A festival will be showcasing the best of Latinx British talent through theatre, music, film and talks this October. Bristol-based arts collective Popelei, the female led theatre group behind the award-winning theatre show Manuelita, has announced the return of PAPAYA Fest.
Running from October 7 until October 15, PAPAYA Fest aims to champion female, Latinx and LGBTQIA+ voices within its fusion of British and Latin American cultures. Taking place at The Wardrobe Theatre and The Old Market Assembly, the second edition of the festival will be jam-packed with shows making their South West debut such as Pepa Duarte’s Eating Myself.
Attendees can also expect three more shows coming straight from the Edinburgh Fringe - including Popelei’s own Edinburgh hit PUSH. Returning to PAPAYA Fest will be multi-hyphenated neuro-queer talent Andrea Spisto, whose previous works include Butch Princesa, with their brand-new show El Dizzy Beast .
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On October 9, the Juicy Bits event will once again connect performing artists from Bristol and Latin America to see what creative nuggets they can devise with one another in the span of 48 hours. A new addition to the festival, however, is a film night which will see the screening and discussion of the documentary film Santiago Rising with a question and answer session with filmmaker Nick MacWilliam.
Meanwhile there will also be an evening of talks curated by Bristol-born award-winning theatre director and educator Maria Askew with guest speakers Pablo Navarrete (founder of alborada.net), Dr Karen Tucker (senior lecturer in politics at Bristol University) and Dr Goya Wilson Vasquez (Peruvian/Nicaraguan researcher in the Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at Bristol University) on the politics of Latin America and the resistance to neoliberalism in a changing world.
To kick off both the opening and closing of the festival will be two music nights at Old Market Assembly. Headlining Friday’s opening fiesta will be Bristol based tropical bass band, XAMAN X, bringing their infectious beats of live electronics, traditional Colombian instrumentation and Latin percussion.
This will be followed by a Latin inspired set from female and non binary-led collective Booty Bass, alongside afro-tropical beats supplied by Venezuelan DJ Ivicore. The festival will go out with a bang on the final Saturday of the week with Latinx powerhouse Desta French and her band, followed by a head-to-head tropical bass-off between London’s DJ Bushbby and Movimientos music activist Cal Jadar.
Tamsin Hurtado Clarke, British-Venezuelan founder and artistic director of Popelei, said: “It’s great to bring PAPAYA Fest back to the city and celebrate all the wonderful things that happen when two cultures, inspired by one another, come together.”
For more information on the line-up and for ticket enquiries, you can visit the PAPAYA Fest site by clicking here.
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