In the darkness of a cinema, the audience sits blindfolded. Behind each row of audience members is a row of children who in hushed voices describe a film only they can see. Accompanied by an intriguing soundtrack, the whispered descriptions are a fragile, fragmentary and courageous attempt by the children to make sense of what they see projected on the screen.

Based on audio description, Blind Cinema is an experience where the act of watching a film becomes a shared investment: a collaborative and imaginative act between seeing children and blinded adults. It embraces the difficulty of finding the right words, of trying to hold onto the unstable images created in the mind’s eye.

Blind Cinema leaves the illusory reality of cinema and re-enters the vivid images of the imagination.

It’s an experiment in time drag; wearing another time as drag and dragging another time into the present. What happens if the Comeback comes back? Like a half-remembered dream or two mirrors facing each other or repeating a word so much it loses its meaning. Comeback Special is a double negative. It’s not the original, but it’s not not. Greg welcomes Elvis fans, theatre fans and anyone who thinks this peculiar re-enactment might be fun. He certainly does.

An emotional and hard rocking journey into the hearts and souls on the outer limits of creativity and building regulations. The Castle Builder tells the true story of an inmate in a Norwegian psychiatric institute who over five years built a castle on a remote headland. The show spirals outwards from personal accounts into tales of other outsider artists who’ve been inspired to build gigantic extraordinary structures, alone, in secret, and without artistic validation from the real world. Vic Llewellyn and Kid Carpet re-imagine these stories and tell them with live music, projection and heartfelt storytelling.

‘I’m having absolutely nothing to do with the theatre or the human race. They can all go to hell.’

– Anton Chekhov

During the turmoil of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Maria Chekhov, Anton’s sister, placed many of her late brother’s manuscripts and papers in a safety deposit box in Moscow.

In 1921 Soviet scholars opened the box, and discovered a play. The title page was missing. The play they found has too many characters, too many themes, too much action. All in all, it’s generally dismissed as unstageable. Like life.

Chekhov before he was Chekhov.

"... Where our real home might be is tricky to say. In a way that is the point. Some people say that is the body, but I think the body is more a channel that leads us home. Ultimate reality is our home. It is here and now, and it is not a special piece of what is happening. We imagine that we are on a journey, that life is a journey, but we are home from the beginning. This is not an easy thing to accept."

In February, two artists got on a cargo ship, and retraced one of the routes of the Transatlantic Slave Triangle - from the UK to Ghana to Jamaica, and back.

Their memories, their questions and their grief took them along the bottom of the Atlantic and through the figurative realm of an imaginary past.

It was a long journey backwards, in order to go forwards.

This show is what they brought back.

There is a possibility that God made everything because he was terrified of doing nothing. Here is a re-telling of the story of the beginning of everything inspired by Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, told through words, music and the easily misunderstood medium of dance. A show for anyone who has ever created anything (a child, a garden, a paper aeroplane) and then had to watch that wonderful thing spiral out of control.

Created and performed by Tanuja Amarasuriya and Timothy X Atack The sounds of Bristol’s streets, wildlife, nightlife, vehicles, venues, markets, musicians and offices are looped, sieved, filtered, warped and stretched to make new, beautiful and perturbing music. Circadial is about the rhythms and polyphony of a place; the way that sound can locate you in time and geography. Built from local field recordings made in the days and nights preceding the performances, Sleepdogs create a live, improvised, constantly shifting music.

A distortion of the film Stand By Me

As flashing neon lights descend upon the tracks, a boxing-gloved boy with a death wish comes head to head with a white suited locomotive and a deer in black patent stilettos…

Castle Rock is a new story inspired by three of the voiceless characters in Stephen King’s novella The Body and its 1986 cult film adaptation, Stand By Me. Expect distorted sound, movement and projection as Massive Owl contort the book’s characters and twist the film’s soundtrack into a reimagined story about loss and acceptance.

Welcome to Castle Rock!

​​We started with wanting to change the world with a performance. We felt like idiots. Then we danced a lot. We jumped. We called on the folk traditions of Sardinia and the Basque Country. We sang. We jumped some more. We committed. Now we promise to persevere. We promise to be open. We promise to do our best. Igor and Moreno are two London based dance artists making and presenting work across Europe. They create dance performances to reclaim the role of the theatre as a place for assembly whilst exploring the cathartic properties of live performance. Idiot-Syncrasy has been touring internationally since its premiere and has been nominated for a National Dance Award, and a Total Theatre Award. It was selected for Aerowaves and the British Council Showcase 2015.

​​DollyWould: The Cloning of a Superstar. The first stages of a new show by Sh!t Theatre on the signifier and the signified. Oh look, Sh!t Theatre again, what is it this time? Oh, is it unemployment? Is there a crisis? Is the government doing something wrong again? No it’s a show about Dolly Parton. We f*#king love her.

​​They’re pretty special. They give a person the opportunity to express themselves. They can be read. They can be heard. They can be spoken. They allow us to communicate with one another. I was always told; it’s not what you say, but how you say it. But is that true?

Bryony is an outrageous, hilarious and fearless performance artist from London.

Tim is an outrageous, hilarious and fearless account manager from a top advertising agency.

Bryony and Tim are a couple. Bryony spends most of her life on tour, trying her best to change the world. Tim spends most of his life at a desk trying his best to sell the world. Six months into their relationship, Bryony found out that Tim suffers from severe clinical depression. He had kept it a secret for a very long time. Fake it ‘til you Make it is Bryony Kimmings’ award-winning, Edinburgh sell-out new work about clinical depression and men made in collaboration with Tim.

A wickedly warming, brutally honest and heart-breaking show about the wonders and pitfalls of the human brain, being in love and what it takes to be a ‘real man’.

All the onstage deaths in Shakespeare performed by “four of the greatest clowns working in Britain.” (Time Out)

There are 74 onstage deaths in the works of William Shakespeare - 75 if you count the black ill-favoured fly killed in Titus Andronicus. From the Roman suicides in Julius Caesar to the death fall of Prince Arthur in King John; from the carnage at the end of Hamlet to snakes in a basket in Antony & Cleopatra. And then there’s the pie that Titus serves his guests.

Spymonkey will perform them all - sometimes lingeringly, sometimes messily, sometimes movingly, sometimes musically, always hysterically. The four ‘seriously, outrageously, cleverly funny clowns' (Time Magazine) will scale the peaks of sublime poetry, and plumb the depths of darkest depravity. It may even be the death of them.

Intrepid traveller Volker Gerling is a passionate creator of flipbooks. Since 2003 he has walked over 3,500km throughout Germany, inviting people to visit his travelling Flipbook “thumb cinema” exhibition and creating flipbook portraits of some of the people he meets along the way.

In a series of enchanting and precious moments the people he photographed come to life on screen as he shares the heart-warming and moving stories behind each encounter.

Portraits in Motion is a delicate and beautiful experience that ‘lets you see the world a little differently’ (What’s On Stage).

Astrangely compelling story with live music, vigorous dance moves, understandable words and a fair bit of profound (probably life-changing) body movement. From the internationally acclaimed maker of Before Us (Mayfest 2015), She Was Probably Not A Robot and The Beast, collaborator on Doctor Brown and His Singing Tiger and The Lounge Room Confabulators. Bowden’s unique style of DIY theatre blends “bizarre storytelling and perfect physical comedy” (Edinburgh Guide) with “a vulnerability that is not often seen in comedy” (Broadway Baby).

A symphony for one. Tuning forks are traditionally used for pitching – unheard by audiences – but up close they create beautiful, surprisingly resonate sounds as instruments in their own right. By blending these metallic tones with live voice, two performers create a vivid and unique sound world for individual audience members. This is a new short piece by Verity Standen, celebrated Bristol composer of Mmm Hmmm and the immersive choral piece HUG.

After sell out shows in London and Bristol, Impermanence Dance Theatre re-stage Da-Da-Darling by firelight in the haunting portrait gallery, at the venue where it was created, the Historic Grade 1 Listed Baroque Mansion, Kings Weston House. Seven performers combine in a thrilling spectacle that pays tribute to surrealist artist Max Ernst’s 1930 collage-novel ‘A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil.’ A violent criticism of man, told through a nightmarish succession of sexually subversive and religiously abusive images – where love somehow remains ever present. Listed in the top 10 dance productions of 2015 in The Observer Critics Review, Da-Da-Darling is beautiful, terrifying and farcical, a kaleidoscopic world of intoxicating sights and sounds, which unfolds before you like a red carpet rolled out to a stormy sea.

Can I Start Again Please tells parallel narratives in parallel languages (English & British Sign Language) which intersect, diverge & build to create a mesmerising mix of verbal and visual theatre.

The piece desiccates and dissects childhood trauma via an exploration of Wittgenstein and semantics. What is being investigated is the power and failings of

language - language that tells and hide truths - sparring

across the the heard and the unheard, the spoken and the unspoken.

The script is poetic and full of humour and is performed by Sue MacLaine and Nadia Nadarajah with a bright, coursing and relaxed reciprocity.

Forget everything you know about magic and magicians…Now remember it all again. This is not a magic show is a performance of and about sleight-of-hand magic: its invisible mechanics, its clichés, and what it tells us about live theatre and make-believe. In a conversational yet crafted approach, Vincent Gambini presents astonishing close-up magic that invites us to question how enchantment and wonder are produced within a theatrical situation. Possibly the first of its kind, Vincent Gambini’s This is not a magic show is part performance-lecture, part deconstructed showbiz, and part magic tricks that leave you, like, omg.

October 23rd, 1956, a revolution started in Hungary. Hungarians fought Soviet troops on the streets, from their homes, and from the Corvin Cinema, the Revolutionary Headquarters. Deborah Pearson loosely “translates” the entirety of the Hungarian film that was meant to be premiered at that cinema on that day. A 1956 Hungarian Football comedy gives way to the stories of a writer who lost his name, an actor who lost his voice, and a country that lost its revolution.

“The stars are out. Dancing under the open sky makes a felt difference. It moves itself differently. And these age-old sediments no longer stick to my bones, melting in the blood.” Michael Klien Night. We find a space in the margins of the city in which to gather: to start an ad-hoc ceremony, to stamp our feet and shake our limbs, to dance in the face of an ending. Following sell-out premiere performances at Mayfest 2015, Of Riders and Running Horses rides out again for 2016. See it again, or if catch it for the first time as part of a major national tour. Of Riders and Running Horses is a stirring and visceral new dance event by Still House created as a communal animation of urban spaces. A group of female dancers and a live band conjure a new kind of old dance, an insistent rhythm, a joyful step into what it means to move together. The music is a rider and we are running horses. Directed by Dan Canham with ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR Laura Dannequin.

​​Why do we love? When would we kill? How do we learn? Why do we believe in the unbelievable? What is memory? Why do we keep doing things that hurt us? T hese were questions for religion and philosophy till about a hundred years ago. Then science joined the conversation and, according to science, pretty much everything we think about ourselves is wrong. Inspired by the controversial book by Lauren Slater, Opening Skinner’s Box is a whistle-stop tour of the scientific quest to make sense of what we are and who we are, told through ten great psychological experiments and the stories of the people who created them.

​​Apiñata gently swaying on an empty stage. A matter-of-fact ghost. A ghoulish choir. A pantomime horse where the front and back can’t agree. It Folds is a reverie. A dream-like story of death, grief, beauty and humanity. It’s a poignant and humorous portrait of the tragicomic events that shape our everyday lives. Fusing the distinctive choreography of Junk Ensemble with the innovative theatricality of Brokentalkers, It Folds features a large cast of Irish and local Bristol performers brought together to present an assortment of characters who attempt to find connection through their shared humanity.

Created in collaboration with local primary school children, Lookout is a one-to-one encounter between one adult audience member and one child performer taking place somewhere high up overlooking their city. Together performer and audience member look out at the city they see before them and imagine what it may look like in the future. Through their quiet conversation they consider architecture and urban planning, technology and futurology, natural disasters and science fictions. In the process a space is created for an exchange between two people who might not normally meet, about a future they may or may not share. Lookout is an attempt to consider big questions in a small way. Developed through a series of workshops with local children, each new version of the piece is unique to the city it is created in and the people who call that place home.

Would you let a child make you over? Well, now is your chance. Step inside the Fashion Machine with this unique combination of performance, art and design, where teams of local kids interview selected audience members who then give up the clothes on their backs. The kids then have 55 minutes to stitch, cut, sew, accessorize, and turn the brave audience members’ outfits into new works of wearable fashion art. Live close-ups of the kids at work fill one wall in a giant projected slideshow. The audience circles a Dr. Seussian workshop space as the kids go wild. The climax is a fashion show where the patrons don the new duds and walk the catwalk.

Interviews with the kids at the end of the night see them discussing the creative choices that inspired chopped-off sleeves, altered necklines and blinged-out accoutrements.

Get there early to pick up an “I’m In” sticker, and you may be lucky enough to have your clothes redesigned (but remember, it’s permanent!) If you just want to watch the spectacle, grab a chicken sticker and the kids will keep their hands off.

A male photographer is taking a photograph of a female celebrity. She wants to be reinvented. She wants to be For Real.

Wrecking Ball is a conversation about consent, power, authorship and putting words in other people’s mouths. It questions about how far we’ll go, how much we think we’re in control and how the world around us is shaped by images.

Wrecking Ball is a play for two performers and an audience. The piece playfully manipulates theatrical conventions and narrative expectations, revealing the seductive power of make believe and the subtle abuses of power that dictate our relationships – with each other, with art and with language. The authors of the work are also the performers and the lines between truth and fiction, and consent and coercion blur until they’re destroyed.

A 75 minute tour-de-force of high-octane mime comedy.

Nautilus is the widely lauded follow-up to cult sell-out physical comedies Kraken (London International Mime Festival ’15) and Squidboy.

Mad, risqué and uniquely eccentric, this is award-winning and internationally acclaimed idiot Trygve Wakenshaw’s Bristol debut.

A psychedelic ride, and a wonky homage to the woman damned for destroying the Beatles, O No! borrows Yoko Ono’s art instructions to ask whether falling in love is always catastrophic. A sell-out success and one of the most talked about shows of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2015.

It’s about reckless optimism, avant-garde art and what we might yet have to learn from the hippies.

Co-directed by Wendy Hubbard.