News
Friday, 01 July 2011
MESH: Oxford International Youth Arts Festival
MESH Festival is a biannual international youth arts festival, which will be hosted, curated and run by young people for young people. The inaugural festival, which is organised by Pegasus in conjunction with its youth theatre members and The North Wall Arts Centre, will involve at least 100 young people from Oxford and Oxfordshire as well as around 100 young people from Europe and beyond.
Visiting groups come from twinned cities Leiden (Holland), Grenoble (France), Perm (Russia) and Bonn (Germany), as well as from Sisak (Croatia) and Gaza (Palestine).
During MESH, the youth companies will perform a range of theatre and dance pieces created in conjunction with professional directors and choreographers. These performances will take place at both Pegasus and The North Wall Arts Centre and will be followed by debates focussed on the themes, ideas and content of the shows.
MESH will be taking place this summer thanks to the ongoing support of many different partners. MINI Plant Oxford is the festival’s major sponsor and is giving support in a variety of ways, including through provision of space, resources and staff involvement in the lead up to, and during, the ten day event. Other supporters of MESH include Arts Council England, the ‘Europe for Citizens’ programme, Infineum, Lucy Properties, Dragon School, Oxford Brookes University, HMG Law and Oxford Bus Company.
For more information about MESH Festival and to book tickets, visit http://www.pegasustheatre.org.uk
Highlights of the festival include:
After Gilgamesh
21 July 2011
Venue: Pegasus
Tickets: £7 full price, concessions £5
Performed by: Pegasus Youth Theatre Companies (Oxford, UK)
This tale of Gilgamesh, demi-god and king of Uruk, is filled with fantastic characters; ancient gods, barbers and weavers feature alongside the soldiers, citizens and generals of the last Iraq war. This new verse drama, presented here with dance and song, puts the spotlight on war, leaders, life and death and asks the question: ‘what has changed in 4,000 years?’
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Gaza Mono-Logues
22 July 2011
Venue: The North Wall Arts Centre
Tickets: £7 full price, concessions £5
Performed by: Ashtar Theatre (Gaza, Palestine)
The Gaza Mono-Logues was a global project involving 33 countries, over 60 cities and more than 1,500 young people from around the world. In this performance, 33 young people who witnessed the war on Gaza between 2008 and 2009 will tell their personal stories, sharing their fears, dreams, aspirations and frustrations before, during and after the war.
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Grand Debate: Human Rights and Young People
23 July 2011
Venue: T Building, MINI Plant Oxford
Tickets: Free admission
MINI Plant Oxford will be hosting the festival’s Grand Debate in its T Building. A panel of invited guests, including standup comic and performer Mark Thomas, artistic director of Ashtar Theatre Iman Aoun plus a number of young speakers, will discuss the topic with international delegates and members of the public.
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The Doctor Despite Himself
25 July 2011
Venue: The North Wall Arts Centre
Tickets: £7 full price, concessions £5
Performed by: Créarc (Grenoble, France)
In this classic Molière play, a downtrodden wife tricks her wicked and lazy woodcutter husband into becoming a doctor. In his new guise, he is asked to cure a neighbour’s daughter, who is inflicted with a rare condition and can no longer speak. On examining her, he quickly diagnoses the condition – she is in love!
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Street Theatre and Costume Parade
29 July 2011
Venue: Oxford Castle, Bonn Square, Cornmarket Street to Oxford Town Hall
Tickets: Free admission
Over the course of the afternoon, 140 young participants from the UK, Europe and beyond will be taking to the streets of Oxford. Groups will perform street theatre at Oxford Castle and Bonn Square as well as taking part in a costume parade from Cornmarket Street to Oxford Town Hall – all before presenting their grand finale performance that same evening.
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The Visit
29 July 2011
Venue: Oxford Town Hall
Tickets: £5
The Visit, a tragi-comic play written by Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt, is a scathing indictment of the power of greed. It centres on a town suffering from grinding poverty, whose citizens and mayor are corrupted by the wealth of a former resident who has returned to wreak revenge for a past injustice. Supported by MINI Plant Oxford.
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