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Review: Hatch Home (Imprint) @ PUSH Festival, Home

  • Hatch at Home (Imprint) features 8 young poets, as part of the PUSH Festival @ HOME
  • Northern Quota reporter Jess Stoddard reviews this piece of spoken word theatre

Spoken word and poetry is not for everyone, but you cannot deny a rise in the interest in this performance art, with poetry slams and open mic nights becoming more and more popular.

One stigma is that “poetry is boring to listen to and for old people”, but this talented company of eight young actors prove that point completely wrong. 

Not only performing over one hour’s worth of poetry, engaging the audience in different physical theatre elements and storytelling, the poets are the performers themselves. 

Directed by Courtney Hayles and dramaturged by Shirley May, Hatch at Home is a research and development piece produced under Young Identity’s Hatch programme, which develops young aspiring spoken word artists and theatre-makers.

Encapsulating the spirit and essence of Manchester, with metaphor and rhythmic performance, Imprint brings the city’s finest and most fierce poets to centre stage.

Photo credit Al Conteh

In an increasingly hostile world, Imprint looks to connect to humanity using poetry and theatre. Poets from Young Identity reflected on the comic, the tragic and everything in between – visual arts, psychology, the news, science, sex and alienation; this show is a microcosm of the human experience. From finding self to fighting self-destruction, Imprint is an expression of how the world has marked us and the marks we strive to make on the world.

The poetry itself is something else – the capacity that this group of performers have is beyond their years. These are the poetry of the future. Or are they the poets now?

This is not just a stand-and-speak poetry show, it is an immersive piece of theatre, with clever links between each piece to showcase the poetry and words that really make the audience think.

Rather than pointing out the pieces and poets individually, the company as a whole needs to be celebrated – all working together in all the pieces to recreate the stories and make this an incredibly thought provoking piece of performance.

The talented cast include Frankie Blaus, Damani Dennisur, Roma Havers, Kayleigh Hicks, Billie Meredith, Naomi Sampson, Haamid Sharif, Jawara Tait.

Photo credit Al Conteh

Young Identity is a Manchester-based spoken word collective who run creative workshops locally, giving young people opportunities to perform their written work across the UK. In the past, they have worked with artists such as Lemn Sissay, Saul Williams, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Kate Tempest and the late Amiri Baraka.

Follow @YoungIDmcr on Twitter or visit youngidentitymcr.com

Hatch Home (Imprint) is showing at HOME on Friday 19th January 2018 at 7:30pm – book here.

Hatch Home is part of HOME’s PUSH festival.