A team of live arts performers is inviting people to join them on a six-hour mystery moonlit exploration of Nine Elms and Vauxhall as part of the Wandsworth Arts Fringe Festival.
The Midnight Run, which is set to take place on Saturday 14 May, will be led by a team of artists with talents ranging from puppetry to parkour but they are keeping tight-lipped about what their audience will experience on the night. It will involve a midnight puppest show at the Royal College of Arts’ StudioRCA Riverlight.
The brainchild of playwright Inua Ellams, the descendent of nomadic Nigerian tribesmen, the Midnight Run has been held in cities all over the world and is designed for the open-minded adventurer.
The Midnight Run is expected to be a highlight of the Wandsworth Arts Fringe Festival, which runs from Friday 6 May until Sunday 22 May.
Other highlights include:
• A series of eight installation workshops at the Southside Shopping Centre in Wandsworth hosted by ActionSpace Artists. Visit www.actionspace.org for more information.
• A zine (or fanzine) afternoon at Putney Library, from 2pm until 5pm on Saturday 7 May, featuring talks, feminist-punk zine-writer, Nina of Echo Publishing in Belgium, zine-writer and activist Vicky Smith and Brazilian zine-writer Tali. There will also be an exhibition of zine work by Fliss Collier, who has been making zines for 20 years.
• On Sunday 8 May and Sunday May 22, 104 Years Theatre will be performing their one-act play Beerey, a dramatization of the experiences of a wife and daughter of a man caught up in an international drugs bust. The shows are on at the The Cat’s Back in Wandsworth.
• Alphabetti Theatre and N16 Theatre are performing Frank Sumatra, a play by Mike Yeaman about a couple who sponsor an orphaned orang-utan only to have the animal turn up on their doorstep. The play has a run for eight performances between Monday May 9 and Wednesday May 18 at the Bedford Pub in Balham.
• Join the CoDa Dance Company for an interactive “silent disco” performance at The Cat’s Back in Wandsworth on Wednesday 11 May and Thursday 12 May. Buy tickets here
Most of the events are free but places for some activities are limited and must be booked in advance.
Curator for the Nine Elms Vauxhall Partnership Anne Mullins said: ““We have a really exciting programme of events and attractions this year, designed to celebrate this burgeoning community, its heritage and historical importance to London.”
After eight years of major investment Nine Elms on the South Bank is now coming to life and is on course to become a vibrant new central London quarter.
The area’s key attractions will included a revived Battersea Power Station, the new US and Dutch embassies, a new centre for London’s foodies at New Covent Garden Market, Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, the new Nine Elms Park and a new stretch of Thames Riverside Walk lined with cafes, bars, shops and galleries.
The district is being shaped by world-leading architects, developers and planners to create a truly mixed-use district with real city centre vitality.
A district-wide cultural strategy is hard-wiring cultural uses and spaces through each new development to ensure the area reaches its full potential as a new centre for arts and creativity on the South Bank.
Two new Tube stations are being built, alongside new schools, around 4,000 affordable homes, health centres, high-speed data networks, a second river bus pier and a new cycling and pedestrian network.
The regeneration programme is privately funded and does not benefit from taxpayer funding.
For more information visit the festival web page
Start date: 06/05/2016
End date: 22/05/2016
