About

See innovative, groundbreaking, new and sometimes experimental work for a price everyone can afford! The Colchester Arts Centre Director has hand selected some of the finest up and coming and established names in new work - and you won't need to break the bank to see them, as  all these shows PAY WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD. You can get a ticket for any of the Wonderful Wednesdays shows for the princely sum of anything from 15 to zero pounds - whatever works for you.

The 2022 season includes
 

LEA ANDERSON: SHUFFLE - 12th October 2022

Born from a desire to create a different way to shape dance; a new interactive performance based on the random track selection of an iPod Shuffle and emulating the relationship between the club dance floor and the DJ.

LUKE WRIGHT - 19th October 2022

Whether he’s opening for the Libertines or reciting Georgian ballads down your local, Luke Wright is adept at taking poetry places it doesn’t normally go. John Cooper Clarke’s regular warm-up guy writes poems that are tender, riotous, caustic and romantic then delivers them with the ferocity and panache of a raconteur at the top of his game.

VIJAY PATEL: BROTHERLY, OTHERLY, DISORDERLY - 26th October 2022

A live art / theatre show by two autistic siblings, an access rider in the form of a neurodivergent pop concert. It's a joyous and celebratory theatrical toolkit for supporting themselves and each other; while navigating the barriers they face within a neurotypical world. B.O.D. is a love letter to sibling care and neurodivergent solidarity, a theatrical access rider and a dream of a better world.

EMILYN CLAID: UNTITLED - 2nd November 2022

Emilyn Claid, queer dance artist in her 7th decade, presents a new solo performance developed in collaboration with choreographers Heidi Rustgaard and Florence Peake around the theme of transformation - posturing, presence and passing. Between clay foot and creature, therapist and hunter, cruising and crumbling, Emilyn Claid, Untitled, playfully embodies queering and ageing, teasing perceptions of what’s real and what’s imagined.

LIVIA KOJO ALOUR: BLACK SHEEP - 9th Novemeber 2022

A story about a black woman finding love and a testament of personal strength, developed through transcending the white gaze, overcoming institutional racism and leaning into radical vulnerability, Securing her place as a pivotal UK Queer Black voice while telling her story via a heady mix of physical theatre, spoken word, song and sword swallowing, Black Sheep is timely, unsettling and deeply personal.

URBAN FOXES: MOTHERLOAD! - 16th November

MOTHERLOAD! is a bold and bonkers clowning show about the end of the world. Meet Mother Nature, the sexiest woman alive turned dumpster fire. She’s doing a Ted Talk. It’s a last chance bid to save her apathetic children. Why? She loves them. As the tech starts to glitch, and her body jirates with the FEVER of a morally confused echo chamber, she regurgitates our cultural trash into a lipsync of epic proportions. It is a surreal comedy for the end of days. A coming of age story from the mother of all mothers. MOTHERLOAD! asks the question on every parents 's mind … should we?

SPLIT BRITCHES: LAST GASP - 23rd November 2022

Equipped with a bulletproof vest, some know-how and a touch of irony, two icons of lesbian-feminist theatre use spoken word and movement as a call and response to urgent global predicaments. Speaking from a microphone about her own narcissistic tendencies, fragile identities and privilege, Peggy Shaw's poetic musings are interspersed with Lois Weaver's micro dance essays.


HANNAH MAXWELL: NAN, ME & BARBARA PRAVI - 30th November 2022

In 2021, Hannah moved home to help care for her terminally ill grandfather, this is her spiralling fantasy rom-com to escape her nan's kitchen and conduct a 'heist-cute' in Paris. Weaving spoken-word, video and chanson francaise, Nan, Me & Barbara Pravi sits you down at the kitchen table to talk through grief and care, addiction and recovery, and hope and coping in unprecedented times.