• Date and time: Tuesday 25 October 2022, 7pm
  • Location: TFTV/046 Black Box, School of Arts and Creative Technologies East, Campus East, University of York (Map)
  • Audience: Open to the public
  • Admission: Free admission, booking required

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Event details

Mixing UK Garage with unpretentious class politics, award-winning performance-maker Holly Beasley-Garrigan wants to talk about the fetishisation of the feral female.

Opal Fruits is an anarchic reimagining of the self-congratulatory solo show, and a wry interrogation of faux-working-class, cultural trends. It’s about class, nostalgia and five generations of women from one council estate in South London. The show explores what it means to be an artist who grew up in poverty... to have a stake in two worlds but to feel as though you don't really fit into either.

Recipient of the Pleasance and Bristol Old Vic Ferment National Partnerships Award. Supported by Arts Council England, Bristol Old Vic Ferment, The Pleasance, Knowle West Media Centre, Streatham Space Project.

 

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

An often-spiteful piece, occasionally tender, aesthetically pleasing and very, very poignant.

Everything Theatre, as seen at Edinburgh Fringe 2022

★ ★ ★ ★

Humour fills the show

Bristol Live

★ ★ ★ ★

A quiet slice of genius

The Wee Review, as seen at Edinburgh Fringe 2022

★ ★ ★ ★

[A] skilled, funny, angular performance

ThreeWeeks Edinburgh, as seen at Edinburgh Fringe 2022

★ ★ ★ ★

Bristol Post

★ ★ ★ ★

Breaking The Fourth Wall

★ ★ ★ ★

Plays To See

 

fizzes with feeling and love and anger and silliness

Bristol 24/7

An invigoratingly punk experience

The Scotsman, as seen at Edinburgh Fringe 2022

Beasley-Garrigan is an incendiary charismatic presence throughout

Life As Theatre

One of my all-time favourite shows

Paul Smith, Artistic Director - Middle Child Theatre

Truly one of the best pieces of theatre I have seen

Audience feedback, as seen at Edinburgh Fringe 2022

So refreshing...unlike anything I’ve seen

Audience feedback, as seen at Edinburgh Fringe 2022

Utterly engaging

Lyn Gardner, Stagedoor

One to watch

A Younger Theatre

About the performer

Holly Beasley-Garrigan

Holly is a Performance-Maker, Choreographer, Movement Director and Performer with a background spanning Theatre, Dance, Music and Live Art.

Concerned with re-claiming space - as a queer, female artist who grew up on benefits - she likes making anarchic work that seriously questions the traditional ways we’re permitted to create and consume art. Holly specialises in devised, site-specific, immersive and inter-disciplinary performance for unusual spaces and audiences.

Previous acclaim includes a Scotsman Fringe First Award & MTN Innovation Award for Fine Chisel’s Dumbstruck (2013); ThreeWeeks Editors' Award for Fine Chisel’s Edinburgh Season (2012); Best Collective Award for The Flanagan Collective’s Adelaide Season (2016); Vault Festival Outstanding Contribution Award for The Guild of Misrule’s The Great Gatsby (2017).

Venue details

  • Wheelchair accessible