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.
All in Arts & Culture
Jonathan Van Ness Genders Things
Megan Piontkowski, one of Harpy's favourite illustrators, is here for something pretty specific about Jonathan...
Ella Woods: Wing Defence
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.
Find Your People at these 7 Inclusive Spaces in Leeds
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.
7 Immersive Novels for the Reluctant Reader
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.
Bee Kind: How You Can Help Save Our Pollinators
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.
How the Light Gets In, and other solstice reads
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: Thought-Provoking Theatre
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.
Review: The Drill @ Home, Mcr
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”.
There’s No Such Thing as ‘Female-Fronted’ Music
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?
Meet Katherine Christie Evans: Velodrome musician and Harpy heroine
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.
Sleepover meets School Disco: what to expect at a Girl Gang 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.
Brighton Rock: Female Stars Shine through a Masculine Mob
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.
Review: WYP presents The Girl on the Train
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.
Sisterhood and Cinema with Girl Gang Manchester
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.
Who or what are the classics for?: RashDash present Three Sisters
“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.
Review: Tessa Coates, Primates
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.
Directing: Can Diversity Change the Film Industry?
It is easy to justify the need for more inclusion from a political point of view: discrimination is wrong, period. Yet, I have often been asked if I thought that inclusion would actually bring anything positive to the film industry. After all, do we need an nth chick flick or another Dr Dolittle?
Review: The Tiger Lillies present Corrido de la Sangre
Three men, eleven instruments, one psychedelic puppet show projection. Billed as "The Godfathers of Alternative Cabaret", The Tiger Lillies take to the stage to tell the story of Maria: a Mexican woman who escaped the clutches of the cartels and of the devil himself.
The Cherry Orchard: the Slow Surroundings of an Eccentric Matriarch
The entrance of a small, ghostly child, before the house lights go down, marks the opening of this latest production of The Cherry Orchard and suggests that this may not be Chekhov as we know.