LONDON WORD FESTIVAL

When? 7 MARCH – 1 APRIL 2010

Where? Various locations around London

How much? Various

What? London’s pioneering celebration of words, text and language returns for a third year, playing host to the most adventurous programme yet.

Building on the success of 2009’s festival, with its sell-out commissioning programme that included live-Manga illustrated live-literature interpretive ‘Shakespeare in Shoreditch’ club event; Iain Sinclair’s site-specific perambulatory performance in St. Augustine’s Tower in Hackney; and the ‘The 14th Tale’, which transfers to The National Theatre this February,we return with a full selection of premieres, commissions and proudly participatory projects are brought to life on a selection of East London’s most interesting and stages and spaces.

With everything from music to stand-up, through shadow-puppetry, micro-lectures, screen-printing nuns and performance poetry, to crime-comic-jazz interpretations: this is the festival that looks way beyond the page.

Who? 2010 Highlights include:

Josie Long and her good-deed amanuenses enjoy a knees up in a home-brew museum to toast self-improvement project One Hundred Days to Make Me a Better Person; hold tight to that cheap cigars of yours as film noir sensibilities go monochrome gangbusters with Led Bib, Toby Litt, Huzzah!! Noir and more on Toynbee Hall’s suitably art-deco stage in Avant! Noir. Tuck into a bespoke word print from the Henningham Family Press at their ersatz Chip Shopscreen-printing workshop; Chris McCabe delivers a psychonavigational multimedia Docklands hymnal: Shad Thames, Broken Wharf, scored by Bartokian folk-drone composers Bleeding Heart Narrative and introduced by Iain Sinclair. Darren Hayman joins the Henningham Family Press, the Universettee, Murray Macauley and more for a hands-on mini-festival celebrating great British posters and Great British eccentricities in Keep Printing and Carry On; mish-mashed, moonshiney animation, shadow-play, puppets, poems and a hypothetical mannequin are a few tools employed by top yarn-spinners Matthew Robins and Terry Saunders who demonstrate the true Art of Storytelling. Tim Turnbull, Laura Dockrill & Luke Kennard head up a night of mischievous wit in a performance poetry best-of; Stuart Silver premieres his anecdotal world-view-shaking comic drama, You Look Like Ants. Join Robin Ince, Professor Brian Cox, Helen Keen and more to explore the cosmos in a space-craft shaped like a church full of comedians and musicians; Leafcutter John rewires Basil Bunting’s Modernist masterpiece Briggflatts; and join a creepy night of theatrical ghastliness in two ghostly performances 'Oh, Whistle and I'll Come To You, My Lad' and 'A Pint For The Ghost'. All topped off by industrial-design-meets-word-play as the Barbican Art Gallery plays host to poetic extremism and quizzical post-modernism from John Hegley and the Found in Translation poets.

“I could easily imagine Dickens, Addison or Dr Johnson doing a brilliant ‘set’ at the London Word Festival."
– Richard Morrison, The Times
“ever wonderful”
– The Independent
“London’s alternative literature festival”
– The Guardian
"a gift from the linguistic gods"
– The Londonist
“the cat’s pyjamas”

Festival Website? www.londonwordfestival.com | www.twitter.com/ldnwordfestival

FESTIVAL LINE UP:

*Date*	*Event*	*Venue*
7 Mar	THE CHIP SHOP Henningham Family Press	Toynbee Studios Arts Café and Bar
10 Mar	ONE HUNDRED DAYS TO MAKE ME A BETTER PERSON with JOSIE LONG The Pictish Trail, Isy Suttie & Sara Pascoe + The Museum of One Hundred Days & exclusive Alex Horne ‘One Hundred Days’ film	Secret East London Venue
11 Mar	ROBIN INCE’s SCHOOL FOR GIFTED CHILDREN ‘SPACE’ SPECIAL + Brian Cox, Helen Keen + more tbc	St. Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch
12 Mar	AVANT! NOIR Toby Litt, Cathi Unsworth, Courttia Newland Music from Led Bib Visuals from Huzzah!! Noir	Toynbee Theatre
15 Mar	STUART SILVER: YOU LOOK LIKE ANTS + Nathan Penlington: Uri & Me	Courtyard Theatre
18 Mar	SHAD THAMES, BROKEN WHARF by Chris McCabe, with Bleeding Heart Narrative and Jack Wake-Walker + introduced by: Iain Sinclair	Jamboree, Cable Street Studios
20 Mar	KEEP PRINTING AND CARRY ON Henningham Family Press with Darren Hayman, Murray Macauley + more tbc + The Chip Shop, Universettee lectures, ‘Sister Corita The Screen Printing Nun’ short film screening, Great British Cake Shop + more tbc	Stoke Newington International Airport
24 Mar	TIM TURNBULL + Laura Dockrill + Luke Kennard + ‘Instructions for Heartbreak’ by Francesca Millican-Slater	Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club
25 Mar	'OH, WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD' + Helen Mort’s 'A Pint for the Ghost’	Jamboree, Cable Street Studios
28 Mar	LEAFCUTTER JOHN: BRIGGFLATTS REWIRED + Peter Finch + MacGillivray + Hannah Silva	Stoke Newington International Airport
31 Mar	THE ART OF STORYTELLING Terry Saunders' ‘Six and a Half Loves’ Matthew Robins’ ‘Death of Fly Boy’ & ‘Sad Lucy: a Fish Opera’ + Henningham Family Press’s ‘The Chip Shop Poem’ with Special Guest Poet + Ignore the Forecast’s The Tree of Lost Things + more tbc	St. Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch
1 Apr	WORD PLAY John Hegley + Found in Translation (Joe Dunthorne, Ross Sutherland & Tim Clare) + Barbican Young Poets + Rough Trade DJs	Barbican Art Gallery

PRESS INFO:
All press materials, artist images and festival information are readily available from:
Sam Hawkins London Word Festival press office:

Sam @ londonwordfestival.com
07800 500 407

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