This November, the Birmingham Rep will be hosting an entire month of limited-run productions in their most intimate performance space, The Door, ranging from highlights of last year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, productions inspired by Alfred Hitchcock films, to theatrical showcases from their youth theatre companies and the BEDLAM Arts and Mental Health Partnership.
Kicking off the month will be Why I Stuck A Flare Up My Arse For England (Monday 4 November – Wed 6 November), direct from a sell-out, five-star Edinburgh Fringe Festival run. This blisteringly funny new play based on a real-life event asks what it means to belong to a club that you to live and are prepared to die for.
Later that same week, the multi-award-winning The Man Who Thought He Knew Too Much (Friday 8 & Saturday 9 November) will be bringing their cinematic caper of accusations, accidents, and accents based on the Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’.
Raucously funny and endlessly inventive, this Lecoq-trained theatre company stuns with live, original music and virtuosic acrobatics following Roger – a Frenchman in 1960’s New York – after he narrowly avoids an explosion that throws his ordered, predictable world into chaos, chasing his would-be assassins around the globe.
The following week, Hitchcock meets Lord of the Flies in Rotten (Friday 15 & Saturday 16 November) an exciting new comedy-thriller by emerging writer Josie White. Exploring themes poignant to our everyday lives: the cost of living, capitalism, mental health and social media.
Rotten follows three young, regional actresses who are struggling to survive in London, with their shared dream dwindling away quicker than their bank balances who discover that through their grotty living room window that they have a front row seat to observe the life of Instagram ‘celebrity’ Iris Montague-Willis, and soon begin to create a scheme when they spot Iris in a compromising position with another woman – which quickly spirals into complete anarchy.
The following week, The Rep’s celebrated youth theatre company for children and young people aged 7–26 will be holding their annual Young Rep Showcase (Tuesday 26 & Wednesday 27 November) an opportunity for their eldest companies – Young Rep Seniors (School Years 10-13) and The Company (ages 18 – 26) to perform short pieces monologues, duologues, spoken word pieces that they have written or chosen for themselves.
Becky Deeks, Head of Young Rep adds: “The Young Rep Showcase is a fantastic opportunity to see some of Birmingham’s best young talent perform work chosen or written by themselves. Both nights will be different, full of drama and hosted by our Young Rep Director/Stand-up Comedian, Ryan Lewis.”
Closing out the month, The Rep is collaboration with the BEDLAM Arts and Mental Health Partnership will be bringing a celebration of the arts, mental health and wellbeing to The Door (Thursday 28 & Friday 29 November)
The BEDLAM Arts & Mental Health Showcase will feature a diverse range of live performance, with comedy, dance, drama and burlesque, accompanied by an exhibition at Birmingham Library. Both days of the showcase will feature stand-up comedy from The Rep’s collaboration with the Birmingham LGBT Centre, LGBTQTeeHee!.
LGBTQTeeHee! is a new stand-up comedy project developed through a series of workshops, learning skills and building connection created by The Rep’s Creative Learning team to provide a safe space for members of the LGBTQ+ community to develop comedy and public speaking skills.