The Gathering: Love
Where conversation meets cabaretWelcome to our new part-cabaret-part-conversation online gathering, at which some of Bristol and the UK’s best-loved artists will perform and talk a little.
Enjoy a song, a sonnet, poetry, prose, music and magic, from established legends to fresh new talent. We’ll be talking theatre, community, lockdown survival mechanisms and much more, and you’ll be able to feed in your own questions via text chat. Whilst our theatre is closed, we’re live and online. But as soon as we can, we’ll be inviting you to join us in our beautiful auditorium, revelling in that rush of adrenaline triggered by dimming house lights...
Our theme in March is LOVE and we’ve got a star-studded line-up:
Bristol-based writer and theatre maker Malaika Kegode (Outlier) has been thinking a lot about coolness, queerness and community—who gets to be cool, who gets left behind and the legacy of alienation. Tonight, she’ll share some early work in progress on these themes through spoken word.
Audrey Brisson will perform ‘Stay’ from Amélie The Musical as well as the fan favourite duet ‘Beauty and the Beast’ from smash hit The Grinning Man with Louis Maskell—prepare for goosebumps.
Acting legends Siân Phillips and Michael Byrne will recite Larkin’s An Arundel Tomb and Yeats’ The Song of Wandering Aengus respectively, before coming together to perform the ‘Pilgrim Sonnet’ from Romeo and Juliet, which featured in Tom Morris’ 2010 production Juliet and Her Romeo.
Performance artist, theatre maker, poet and writer Travis Alabanza, one of the UK’s prominent trans voices, will read a section from their ‘absolutely vital’ (★★★★★ The Stage) sell-out show Burgerz.
Mind-magician Chris Cox (The Illusionists), ‘one of the most exciting entertainers in Britain’ (The Guardian), will perform exciting tricks crafted around the theme of love especially for The Gathering.
And a special love letter to the theatre will be flown in on the digital airwaves from the inimitable Sir Patrick Stewart OBE. If that doesn’t warm the cockles of your heart, we don’t know what will!
About the show
How will it work? The show is powered by Zoom and will be streamed live. You'll be able to interact via the chat and Q&A functions with each other and our guests. If you need any help with Zoom, check out our Guide. When you book, keep your eyes peeled for a link to further info about the show in your booking confirmation.
Pay What You Choose: To make our online work more accessible, we’re introducing a flexible pricing scheme for a number of events. Find out more about it here. Prices for this event are: £8 (Open Concession) / £12 (Standard) / £18 (Pay It Forward).
