Arches Live 2011

Arches Live is back and bigger than ever. Check out this year’s extensive programme right here. This year’s festival of new theatre will be held at the Arches in Glasgow from Tuesday the 20th of Sept. to Saturday the 1st of Oct 2011. A festival pass will set you back £28/£24 while a day pass is a mere £13/£9. There is an opening night gala on the 20th starting at 6 p.m. For tickets or more info contact their box office at 0141 565 1000.

I’m particularly looking forward to seeing Ross MacKay’s The Medium, a piece I have a little familiarity with but that is going to be something surprising for everyone. He’s developing the piece as part of his attachment to the NTS and I think he’s going to a brilliant job of expanding his practice in truly innovative ways.

Also very promising is Sita Pieraccini’s “Bird.” Sita is a great performer, a highly physical performer, and a charming woman. This looks like an intriguing bit of storytelling an a little unusual for an Arches Live piece. Clowning. Good. There’s a terrific trailer for it at this link, so check that out.

There are loads of other great performers on with new piece as well as performers I’ve never seen or heard of, which is totally exciting. And leaving me a little anxious that I didn’t do more to be a part of this year’s impressive line up. I wonder if anyone in London-town takes note of this festival? It’s so much more important than the fringe, in many ways. Fringe shows are always shows that have money and support behind them – or else how could they fund their Fringe appearance? They might be older then, or restagings of shows that have proven themselves worthwhile. Whereas the Arches showcases work that is fresh or mostly fresh. It’s from people scraping resources together or working for the love of it not because they’re paid to – which gives the work a certain urgency. It’s also going to feature folks who have been at this for a while but for one reason or another are not in the mainstream and one of these reasons, I’d suggest, is that their work is complex and genre bending in ways the mainstream does not allow.

So it’s an important festival and I’d be keen to see a Guardian theatre blogger hike up to Glasgow for a peek.