AT A GLANCE: FESTIVAL IN MY HOUSE... AND YOURS
AT A GLANCE: FESTIVAL IN MY HOUSE… AND YOURS
From an online Queer literary festival, to a cook-along party and a club night for the living room, we’ve loved seeing how Greater Manchester artists have responded to the challenge of re-imagining our popular micro-festival series for the lockdown. Our new set of online commissions, Festival in My House…and Yours, were originally streamed via MIF LIVE, and many of them are still online.
We’ve compiled a handy round-up so you can catch up or enjoy them all over again.
WATCH ONLINE . .
TOILET ROLL GATE RETROSPECTIVE
When former MIF Jerwood Fellow Chanje Kunda realised that the everyday angst she felt when going to the shops to buy toilet paper was now an international crisis, the result was a singular spoof show exploring all things toilet paper, and the first-ever all-digital, online-only Festival in My House… And Yours.
Read our interview with Chanje Kunda
This online literary festival brought together six of the best queer writers in Manchester, working across all forms from poetry to performance and from fiction to theatre. Teaming up in pairs across the course of the evening, they included poets Frankie Blaus and Roma Havers, writer-performers Mandla Rae and Ella Otomewo, and novelists Okechukwu Nzelu and Rosie Garland.
A Festival friend since her starring role in FlexN Manchester at MIF15, dancer-choreographer Yandass Ndlovu invited audiences to join her and collaborator Sam Arbor for a celebration of homegrown Manchester dance culture. From electronic beats crafted in Salford bedrooms to contemporary vibes smashed together in Bury, WOZA! was a dance journey that took you across the city’s music scene – all from within Yandass’s living room.
House of Noir are the rising stars of vogue and ballroom culture in Manchester, equally at home in the nightclub and on the runway. For MIF Live, the collective created a one-off quarantine kiki – a super-relaxed, youth-led, politically-driven voguing ball-from-home with the theme ‘All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go’, featuring dazzling live appearances by some of the city’s leading QTIPOC performers (queer, transgender and intersex people of colour).
Acclaimed Manchester-based poet Hafsah Aneela Bashir has been connecting with the world during lockdown with a live reading on Instagram sharing poetry and short stories. For MIF LIVE, she joined forces with Kansas-based poet Aisha Sharif for a transatlantic reading and conversation covering poetry, panaceas, power and the pandemic, over here and over there.
NOT ONLINE (BUT NOT FORGOTTEN) . .
Due to licensing restrictions, some of the commissions are unable to live on in the online realm, but we had a ball at them both so here’s a FOMO-inducing shout out to two memorable evenings:
On The Request Line! was a virtual club night from RebeccaNeverBecky, a collective which showcases new and emerging BAME, LGBT+ & QTIPOC Manchester DJs and creatives. There was good-vibes live performances from soul singer-songwriter Tyron Webster, cabaret star La Bella Fatma and Mystique, all fixtures on the Manchester scene, before RebeccaNeverBecky closed things out with a DJ set.
Pre ‘n’ Tea was a transnational cook along party from MC, DJ and multi-disciplinary artist Chunky and creative chef Sunny Ray – one in Manchester, the other in Barcelona. Audiences pre-purchased a list of ingredients and cooked along with us, all to a blisteringly good soundtrack spun live from Quarantine by Chunky and pals.