GIFT - the Gateshead festival that keeps on giving
An adventure in theatre
Theatre is a broad church and anyone who doubts it should speak to Kate Craddock – or look at the programme for GIFT (Gateshead International Festival for Theatre) of which she’s founding director.
Its attractions might not get the audiences of the region’s big theatre shows but it’s as vital a part of the North East cultural offer, locally rooted and incredibly well networked internationally.
With the 16th edition of GIFT coming up in May, what wonders might unfold?
Might there be anything to beat last year’s experimental opera based on peat bogs?
Creators Jo Hellier and Yas Clarke, up from Bristol, took willing participants off to immerse themselves in the things – before returning to Gateshead to fashion an unlikely sound score.
It was a ‘work in progress’, says Kate, the hope being that a GIFT staging would help to pave the way to a full-blown production called (what else?) Bog.
Proving, if you like, that some people are up for anything, volunteers attracted by the prospect of peat bog immersion ranged in age from 18 to 80.
“You always get a range of people who will interact,” says Kate.
Chatting at Gateshead Library, where GIFT has an office, she attempts a concise definition of what the festival is and what it offers.
“It’s contemporary experimental live art, I suppose, and work that has an international sensibility.
“I describe it as an artist-led festival. When I set it up (in 2011) I was still making performance work myself so I see it as my artistic output. Curation and bringing people together is my creative practice.
“But what’s special about GIFT is the way visiting artists exchange ideas and interact with audiences and the local artistic community.
“There’s a core of people who regularly support us and they’re a real cross-section. They’ve formed a sort of GIFT community.”
Always, though, Kate strives to grow that community by getting word out to other adventurous souls who might be up for a trip to theatre’s cutting edge.
Hence our chat about the festival’s three days in May.
“For the first time this year we have a VR (Virtual Reality) immersive experience called Awake and Still Drowning,” says Kate.
“We haven’t had anything like this before. It’s by an artist called Dustin Harvey who’s from Nova Scotia.
“I first met him in 2020, just before the pandemic, at a festival in Vancouver and he was pitching this project which was then in its infancy.
“It deals with the climate emergency and I just loved the idea of it.”
Harvey describes it (as you’ll see on the GIFT website) as “a hands-on mixed-reality performance where audiences move together as a flock of seabirds attempting to cross the rapidly flooding Chignecto Isthmus, the narrow land bridge connecting Novia Scotia to mainland Canada”.
Kate explains: “Some of the audience put on VR headsets and move together, as instructed in the work, while the others observe. Then they swap round.
“The imagery is beautiful. The artist describes it as being guided by quiet narration, hand-drawn/animated text and a bird companion, so there are connections with the kittiwakes on the Tyne.
“It’s taking place in St Mary’s Heritage Centre which is perfectly positioned for this.
“Location is always something I think about, how it relates to the work and how your experience might be amplified as a result.”
Book a time slot on any of the three days and you’ll feel environmental change, promises Harvey, “not as a distant headline but as something shared, physical and unfolding in the present”.
While Kate professes never to theme her festivals, A Citizens’ Assembly, by Andy Smith and Lynsey O’Sullivan, also deals with the climate emergency.
“We are the citizens! This is our assembly! We are the actors in this story!” goes the exclamatory online teaser.
“What are we doing about the climate emergency? What are we not doing? What more could we be doing? What more should we be doing?
“Be part of the story and join the debate.”
It’s a piece, says Kate, that requires no set, no tech and no actors – just Andy, some chairs and a bunch of scripts which are handed out to audience members who agree to read the parts of characters.
They then might find themselves arguing positions far removed from their own. When the play gets to Act Three, a blank page signals time for debate.
Kate first met Andy, who is based in Lancaster, when he was in the audience for a piece she performed. He first appeared at GIFT in 2012 and the relationship – as so often happens – has continued.
She presented A Citizens’ Assembly in Edinburgh recently as part of an international showcase. It is to be performed in Germany in June and is off to Brazil next year.
Catch the piece at St Mary’s Heritage Centre on May 1 and the Caedmon Hall, Gateshead Library, on May 2.
Two North East artists share billing on May 3 under the title Sunday Scratch ‘n’ Social.
Newcastle-based Rosa Postlethwaite presents Solos with Sourdough at Vane, the art gallery near the Tyne Bridge, which purports to be “about our lives with other-than-human species” – in this instance, sourdough.
It came out of lockdown, of course, when lots of people went a bit sourdough silly.
Kate believes it started as a joke but then became the serious substance of the artist’s PhD research.
Sourdough will feature in the show – after which the audience will make the short trek to St Mary’s Heritage Centre for Scott Turnbull’s How did we get here?
Based in Stockton, Turnbull was recently – and aptly, Kate believes – described as a shapeshifter, as comfortable in a theatre as in a social club setting talking about that Teesside delicacy, the parmo.
Most recently he was at The Glasshouse performing with Toby Jones and a classical ensemble in Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale.
Here he presents “an allegorical tale that combines fact and fiction whilst exploring the relationship between two best friends and their very different lives”.
Another GIFT returnee is Ziza - born in Rwanda, based in Gateshead - who is best known for the show Dandyism and whose performances draw on the artist’s African heritage and current circumstances.
Ziza will discuss new work Free to Roam with Dr Mwenza Blell at Gateshead Library on May 1 (a GIFT collaboration with Newcastle arts organisation D6: Culture in Transit). Kate promises a lot of shoes.
This year’s programme also features workshops led by the likes of Nova Scotia-based dance artist Jacinte Armstrong, ‘performance maker’ and drag make-up expert Wet Mess and vocal ensemble Mouthful.
And if you fancy an encounter with Johnny the Biblical Rapper (aka spoken word artist Tessa Parr), head for Vane between 3pm and 6pm on May 3. The show I Am Johnny is to premiere this year at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Parr, incidentally, is also playing Virginia Woolf next month in Shelagh Stephenson’s new play for Live Theatre, Astell & Woolf, showing GIFT has a foot in the mainstream.
GIFT runs at various Gateshead locations from Friday, May 1 to Sunday, May 3. See the full programme and ticket details on the GIFT website.