This month, Camden People’s Theatre (CPT) welcomes the 15th annual Sprint Festival.
Sprint offers four weeks of adventurous "live art": top-notch, quirky, innovative, experimental and exciting performances from the best artists in Britain and beyond.
If you’re a passive audience member, you can look away now. The shows Sprint offers aren’t for you. Head along to CPT this month, and you might be incited to riot, to buy perfume, or to pop inside a tent and talk about monsters.
Festival highlights include A Symphony for Audience and Performer (28-29 Mar) by Greg McLaren, a trilogy of performances taking an oblique view of the current social situation in the UK, featuring Steve Jobs, back from the dead, to tell us about his innermost desires. McLaren also revives his Doris Day Can F*ck Off (11 Mar) from last year: about the time he spent talking in song for six weeks. Some people thought he was mad, some tried to assault him, others would sing back. The show promises to be both funny and moving, delving into the origins of song, and its meaning in society.
We also like the sound of Your Last Breath by Curious Directive, a tale spanning 150 years fusing movement, live piano and video to unravel our own personal geographies; and Perle – go, and you’ll see an attempt to create a live cartoon, based on one of the oldest poems in the English language.
And their pièce de résistance is surely Avon Calling, by The Other Way Works. Performed to groups of 10 in audience members’ own houses, Avon Calling is an intimate solo show created by Katie Day and Louise Platt, and performed by Louise Platt. "Invite your friends round to share in a celebration of beauty in all its forms, and uncover the secrets that lurk beneath your visitor’s perfectly polished exterior," invites the website. See what we mean about experimental?
Sprint Festival is at Camden People’s Theatre, 58-60 Hampstead Road, London, NW1 2PY from 9-31 March. Tickets are promised to be “never more than a tenner.” You can buy a festival pass with access to five shows for £30. Visit sprintfestival.wordpress.com for more information.
