Following the success of last year’s event The Kings Theatre will be once again opening the Spring season with an open day event on Saturday 23rd January from 10.00am – 5.00pm. Now is your chance to get behind the scenes and discover the secrets of the theatre:
Drama:
Professional Workshops for all ages, and your chance to join the new Kings Youth Theatre.
Dance:
Professional workshops for children, Street Dance, and your chance to audition for the English Youth Ballet.
Art and Literature:
Be inspired by the theatre’s wonderful archive items and create a piece in response. The workshops will be lead by two professional artists and are available to adults and children. In collaboration with Aspex Gallery and the Libaries Service.
Film:
Filming of the documentary The Kings throughout history. What can you remember? This is your chance to tell the Theatre what you love about The Kings. In collaboration with City Eye. The theatre will also be screening The Caretaker (filmed at The Kings in 2009).
Technical:
Trips to the Fly Floor, Lighting Desk and Follow Spot demonstrations.
Plus stage make up, dressing up, meet the characters, tours, presentations and a heritage display throughout the day. Tickets are only £2.50 and all the workshops are free.
Readers of The News have voted and the finalists for The News Guide short film award from the summer’s Shorts::Cut Film Festival are:
Me Plus One – directed by Russell Oastler. (Documentary) 21 year-old single mum Vicki Parks faces the harsh realities and frustrations of choosing to have a child at a young age. 9 minutes
Mark – directed by James Harrison. (Documentary) Professional BMX rider and local resident Mark Webb ignores medical advice after breaking his back, and travels to China to compete in the international X-Games 10 minutes.
Ballet School for Over 50s – directed by Stuart McKears. (Documentary) Open day performances and interviews with the members of the Balandis Lilley Ballet school in Bognor Regis – 4 minutes.
The Club – directed by Guy Murray-Brown. (Documentary). An enigmatic and humorous look at the people who work at the Elegance strip club in Portsmouth – 9 minutes.
The Girl Of My Dreams – directed by Russell Oastler. (Documentary) Adam Pacitti is searching for his true love, a girl he met in a dream. (4 minutes)
Less Than Romantic – Directed by Simon Hatt. (Comedy) Alex has two days to find a girlfriend, recover his brothers half of the inheritance, and polish the trophies! No pressure – 10 Minutes
The winner will be announced at the Guide Awards ceremony on Sunday 16th November at the Kings Theatre.
Legendary comedian Dave Spikey will be performing his stand up show at The Kings Theatre on the 28th of September. Probably best known for co-writing and co-starring with Peter Kay as Jerry St Clair in Phoenix Nights and more recently as team captain on four series of Ch4s 8 out of 10 Cats, this show is his contribution to improving the health of the nation. Tickets are £17.50, check the Kings Theatre website for full details.
On Saturday 5th The Kings Theatre will be showing the film Hairspray and actively encouraging the audience to sing along. The evening begins with a live show in which your host will lead you through a vocal warm-up, judge the audience fancy dress competition and award the prizes. Costumes are not compulsory but they are highly recommended and you will be amazed at the inventiveness on display. The host will then show you how to use your free goody bag throughout the film and suggest some appropriate heckles and accompanying actions (such as hissing Michelle Pfeiffer, yelling “Cheese” at Corny Collins and, of course, cheering on Tracy).
Tickets are £14.50 Adult £11 Children and a special family ticket of £20 for four seats.
Shorts::Cut, in partnership with The University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth’s No.3 Cinema and The Kings Theatre, organises screenings in Portsmouth and Southsea of short films by regional filmmakers. This year the screenings will be held at Portsmouth’s independent arts cinema, No.3, in the library in Guildhall Square and The Kings Theatre, Southsea. Selected films will also be shown as part of subsequent events during the Portsmouth Film Festival.
The Kings Theatre
Sunday 23 August, 2009 from 7pm
Tickets £3 advance, £4 on the door
No.3 Cinema
Central Library
Thursday 27 August, 2009 from 7:30pm
Tickets £3
Short films made in Portsmouth and the surrounding area could also win the award for Best Local film at The Guide Award 2009, organised by The News. Last year’s winner was “Stolen Youth”. For more information, go to The Guide award for Best Local Short Film.
Check the Kings Theatre Facebook event and the No. 3 Facebook event for full listings of all of the short films to be shown on both evenings.
A quick reminder about the Kings Theatre showing the film Tommy tomorrow night. Tickets are only £4 and you get to see Southsea (and The Who) as they were in the 70s. See the Facebook event for all the details.
The Who’s rock musical Tommy has very strong links with Southsea, much of the outside scenes were filmed here and Ken Russell was also on hand to document the Pier burning down (nothing to do with the production!). As well as the location shots Southsea’s own Kings Theatre played host to Elton John’s iconic Pinball Wizard too! To celebrate Tommy’s anniversary The Kings Theatre will be showing the film on the 24th July and after will be holding some background talks about the film too. Only £4, tht’s cheaper than seeing a film at the Odeon plus you’ll be sat in a seat right where someone in the film watched Elton and his boots. Unmissable.
We are very happy to announce the details for our Primary exhibition, with it’s preview night on Friday 1st June at Bonzo in Albert Road. We had well over 500 submitted photos by well over 100 different local photographers, all using their mobile phone cameras and an assortment of different apps like Instagram, Camera+, etc. The exhibition format itself will be something new and previously unseen in Portsmouth in this form and we will be unveiling the winners of competition too, with loads of photography related prizes. There will also be food, drink and some surprises we’ll let you know about nearer the time. This may well be one of the largest community arts projects in the city in relation to the number of people who actively participated and we really hope everyone can make it down to see this absolutely unique view of our city and it’s people.
If you cannot make it down on Friday the exhibition will run through the whole of June so be sure to pop along. After the exhibition we will have an online, interactive gallery of all of the images to form a legacy to the project.
As you may know each year we run a home brew competition in February where the winning brew has the opportunity to be brewed by Irving & Co Brewing Co. and sold around the city in the summer. Last year’s brew, the Strong Island Hopper Ale, was hugely successful being one of Inving’s best selling ales and selling out so quickly it went through a second brew run. This year’s winning ale is Dry Dock No. 1, originally brewed by Lee Immins, went on sale in some of Portsmouth and Southsea’s pubs over the weekend.
We spoke to The Hole in The Wall in Southsea who said the new ale went down a storm with it being their best seller on Sunday and with almost two barrels empty by the end of the Bank Holiday weekend. Those guys at the Hole in The Wall and their regular ale drinkers know their stuff so for us this was amazing early news with the ale.
To officially launch Dry Dock No. 1 we are having a launch party with the lovely souls at The Belle Isle on Thursday evening. The ale will be on full flow, come down and try a pint or two. As well as being on sale all around the city the ale will also be available in Chichester’s Belle Isle too, so you can drink it away from home for the first time too.
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