Back at the start of 2022 we spoke to Maya and Rosa from Hooky Productions, who were deep in preparations to take their show Experiment Human to VAULT Festival. A few days after we recorded the interview the festival was cancelled!

Thankfully it didn't stop them, and the show found new places to play throughout 2022, including Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It also picked up a few awards on its travels, including our own Ettie Award for best comedy.

The show is now back for 2023, and following a brief stopover at this year's VAULT Festival it will be making its way to Oxford this week before making its way to the South coast for Brighton Fringe in May.

It therefore felt like a great time to catch up with Maya and Rosa to find out just what they have been up to since we last spoke, and whether they ever worry that Benedict Cumberbatch has somehow placed a curse on them for what they may or may not do to him in the show.

You can find out more about the show and upcoming dates on their website here.

Our guests this week are writer Andy Walker and director Leslie Manning, chatting about their upcoming show, Happy Hour. Happy Hour is a comedy/ drama about Jacqui and her relationship with drink, and her demon George who encourages her to keep drinking.

As he tells us, Andy has been sober for 40 years now, but has tapped into his past to write this play. So we obviously have to discuss that, and why they decided to make the protaganist female and not male then. We also chat about how his background in animation means he writes very visually, and how this helps or hinders Leslie when it comes to directing his work.

Happy Hour plays Upstairs At The Gatehouse from 16 - 28 May. Further information can be found on the venue website here.

Happy Hour

Jacqui has a problem: herself.

She’s controlled by an internal demon named George. George is everything Jacqui would like to be: funny, attractive, sociable.

But George’s purpose is tempting Jacqui to drink alcohol. Jacqui doesn’t need much tempting. And drinking is killing her.

Jacqui needs to break free from the self-slavery of addiction and regain her soul. However, George isn’t prepared to free his captive without a titanic struggle.

HAPPY HOUR tackles a truly universal subject – alcohol addiction – with an imaginative blend of comedy and drama.

Our latest guest is Aaron-Lee Eyles. Aaron-Lee is no stranger to Everything Theatre, having reviewed for us in the past inbetween working on his own shows. And his latest show is Mi$fortune, which tells the tragic story of Billie-Bob Harrell Jr, an American lottery winner, who quickly found that winning big isn't always that good. The show started life a couple of years ago under a different title, and we actually spoke to Aaron-Lee about it then. So this time around we recap the show but also discuss what has happened in the two years since. It's a great insight into the lifecycle of a play.

Mi$fortune comes to Golden Goose Theatre from 18 - 22 April, further information can be found here.

About the show.

Texas, Summer 1997. Home Depot worker and devout Christian Billie-Bob Harrell Jr. wins big on the lottery, $31 Million big. The months that followed surely changed his life, but not in the way you might imagine. What many would expect to be a life-changing miracle for a humble family man unravelled into a fatal battle of faith vs pride.

From Unmarked Theatre, whose previous work has been described as 'experimenting with form and structure in ways traditional theatre probably never will' (Everything Theatre, 2022) comes MI$FORTUNE - a bold exploration of one man's tragedy told through physical theatre, improvisation & song.​

Our guest this week is Jonathan Oldfield. Jonathan is bringing his new show, One Way Mirror to The Pleasance from 24 April. The show is about his experiences of watching people through the one way mirror that is the frontage of the solicitors office he has been living in as a guardian since 2019. This means people outside see their own reflection in the office windows, completely unaware that on the other side is actually someone's front room. It sounds far fetched, but it is completely true, as you will hear.

We chat about why he found himself living in such an unusual place, how the show devleoped from this, and we of course have to touch upon whether he feels a voyeur as he watches people outside, and whether he feels like the wildlife cameramen who film but never interfere with what is happening.

This week's guest is Amy Tickner, Artistic Director of Act II Festival. The festival returns to The Space on 8 and 15 April, and so it seemed a great time to sit down with Amy to find out what it's all about.

ACT II is a creative programme bridging the gap between student theatre and the industry. They provide a creative development programme for London Students, giving them access to skills workshops, Q&As, and tips from those currently working in the industry. The festival encourages London’s students to work alongside one another, creating a London Student Drama community that does not discriminate one institution from another.

We discuss the festival and what it offers new theatre makers, whether that be writers, directors or actors. Plus why The Space is such a great fit to host the festival, and just what we can expect if we come along to see the shows.

You can find out more about Act II on their website here. Tickets for the festival can be found on the Space website here.

This week we were joined by writer Molly Anne Sweeney, whose latest play, Decommissioned, is coming to Pleasance Theatre in April. It's a funny and confronting play about how we're meant to care for children, fall in love and stay sane while tackling the climate catastrophe.

The play was inspired by the true story of Fairbourne, the Welsh village that has been earmarked for "managed retreat" due to authorities deemed it unsustainable to defend, given predicted sea level rise. The best estimate was that the area would be abandoned between 2052 and 2062.

We chat about the play, and why climate anxiety is something that we are instilling in children. Plus we discuss whether there is a risk that with so many plays tackling climate change, whow we avoid becoming bored of the message.

Decommissioned comes to Pleasance Theatre between 10 - 15 April, and it is then hoped that it will be toured later in the year. Tickets for Pleasance are available here.

This week's guests over on our Runn Radio show were Zena Barrie and Michelle Flower, who between them set up Camden Fringe back in 2006. Since then it's grown and grown, and is now a vital cog within the Fringe Theatre calendar.

We chat about its history, but more importantly, how people can get involved this year. 

You can find out more about Camden Fringe on their website here. You can also hear more from them on their own podcast, available from all the usual podcast providers, including Spotify here.

This week's guest is Matthew Jameson. Matthew is most well known as being part of the team at The Space on Canary Wharf. But as well as his day job, he has also been busy writing his play, Ten Days. Well, we say busy, but as he tells us, it has been ten years in the making!

Ten Days is a slice of intensified history, based on the memoirs of those that  lived it and adapted for 2022. An epic, comic, political thriller from journalist John Reed as he follows Lenin, Trotsky, Tsar Nicholas II and (of course) The People of Russia from the February uprising through the Storming of The Winter Palace in an action-packed, ridiculous and urgent  retelling of ten days that changed our history and shook the world.

As well as discussing the play, we also find a little time to talk about The Space, and some of what they have been up to. 

Ten Days plays between 14 and 25 March. The play will also be livestreamed on 23 March and then available on-demand for two weeks afterwards. Further information and bookings here.

Improv theatre is a genre of theatre that both scares and excites us, although probably more scares if we're being honest. But luckily we aren't the ones getting up on stage each night having to think on our feet and come up with funny and surreal scenario’s. Instead we can leave it to the pro’s who in this case are Pinch Punch Improv.

Pinch Punch are bringing their latest show, Locomotive for Murder, to the VAULT Festival on 4 and 5 March. And before then, they found the time to sit down with Lily Middleton to chat about the show and how you go about devising an improv show.

(We apologise for the slightly grainy quality of the recording on this one, but hopefully it won’t distract from your enjoyment).

You can book tickets for the show here.

We are massive fans of the VAULT Festival, which takes place over January to March each year. It's grown year on year, and in 2023 will be hosting over 500 shows, ranging from theatre, comedy, cabaret and anything else you can put on in one of its many spaces. 

But they have now been informed by the venue landlord that their lease is not being renewed for 2024, and so they are now seeking a new home for the future. So we wanted to give them the chance to explain what is happening and why they are seeking to raise £150,000 by the end of this year's festival to ensure their future.

Bec Martin, Head of Programming, found the time to chat with us about all this, and whilst we had it, it would have been a waste not to also ask her about some of her highlights of this year's festival, and how people can go about applying to be part of the future festivals.