All in Arts & Culture
There’s something alluring about the irreverent way female jazz performances reclaim feminine sexuality and play a part in the subversive culture of jazz and metropolitan life. Chicago is a musical that tells women’s stories predominantly through performances by female characters, so it should feel like an empowering romp from one of the raciest decades of American history.
OthelloMacbeth brings together two of Shakespeare’s great tragedies. Promising to bring ‘the voices of some of Shakespeare’s most iconic female characters [...] to the fore’, this combination of plays reeks of ambition.
The eponymous Queen is interestingly mute for the first few scenes of this feminist re-framing of history. We are firmly grounded in the patriarchal realm of Renaissance drama (indeed, all drama), ready to be sprung into a new orbit.
The recent series at Manchester’s Royal Exchange theatre has taken on the important role of platforming the unheard. Real women are taking to the stage to sing some home truths and to celebrate the hard-won fight to have a voice.
Megan Piontkowski, one of Harpy's favourite illustrators, is here for something pretty specific about Jonathan...
Heading to Edinburgh this year? Check out Harpy’s new favourite comedian Ella Woods and her show Wing Defence: a comedy about sport by someone who hated it.
It can be intimidating to feel like an outsider in a big city. Whatever your kinks and quirks, Leeds is teeming with open-minded, friendly people… you just need to know where to look. Check out this list of Leeds venues and collectives and you’ll soon find yourself spoilt for choice of things to do and people to see.
Do you suffer from book panic? There’s an ever-growing pile by my bed. There are hard-hitting novels, poignant memoirs and essay collections I’ll never get around to, all lovingly recommended by friends or featured on podcasts. The problem is, when I’m craving a book, I want a big dollop of fiction.
Bees are dying out. We need to do something to curb it.
I’m sure this isn’t news to all of you – and amidst the other innumerable nightmares taking place across the globe, it can feel like just another sign we’re hurtling towards apocalypse.
On the longest day of the year sunlight floods Hyde Park Book Club for the launch of Clare Fisher’s short story collection How the Light Gets In. Joined by Influx Press, Leeds Big Bookend, Naomi Booth and Samuel Fisher, it's a summer solstice book launch to remember.
Refugee Week is dedicated to recognising the overlooked. Home, Manchester, set aside 16th-22nd June to provide a platform for theatrical, musical, cinematic and political offerings from refugees and solidarity supporters.
For Breach theatre company, we live in a world where planning for the future is at odds with the constant threat of lacking a future altogether. We live under the looming threat of terror attacks or even “a tornado, probably with a woman’s name, so no one will take it fucking seriously”.
You’ll never catch me listening to a female-fronted band. Why? Because there’s no such thing. You probably already know that ‘male-fronted’ bands don’t exist—it’s rare to see male artists being defined by their gender, so why have people latched onto the idea that a band can be female-fronted?
Katherine Christie Evans = Velodrome: a queer artist whose work is concerned with social inequality, Feminism, and mental health and queer visibility. Harpy meets Katherine to talk about Velodrome’s debut single and debut event.
Lining the route with pink balloons, Girl Gang Manchester transformed the Lowry’s loading bay studio space into an inclusive and welcoming room full of frivolity. If you fancy heading to a Girl Gang event but aren’t sure what to expect, here’s a rundown of all the action from where I was sat last Saturday night.
In a new adaptation by Bryony Lavery, who’s on a mission “to create iconic roles for women […] because the world is full of fantastic female actors”, Brighton Rock enacts the classic Graham Greene novel and aptly fits Week 53’s ‘coming of age’ theme.
Writers Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel return the stage version of The Girl on the Train to the setting of Watford, refreshingly diffusing any sense of glamour and bringing a gritty domesticity to the drama.
As part of the annual ‘Week 53’ festival at The Lowry, Manchester, Girl Gang are offering the latest in their series of immersive theatre experiences: enter the world of Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.
“Fuck you and your excellent words.” Questioning how actors and audience ought to interact with the canon, RashDash explode onto the stage to fight for an artist’s right against the dictatorial bonds of the script.
Tessa Coates - sketch comic extraordinaire, trio-of-podcasts host and now stand up - unveiled Primates, her debut solo show, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017. Part-autobiography, part-anthropology lecture (and a whole lot hilarious) Primates has just finished a sell-out run at the Soho Theatre. Harpy was lucky enough to snatch half an hour with Tessa to talk about her experience creating the show.
