Event Types: INN CROWD

The Regulars

Have you ever wondered who might have nursed a pint at this table before you? Who propped up the bar a decade ago? Or who stood in front of that fireplace telling tall tales 200 years back? In Teatro Vivo’s new show THE REGULARS of the past sit shoulder to shoulder with the pubgoers and bar staff of today.

Designed specifically for performance in pubs, it is a celebration of the outlandish, sometimes incredible stories you hear over a pint.

Pull up that stool, lean in close, and as the drinks flow you might start to wonder how blurred the lines are between fact and fiction…

Jess Morgan’s Boring Someone in Some Dark Café

Meet Jess – the hardest working folk-singer-songwriter you’ve NEVER heard of.

Jess lives in London, in a flat above a carwash, spending her days churning out demos, hustling for gigs just waiting for that call from Jools Holland. She’s young, single-minded and ambitious to get out on the road…at any cost. It’s the oldest rock and roll story ever told.

So, what happens when after ten years on tour, the sleepy rural town Jess grew up resolute to leave behind suddenly glitters with possibility – something more promising than fame, and more life-changing than a spin on Radio 2..? Will she hang around long enough to find out?

With songs carefully knitted into the narrative, this show tells the story of ten glorious years being a nobody in the music industry – of festival tents, starry night drives, the romance of concrete and magic of pylons; a story of frustration, exploitation and discovering that most people don’t get famous. Most people just turn thirty.

Jess Morgan is a writer and musician from Norwich – described as “The sort of thing you put on your headphones when walking alone and wanting to feel like you’re in your own gritty British love story.”

The Regulars

The pub goers of the past are closer than you think

Have you ever thought about who might have nursed a pint at this table before you? Who propped up the bar a decade ago? Or who stood in front of that fireplace telling tall tales 200 years back?

The pub is a meeting place; a hub of activity. It’s a place where time can stand still. But what if it does more than that? What if it reverses, accelerates, twists and collides. ‘Last orders’ are never called and THE REGULARS have never left. And as the drinks flow, how blurred is the line between fact and fiction?

Jess Morgan’s Boring Someone in Some Dark Café

Meet Jess – the hardest working folk-singer-songwriter you’ve NEVER heard of.

Jess lives in London, in a flat above a carwash, spending her days churning out demos, hustling for gigs just waiting for that call from Jools Holland. She’s young, single-minded and ambitious to get out on the road…at any cost. It’s the oldest rock and roll story ever told.

So, what happens when after ten years on tour, the sleepy rural town Jess grew up resolute to leave behind suddenly glitters with possibility – something more promising than fame, and more life-changing than a spin on Radio 2..? Will she hang around long enough to find out?

With songs carefully knitted into the narrative, this show tells the story of ten glorious years being a nobody in the music industry – of festival tents, starry night drives, the romance of concrete and magic of pylons; a story of frustration, exploitation and discovering that most people don’t get famous. Most people just turn thirty.

Jess Morgan is a writer and musician from Norwich – described as “The sort of thing you put on your headphones when walking alone and wanting to feel like you’re in your own gritty British love story.”

If We Just Keep Going We Will Get There In The End

Acclaimed stand-up poet, storyteller and lo-fi theatre maker Jonny Fluffypunk is back with a brand spanking new show about searching for the hero inside yourself, without involving M-People.

The world’s gone nuts. You’ll have had your problems; Jonny’s had his. He also built himself a shed in lockdown, in which to work out how to get through it. This is the result. Inspired equally by idleness, ancient myths, and Grayson Perry’s Art Club, it’s part story, part on-theme poetic digression and part community support group.

It’s a show about celebrating the glory of small things; about love and strength and finding some sort of meaning. By turns funny, absurd, and touching, there’s a pilgrimage across London with a home-made effigy of a dead dog, the tragedy of throwing your childhood home into a skip, and an epiphany beside a derelict canal.

There are poems, bits with a ukulele, opportunities for supported sharing, and who knows what else? The world keeps throwing curveballs; the best-laid plans are thrown into chaos, and Jonny’s plans are rarely that. But that’s what this show is really all about- fragile humans, and the ways we have to find to cope with it all.

This show is part of The Inn Crowd at The Festival Speak Easy 

 

 

 

 

Boring Someone in Some Dark Café

Three days. Six shows. Experience some of the best spoken word and live literature in the UK in our very special secret pub hidden in
Festival Gardens.

Wide-eyed and brimming with hopes of becoming the next guitar-cradling, shoe-gazing romantic that everybody’s talking about, Jess dreams of a life that’s anything but ordinary. Boring Someone In Some Dark Cafe follows one musician’s discovery, that outside of the world of records and songs – ordinary might just be the best thing going.

With original songs and music carefully knitted into the narrative, this show tells a story of being both a nobody in the music industry and a rookie in love, and of looking around for somewhere to belong.

Jess Morgan is a writer and musician from Norwich – described as ‘The sort of thing you put on your headphones when walking alone and wanting to feel like you’re in your own gritty British love story.’ (TRASH magazine).

This show is part of The Inn Crowd at The Festival Speak Easy 

 

 

 

366 Days of Kindness

On August 18th 2011, in response to the UK riots and after a chance encounter in a post office, Bernadette Russell embarked on a reckless mission to be kind to a stranger every single day for a year. This show, part stand up, part storytelling, charts this amazing year, which began with burning buildings, and ended with the flame of the Olympic torch. It attempts to answer the question: “is it possible to change the world just by being kind?”

You might laugh. You may cry. You could win one million pounds (really).

‘A thought-provoking, hilarious and disarmingly honest show’  **** Daily Express

Bernadette is a storyteller and author of non-fiction for adults and children. She has created work for the Royal Albert Hall and National Theatre amongst many others.

This show is part of The Inn Crowd at The Festival Speak Easy 

 

 

 

The Ballad Seller

Back in Georgian times we got our news from poetry. Before papers, broadcasts or the internet, ballad sellers would hawk their doggerel on street corners for a penny. Scandalous affairs, grisly crimes, and colourful characters were brought to life in rhyming verse long before first tabloid was printed.

Now Luke Wright has rewritten the very best of these stories for the modern ear: take a trip through the Drury Lane gin shops with the Boxing Baroness; filch oysters by the dozen with Dando, the celebrated gormandiser; and peer inside the restless mind of a lonely itinerant ballad seller. Expect scandal, excess, and beautiful flawed humanity.

‘His performances rumble with rage, passion and humour. They are also peppered with brilliantly smart observations. You will leave his show brimming with energy, heart pounding and brain whirring.’ Guardian

‘Wright’s full-throated reverie is spellbinding.’ The Mirror

Luke Wright is a spit and sawdust wordsmith. His poems are inventive and engaging, documenting 21st century British life with wit, humanity, and panache. He is a Fringe First and Stage award winner and is the author of 8 books, and five albums of spoken word.

This show is part of The Inn Crowd at The Festival Speak Easy 

 

 

 

But I Haven’t Finished Yet

We are all growing older, and most of us don’t like it! But since we can’t do anything to change it, why not laugh?

Join poet Brenda Read-Brown on a riotous celebration of growing older. In her fantasies she is an imprisoned pensioner who rescues fellow passengers from crashed aeroplanes. In reality she is a bit of a hoarder who likes Greek islands. On the journey you will take in rhubarb, (not) climbing Everest, suitcases, soft-closing kitchen drawers, squirrels, and comic injuries. And you’ll find out why Brenda’s final words will definitely be ‘But I haven’t finished yet!’.

A show to delight and entertain audiences, however advanced in life they may be.

In 2001, Brenda Read-Brown gave up a secure career as a project manager to be a poet; it seemed a good idea at the time. Since then she’s won many poetry slams, and performed her poetry on Radio 4, in Texas, Denmark, the House of Lords, lots of festivals, and any number of low dives. She was Gloucestershire Poet Laureate from 2012 – 2019, and has published two collections of her poems: Arbitrary edges (2013), and Like love (2018).

This show is part of The Inn Crowd at The Festival Speak Easy 

 

 

 

Rattus Rattus: The Epic Tail of Man v Rat

It’s New Year’s Day 2015 and Rosa’s dad has made a life-changing resolution. At the same time, a rat sneaks into her family home and so begins an epic battle for control of the house. As the months pass, her father goes to ever greater and more extravagant lengths to trap the rat, and Rosa starts to wonder whether it’s the rat that he is chasing after all.

A funny real-life story about family, growing up, and the times we all find we’ve gone a little bit mad.

Rosa Torr is a writer, performer and radio producer. Her work explores the peculiar experience of being human, relationships and identity. Her previous theatre work has been shown at Soho Theatre, TARA Arts, Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Smock Alley Theatre, Waterstones and more. Rosa is Creative Lives Producer for BBC Radio Norfolk and BBC Radio Suffolk, documenting creative community activity across East Anglia.

This show is part of The Inn Crowd at The Festival Speak EasyÂ