceptance, and the messy process of breaking cycles.

Vegemite Sandwich (part of Queer Up Duck!)

Writer: Eden Peppercorn

“I wish to acquaint you with some of the occurrences of the present, past and future.”

Australian-born, English-raised theatremaker Eden Peppercorn pulls apart their cross-hemisphere family history in the hopes of unravelling just what their mixed–heritage identity means from the other side of the world.

SATURDAY 26 OCTOBER

Relatively Dead (part of Queer Up Duck!)

3.30pm

Company: Sunken Village

Daisy and Sunny’s eccentric estranged father has passed away, and now they must come together to clear out this old house in the middle of the woods. Over the course of the evening, as they pack up dusty clothes and old playboys, they begin to discover a dark truth about their father and the world they thought they knew.

A fresh new work-in-progress dark comedy from Sunken Village, putting fun new spins on a good old fashioned ghost story.

Gnaw (part of Queer Up Duck!)

7pm

Writer: Daniel McVey

On the way home from work George sees something he wishes he hadn’t. George just wants to live in a bubble, with the people he imagines, the ones he dreams about. But something, gnawing out from inside him, won’t let him.

Into the Pit (part of Queer Up Duck!)

8.45pm

Writer: AK Golding

It’s all getting a bit much up here, isn’t it, on top of the world? What do we do when the grass is no longer green on either side? Instead of putting your head in the ground … why not join spooky entity, Coal Minor, and jump Into the Pit?

Slip down through the hands of time in Coal Minor’s whistle stop tour of the history of coal mining in the UK. Unearth the stories of the mining industry and the people that made it. Help Coal find a little light in the dark in this surreal, immersive underground coal mining cabaret.

More details on Amplify Festival