The 8th PULSE Fringe Festival is set to get your heart racing with a heaving schedule of contemporary performing arts spanning all arts forms. For 18 days (29 May to 15 June) PULSE offers an around-the-clock mini-season of events, live gigs and performances. With 36 shows spanning theatre, dance, music, live and visual arts in 6 venues across Ipswich, the Fringe is a full-on, immersive arts experience that will leave you breathless!
Established in 2001 by the New Wolsey Theatre, PULSE provides a platform for new and emerging artists and fresh approaches to performance in all disciplines, nurturing artistic ambition and excellence and showcasing the most cutting-edge, boundary-breaking performing arts from the region and beyond. “PULSE is an important platform and it’s very exciting that Ipswich has become a showcase for new talent,” says Festival Director Stephen Freeman.
PULSE 08 features work at various stages of development, giving participants the opportunity to try out new work when audience feedback can make a critical contribution. PULSE facilitates this by inviting audiences to take part in ‘talkbacks’ and encouraging open discussion. “The audience’s response to work at this point in its development is invaluable,” says Stephen. “It is also an interesting experience for the audience who rarely has an opportunity to contribute and it’s possible that some of this work will be developed further for PULSE 09, giving them the opportunity to see how the work has progressed.”
PULSE 08 opens with an early development of Beachy Head by Analogue Theatre, the second show in a trilogy which began with Mile End (which the New Wolsey presented as one of it’s Pick of the Fringe shows from Edinburgh last year). Analogue brings this story to life in their innovative and cinematic performance style, mixing 3D animation, object manipulation, text and arresting physical performance.
Like Mile End, The Mother’s Bones and Bacchic were critically acclaimed in Edinburgh last year. Devised by Kath Burlinson, The Mother’s Bones is an uncompromising solo performance piece combining theatre, movement, visual art, music, song and sound. It uses no words, but tells the story of three generations of women and their relations to each other. At times profoundly harrowing, at times celebratory, it is a mythical tale to stimulate the imagination, stir the soul and stun the heart. You can see The Mother’s Bones at Sir John Mills Theatre on Thursday 12 June.
Bacchic is a provocative, seductive and highly visual update of Euripides' classic Greek tragedy, The Bacchae. Featuring spectacular aerial theatre, an inspired musical score and innovative lighting, the show is an exciting, playful and powerful marriage of circus and narrative performed by actors of dionysus’s Artistic Director Tamsin Shasha which you can see at The New Wolsey Theatre on Saturday 14 June.

The Visible Men (The New Wolsey Theatre on Saturday 7 June) is the latest work from the UK’s only practitioners of comedy dance, Tom Roden and Pete Shenton, aka New Art Club. New Art Club’s shows are a mixture of philosophical comedy, live art and dance, serious and silly in just about equal measure. Tom and Pete have been described as ‘the Morecambe and Wise of dance’, ‘the Reeves and Mortimer of contemporary choreography’, ‘the Gilbert and George of dance’ and ‘back-achingly, stomach creasingly funny.’

This year PULSE is working in collaboration with The Town Hall Galleries to facilitate participation for contemporary artists. Six artists have been included with work ranging from painting to sound installation. “It is a very exciting opportunity for developing artists,” says Julia Devonshire, Arts Project Officer at The Town Hall Galleries. “Art incorporates an enormous range of talents and its inclusion in PULSE acknowledges this and gives it a critical relevance within the arts at its most inclusive. We are very excited to work with PULSE and looking forward to a great Festival.” Work will be displayed in The Chamber at Town Hall Galleries and at the New Wolsey Theatre.

The other PULSE 08 venues are Sir John Mills Theatre, The Steamboat Tavern, The Regent Theatre Ballroom and New Wolsey Studio.

This is Stephen Freeman’s first time to be PULSE Festival Director. “I think that the festival offers an amazing opportunity for the residents of Ipswich and beyond to gain access to work that wouldn’t ordinarily be performed in the town. It’s like our very own slice of Edinburgh. On one single night in the festival you can see a piece of visual art, watch a play in the most unusual surroundings followed by some of the most cutting edge technology–made music! And if that don’t float your boat, what about seeing rehearsed readings from some of the most exciting new theatre companies? We’ve got it all - from gay theatre to contemporary sitcom!”

Visit www.pulsefringe.com for this year’s performance schedule and for lots more information about PULSE events. Tickets range from £3 to £7 and can be booked on 01473 295900.