Hull Truck Launches 6th GROW season

Hull Truck is proud to announce the launch of the new Grow Season! Grow is Hull Truck Theatre’s artist development programme for artists at any age or stage in their career, designed to provide opportunities and support exciting new performances.

This year’s programme will feature new exciting work from local, regional and national artists and, for the first time, will include a series of Edinburgh Festival Fringe previews. Audiences are invited to see new work either in development, tour-ready or just a sapling of an idea.  

The Grow Season will launch with our annual Grow Festival, now in its 6th year, taking place between Tuesday 7 and Saturday 11 May. The festival will feature cutting edge performances, master classes, talks, workshops and will provide the participants with a chance to network.

After kicking off on a poetic note with the Roundhouse Poetry Slam (Tue 8pm, Pay What You Can), the festival will present Blokes, Fellas, Geezers, a charming one-man show that explores the concept of masculinity (Wed 7pm, £10), as well as Norris & Parker’s hotly anticipated sketch comedy Burn the Witch (8pm, £10). Then starts The Welcome Revolution, a call to arms with mugs in hands (Thu 4pm and 6.30pm, £10), and will be followed by the story of Sophie, who, pregnant and uninsured, must raise the funds to deliver her unborn baby (First Time Out: Mumsy, by Lydia Marchant 8pm, £6).

On Friday Tilly Branson will present the fascinating concept of Aunting in her brand-new show (6pm, Pay What You Can), while the performance titled User Not Found will explore the complex meanings that digital technology can acquire during – and after! – our lifetimes (Fri 10 and Saturday 11 May, £10). Equally engaging, Can I Touch Your Hair (Fri 8pm, £10) is a bold yet humorous piece that explores the struggle of having Afro hair, but more importantly, the pride. Jamie Wood will conclude the festival by inviting the audience to a dance party with ghosts, in a forest, in our theatre (I am a Tree, Sat 8pm, £12.50).

Grow Festival will include workshops dedicated to a variety of subjects ranging from tour booking (Wed 11am – 3.30pm, £10) and auditions (Wed, Middle Child’s Actor’s Gym, 2pm – 5pm at Darley’s, free event) to theatre funding bids (HTT surgeries, Thu 10am - 2pm, free event) and playwriting (Thu 5.30pm – 7.30pm, free event).

Participants will also be able to attend a directing master class with Barrie Rutter OBE (Thu, 10am – 1pm, £10), learn about Amanda Huxtable’s experience as a Change Maker in the theatre industry (Line of Change, Thu 5pm – 6pm, Pay What You Can), and meet Absolutely Cultured’s Hull Independent Producers (drop-in session, Thu 3-4pm, free event). On Saturday, the multi artform 154 Collective will talk about their experience whilst making the first midscale theatre production about the life of Nellie Bly (7pm, free event).

There will also be an opportunity for networking as part of Slate Social (Fri 7pm, free event) and the festival will conclude with an after party – where all festivalgoers are invited!

The Grow season will continue with a series of innovative performances: Walking Towards Ithaca (Fri 24 May, 8pm, £12.50) reflects on the complexities of human connection, while 1975 (Sat 25 May, 3pm, free event) is a piece still in development that renders the first referendum in Europe. Modern day topics such as nationality, feminism, the #MeToo movement, and disability are explored in Status (Wed 29 May, 8pm, £12.50), Beach Body Ready (Fri 31 May – Sat 1 June, £12.50), Velvet (Wed 5 June, 8pm, £12.50), and Another England (Thu 27 June, 8pm, £12.50). Award- winning local company Silent Uproar will share an early draft of their next project, Our Neon Children (Thu 6 June, 8pm, Pay What You Can), while Jamie Wood returns to talk about rivalry and love in his new show Beating McEnroe (Fri 28 June, 8pm, £12.50).

For the first time, Grow will also include Edinburgh Festival Fringe previews right here, in the heart of Hull. The previews will feature performances by multi-award-winning comedian and Hull native Jack Gleadow, Edinburgh award nominee Lucy Beaumont, The Kagools, Middle Child, queer artist Nathaniel Hall, and Hull-born comedian Richard Stott.

The unique, dynamic atmosphere of The Edinburgh Fringe Festival will be recreated on 13 July, when the best of Hull’s homegrown theatre will take over our theatre. Get ready to be wowed by three exceptional shows: Beach Body Ready, Standing Too Close on Our Own in The Dark, and Slime. The performances are part of the 2019 Hull Takeover, produced by Absolutely Cultured through their Hull Independent Producer Initiative, in partnership with Middle Child, supported by Hull Truck Theatre and Back To Ours.

Adam Pownall, Producer at Hull Truck Theatre, says:

“We are proud to bring together local artists with regional and national artists and companies to network, develop and grow as part of our new Grow Season. Spanning 3 months May – July, the season includes tour-ready performances, work-in-progress sharings and ‘First Time Out’ presentations. The season is multi-themed and includes work by racially diverse, working-class, disabled and queer artists and companies with a commitment to presenting work with an equal balance in gender parity. We are also able to showcase work from our supported artists including Norris & Parker, The Roaring Girls, The Herd, Silent Uproar and playwright Lydia Marchant. All of this, plus our packed schedule of workshops, talks and events with leading experts in their artistic fields means we’ll share our most action-packed artist development programme yet.”