Save Me: A Conversation Across The City

For two hours each day, for eleven days during Mayfest 2011, Bristol-based performance duo, Search Party, spoke to each other across Bristol Harbour using semaphore. Arnolfini is now working with Mayfest and Theatre Bristol to publish and launch a new book with Saearch Party and The University of Chichester about how a simple act of performance in May became to represent the struggles of distant connection.

Join us on Saturday 22nd October 6.30pm at Arnolfini for the launch night of the publication, a performance from Search Party and hear the artist share a few thoughts on the acts of coding and decoding that occur within daily acts of communication.

Mark My Wordle

Cast your minds back to May. Fun wasn't it? Here's a little summer treat - a Wordle made up of all your Twitter comments from during the festival (click to enlarge):

Mayfest 2011 in 42 Tweets

So there we go. Mayfest 2011 has come and gone in a flash. After this frantic festival though, before we all return to the more natural pace of life, let's just have a quick look back at another great year and what better way that through the wonderous medium of Twitter?

The Blind Tiger goes into Hibernation

Friday 13th May, a distinctly lucky night for all in attendance at the last appearance of The Blind Tiger in 2011. Hilarious acoustic songs from Hazel Winter, interesting improvised dance from A38, all singing all dancing comedy from Desperate Man Jon Beedell, a fascinating physical dance drama from Probe's Antonia Grove, some side-splitting banjo numbers from Publick Transport's Angus Barr (including the riotous Ballad Of A Plastic Bag) and a collection of poetry from Rina Vergano - the purr-fect way to end this widely loved Mayfest addition.

Aint no Party like a Mayfest Party!

The wait is over – Mayfest 2011 is finally here! And what better way to celebrate than at a huge Opening Party at the Bristol Old Vic featuring live music, singing, a robot disco, bacon sandwiches and the usual high jinx? It’s tonight from 7.30pm and it’s completely free!

And to help you get in the mood for 10 days of exciting and playful contemporary theatre, here are 10 photographs to whet your appetite for Mayfest 2011:

Veue Magazine's Mayfest Preview

Performance cheese-tasting, the history of the 20th century in 70 minutes and a semaphore soap opera are among the delights on offer at this year’s Mayfest thesp riot. Steve Wright is our man waving the flags for Venue.

At a time when our public services and cultural heritage are being decimated by a government pursuing an ideology dressed up as 'necessary', festivals provide a place for people to come together, have a good time, talk and be inspired. Theatre is a powerful tool for reflecting on the state of things, whether in an overtly political way or more obliquely. It helps society learn about itself.” Wise and timely words from Matthew Austin, co-artistic director of Mayfest, Bristol’s annual and ever-more-ambitious festival of leftfield theatre.

Now a regular fixture on the UK’s cultural calendar after a decade’s existence, Mayfest is back once again this month, commandeering venues and unusual sites across town to present the very best local, national and international theatre and performance. This year the festival’s staging events at more venues than ever, from old hands like Bristol Old Vic, Arnolfini and the Tobacco Factory to Hamilton House, an empty College Green shop unit and a section of the Floating Harbour. As ever, the festival is bursting with weird and wonderful performances (27 of them, spread over the festival’s 11 days and 15-odd venues), but this year, in keeping with Matthew’s view of festivals as temporary communities, Mayfest also features its own café, artists’ talks, workshops, debates and other extra-mural delights.

Tomorrow is Only a Day Away

It's the 4th May. Which makes tomorrow the 5th May. Which makes that the first day of Mayfest 2011. Which brings: the first performance of Search Party's Save Me, our Opening Party at Bristol Old Vic, featuring a Robot Disco and Faulty Optic's Flogging a Dead Horse at the Tobacco Factory. It's all go...

Why Mayfest is so Important to Bristol - Ali Robertson

Director of the Tobacco Factory Theatre

“Mayfest consistently has a massively high programming standard that ensures that we get a uniquely concentrated burst of some of the most wonderful companies that we already know about and also we find companies that we never knew about and get to fall in love with. I first saw Action Hero and John Moran in Mayfest: they don’t feel like discoveries now – they feel like two of the best companies going.

Mayfest also gives many people that work in or around theatre in Bristol a real sense of community and, incidentally, I think that Kate and Matthew’s real visibility during the festival is very helpful for this. I think that a lot of people have a real sense of belonging to a community that they’re really proud of during the two weeks of the festival.

People should see as much as they can at Mayfest because it’ll certainly be not-boring. It’ll very probably be good and it’ll quite possibly be brilliant.”

The Blind Tiger's Call for Artists

Come and show us your claws!

As you may well have heard, this year we are introducing The Blind Tiger to Mayfest proceedings which is our very own late night bar/cabaret/speak-easy type affair. We don’t want to define it too much, because ultimately you, the artists of Bristol, will bring the ingredients needed to give it its own unique flavour. But here’s the info you need…

What's it all about?
The Blind Tiger is in the Basement of the Bristol Old Vic will be open from 9.30pm til midnight on the 6th–8th and on the 11th–13th May. Each evening there will be open slots for you to come and delight and entertain our most discerning of audiences. We call for performers, musicians and magic-makers of all kinds to pitch up, take to the stage, and have some fun.

How do I get involved?
There will be a Blind Tiger sign up sheet resident in our Mayfest Café at The Parlour on Park Street. If you fancy a slot you just need to pop along and scribble your name down at some point during the day. At 6.30pm each day we will then chalk the acts up on the ‘Blind Tiger Presents’ board outside the Basement, and any remaining gaps will remain up for grabs until 9.30pm that evening.

£2.75 per Mayfest Show?

Are you a theatre addict? Do you look at the Mayfest programme and schedule two weeks in your diary where the rest of your life will have to be put on hold? We might just have something for you then…

For Mayfest 2011 we have a very limited number of Festival Passes available. One pass which will let you see every show at the entire festival. Every single one for just £80. That’s £2.75 per show. BARGAIN.

So if you're up for really getting stuck in this year, call Bristol Old Vic Box Office on 0117 987 7877 and they'll guide you through the process.

Interview with Mayfest’s Artistic Directors, Kate Yedigaroff and Matthew Austin

What can people expect from this year’s Mayfest?
Oh help, we’re in danger of spouting out some clichés here like ‘ooooh, well, expect the unexpected’ or ‘you never know what you’re going to get with Mayfest’ but that would probably just be a bit annoying. So we will resist. Every year we get asked if there is a theme or a particular guiding star that has led us to make the choices we make about what the shows in the programme are, or what the general focus & personality of the festival is and it’s always something that stops and makes us think.

We have often discussed “theming” the festival but for some reason something stops us, and perhaps this is because we don’t want to be instructive or create categories about what we do or do not see as having a place in this context. This year we have been drawn to a few more projects that are specifically located in this city. Companies like Proto-type Theatre and Search Party are creating bespoke experiences that make us think about the landscapes and architectures of Bristol – they happen outside the realm of a theatre space and so by their very nature are about the place in which they sit.

So you can expect a celebration of Bristol, a performance programme with a very broad range of different kinds of show which we think reflect a community of artists and audiences which come from a broad range of perspectives and experiences. You can expect to be able to do a lot of chatting and drinking in our late night speakeasy (The Blind Tiger) and in our brand new hub, The Mayfest Café on Park Street.

We hope that you can expect to have a good time, that if you want to you can be challenged and experience something you haven’t before. But above all you can spend some time in the company of inspiring artists who are curious and creative and who are able to share a version of the world we may not have seen before. We also think that it would be good planning to expect a hangover on the 6th May after the Mayfest Opening Party.

What is different this year?
Each year is always different. When it ceases to be so, it will probably mean we should stop doing it. Perhaps some obvious differences are that we don’t have a hotel on the harbourside, that the festival is slightly shorter in length, that despite the big space and the Paintshop at Bristol Old Vic being closed for refurbishment we are collaborating with more partners than ever before to present work in an increasing variety of spaces. This year also marks the first of our co-commissions with the fabulous Theatre Bristol on Save Me by Search Party.

The Mayfest Brochure has Landed

The Mayfest 2011 Brochure is here! It's time to really start getting excited now as you browse through all 29 shows of this year's festival along with a wealth of artist talks, artist breakfasts, workshops and social opportunities including details of The Blind Tiger, our very own festival speakeasy.

Pick up a copy of the brochure in a multitude of pubs, cafes and shops across the city as well as every venue Mayfest is at this year or alternatively browse and download its pages online here.

And if you're still looking for more info, details, gossip and inspiration to help you decide which shows to see, keep you eyes locked on the Mayfest Blog as we start to ask festival patrons which shows their looking forward to most this year.

Welcome to Mayfest 2011

As we were toasting the start of last year’s Mayfest, the nation was ushering in a new government. Since we last saw you, there have been momentous shifts in the UK’s cultural landscape. So, as once again we smash the proverbial bottle of champagne on the bow of the good ship Mayfest, the importance of festivals is felt more keenly than ever – in a time of flux and vulnerability they are an opportunity for people to come together as a temporary community, to celebrate, be challenged, provoked and moved. We hope that this year’s Mayfest programme will do just that.

From magical encounters in small rooms, to a semaphore soap opera for the city, Mayfest champions difference, playfulness and new perspectives. This year we launch a new producing organisation, MAYK, which is the consolidation of our partnership as Artistic Directors of Mayfest and the vehicle for what will be a rolling programme of celebratory theatrical events that extend outside this heady two weeks in Spring and across the calendar year. You can find out more about MAYK by visiting our temporary home mayk.posterous.com

As ever we are hugely grateful to our producing partner Bristol Old Vic, who generously invest in the festival in many different ways, and provide the space for us to be brave and ambitious. We are also thankful to Arts Council England for their continuous support, to Bristol City Council, Arnolfini, Tobacco Factory, Theatre Bristol, Watershed and our various partners across the city.

Mayfest is a festival for Bristol, a city which we love, and which continually surprises us. We hope you enjoy it.
Kate and Matthew

Welcome To The Mayfest Blog!

Mayfest 2011 begins in exactly one month and to mark this momentous occasion we are proud to reveal to the world the Mayfest Blog. This is a new venture for 2011 and we hope it will be a way of embracing the internet and engaging much better with Mayfest’s audience.

As we see it, festivals are about building communities; temporary communities who come together to share an experience over an intense period. The late-night chats in the bar, the early morning coffees, the heated debates over a show that divides its audience – conversation makes festivals richer for artists and audiences.

The Mayfest Blog is therefore about opening up the space for a community to form. It’s a place for the Mayfest team to share the inside story on the festival; it’s a place for previews, reviews, photos and videos; it’s a place for audiences to comment and artists to share; it’s a place to dissect, ponder, provoke and generate discussion.

We’ll be blogging regularly in the lead-up to and during the festival about whatever pops into our heads. We hope you’ll join the discussion too!