Fierce Festival announces full programme

International performance festival Fierce has announced its full programme, including theatre, dance, music and art at various venues Birmingham.

Now in its 17th year, the week-long festival features 50 events with artists hailing from ten countries across four continents.

The programme will showcase new works including Notorious by The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein, which explores pop culture’s portrayal of ‘female monstrosity’ ahead of a run at the Barbican, and dance piece i ride in colour and soft focus no longer anywhere by Last Yearz Interesting Negro aka Jamila Johnson-Small.

$elfie$ by Marikiscrycrycry is an exploration of black and queer aesthetics, Vivian Chinasa Ezugha will debut Ghana Must Go and Britney Spears a new performance exploring xenophobia and cultural stigma and Owen G Parry’s latest piece on fan culture fic.the.sky, featuring European dance theatre collective Medeber Teatro.

Fierce will also host the UK premiere of a trio of Canadian works curated in collaboration with Studio 303, Montreal: Adam Kinner and Christopher Willes’ Listening Choir which invites the audience to walk through Birmingham listening to an altered sonic landscape of the city; Andréa de Keijzer and Erin Robinsong’s performance This ritual is not an accident and Andrew Tay’s Fame Prayer / EATING. Belgian visual theatre artist Louis Vanhaverbeke will turn into a disc-jockey in Multiverse and French choreographer Michele Rizzo’s piece HIGHER explores the agony and ecstasy of clubbing through dance while Simone Aughterlony and Jen Rosenblit present promenade piece Everything Fits in the Room.

Mexican artist Rocio Boliver’s Sweet 60th explores how society has equated ageing with failure. Boliver was once one of Mexico’s top news broadcasters before turning her attention to porno-erotic writing and contemporary performance.

Themes of activism and protest run throughout this year's programme with Steve Lambert’s public installation Capitalism Works For Me! (True/False) which will travel around Birmingham city centre, having previously been staged in Times Square, New York. American activist Preach R Sun stages new work Lord of Flies (Coronation) which addresses histories of slavery and colonialism in Birmingham and award-winning urban activists Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir will make a stop at Fierce on their Trump Depression Hotline Tour.

Fierce will team up with Free Radical to take over Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery for Be The Change at the Edwardian Tearoom on 21 October. Featuring political artists, performances and film screenings there will be a crowd-sourced Protest-Playlist and a chance to go on activist-speed dates with artists.

The festival will also cater for younger audiences with Ant Hampton’s interactive installation Crazy But True in collaboration with Birmingham Repertory Theatre’s The Young Rep. Staged at mac Birmingham, the piece will invite children between 7 and 11 to form a rolling panel of experts.

Fierce will take place across Birmingham with events in Fierce’s brand new Festival Hub in Digbeth, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, The Patrick Centre, Birmingham Hippodrome, Birmingham School of Art, STRYX, ACE Dance and Music, mac, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, AE Harris and the new Birmingham Conservatoire as well as various outdoor locations.

This is artistic director Aaron Wright's first programme at Fierce. He said: "It’s a fresh, exciting, radical programme for a young, diverse city taking in everything from immersive dance shows, new performance art installations, major club nights and late night cabaret."

Fierce runs at various venues throughout Birmingham from 16 to 22 October.