Our March PILOT Nights took place in the newly refurbished studio space at the AE Harris Building in the Jewellery Quarter Area of Birmingham. Co-Pilots Francesca Millican-Slater and Sarah Hamilton Baker curated an eclectic mix of performances from some of the UK’s most exciting theatre companies.
Demi Nandhra
Life Is No Laughing Matter
Life is no laughing matter but depression is. I hope it is! I’m fed up of it not being…..funny!
Demi Nandhra for the sake of her own sanity is doing a show about her depression. A ‘funny’ show about depression. Delving into her past, present and not so much her future,( she doesn’t like the future, it scares her). She will talk of feelings, causes and her cure (yes she has a cure). Their will be a giant edible happy pill (antidepressant) – so we can all have a nibble and feel better, a canoe, 2 yellow PVC raincoats (for the storm), a onesie for comfort and Yoko – The puppy that Demi may have or may not bought to feel better.
K.I.D Theatre Company –
TAH: The African Heterosexual
TAH: The African Heterosexual shows a young man’s relationship in defining his manhood and sexuality.
K.I.D are made up of three young, black african theatre-makers; David Gilbert, Kayode Ewumi and Ibrahim Shote. K.I.D artistically aim to create theatre that can only be made by none other than K.I.D. K.I.D exist because they believe there are still discriminate concepts today of what manhood is and especially of what an African man is which need to be challenged.
Tina Hofman
Lucid Interval
Someone completes you, and lights up your life in every possible way. But what happens when that someone suddenly disappears?
That void left behind and the division of a life in to two distinct halves – one with them, one without – is at the root of this new piece from Tina Hofman. Inspired by our most private places and the way our minds and bodies deal with a sudden change in our reality, Lucid Interval investigates the space we come to inhabit between normality and chaos when sudden, shocking loss occurs.
Zoo Indigo
Silver Screen Dreams
Zoo Indigo’s Silver Screen Dreams and Celluloid Souls is an interactive and unique digital performance experience exploring our obsession with the cinema. Using live video feeds and pre-recorded material the performers dive in and out of projections, crossing the celluloid divide. Zoo Indigo use audience contribution to create a tailor-made multi media performance, including re- enactments of the spectators’ favourite films, and memories related to the cinema. The performance humorously addresses representation of gender in different movie genres, with a delicious assortment of cross-dressing, miscellaneous costumes, make up, and fake moustaches.
Zoo Indigo is a contemporary performance company based in Nottingham, playing with the innovative integration of new technologies. Through the use of humour, popular music and the reprocessing of cultural images fused with autobiography, the company explores the banalities of the everyday juxtaposed to the grandeur of the cinematic.
Venue: AE Harris
Initially Stan’s Cafe took a recently vacated portion of the A E Harris & Co (Birmingham) Ltd. factory for a six week period to stage Of All The People In All The World. Audiences responded so enthusiastically to the venue and Stan’s Cafe liked it so much that talks were initiated between theatre company and metal fabricators with a view to securing the space for performance on a long term basis.
The ambition was for this space to provide a location for devising, rehearsing and presenting Stan’s Cafe shows and to become a focus for the development of an independent theatre scene within Birmingham. For its first two years @ AE Harris operated under significant subsidy from Stan’s Cafe. Any hire fees went to off-setting rent or improving the venue’s facilities.
In November 2010 Arts Council England recognised the contribution AE Harris makes to the local theatre scene and agreed to provide a degree of financial assistance. An agreement is in place with A E Harris that the venue can continue until the site is finally sold for redevelopment.
Co-Pilots:
Francesca Millican-Slater is a solo writer and performer, she tells stories directly to you, she never pretends your not there. Most of the stories are true, steeped in history, though some times she makes things up. Just for fun. She loves a power point but she’s trying to wean herself off them.
Last year Francesca premiered The Forensics of a Flat (and other stories) at Birmingham Repertory Theatre along with a national preview tour.She created two brand new work’s My Dearest Girls: The Letters Book and My Dearest Girls: Helen’s Story based on the letters sent between a group of Shropshire women between 1917-1920. Made in collaboration with Arts Alive and Shropshire Archives, this duo of performances has been touring across Shropshire and will continue to tour nationally until 2018. She is creating a performance around GOLD! as part of the Behold Festival exploring the Staffordshire Hoard at The New Vic this summer.
Sarah Hamilton Baker is a theatre-maker and performer from London who now calls the second city her home.
She makes solo pieces of work, that are lead by her exposing too much about her personal life. Her work is visual and funny – a fusion between theatre, performance art, and comedy.
She also makes film, directs shows, works as a performer and deviser with wonderful people and companies: Amy Lord and Louise Orwin, Tin Box, Little Earthquake and Companis………and she forces people to dance in a circle (though that’s usually just at weddings.)
Sarah is a theatre maker on the Birmingham REP’s Foundry programme and is currently developing a show called Lady Lust. Using pornography as the starting point for an investigation into what it means to be a woman in the 21st century, Lady Lust is a funny, uncomfortable and honest autobiographical collage.
PILOT Nights is funded by Arts Council England and The Sir Barry Jackson Trust.
PILOT Nights: October 2015 
