Hull Truck Theatre launches Grow Season 2022 with bold new theatre and artist development opportunities

Hull Truck Theatre is pleased to announce that its Grow Season makes a welcome live return, supporting artists and developing local talent with a packed programme of performances, sharing workshops and networking opportunities. New and contemporary theatre will inspire audiences and artists, with the final two events in August delivered in partnership with Freedom Festival.

The annual Grow Festival offers a programme for artists of any age and at any point in their careers, featuring cutting edge performances, master classes, talks, workshops and will provide the participants with a chance to network. Spanning across four months, May – August, the season includes tour-ready performances, work-in-progress sharing’s and ‘First Time Out’ presentations. The season is multi-themed and includes work by racially diverse, working-class, and queer artists / companies with a broad age range of producers.

Adam Pownall, Senior Producer at Hull Truck Theatre said: “We are proud to bring together local artists with regional and national artists and companies to network, develop and grow as part of our new Grow Season. Being our 50th Anniversary year of Hull Truck Theatre, we are also very proud to be championing local people and companies from Hull: Hull Truck Young Creators, Writer Kerrie L Marsh, The Roaring Girls, Same Circle, Silent Uproar, and artists in partnership with Freedom Festival. At Hull Truck Theatre we take pride in supporting up and coming artists, especially those who are rooted here in Hull, giving them further opportunities to flourish. This is going to be four months of contemporary theatre that we hope all artists and audiences will be able to enjoy together.”

Grow Festival begins with Hull Truck Theatre’s Young Creators, presenting a fun and thought-provoking piece of sketch-theatre that answers life’s most important question: What Not To Do (Tuesday 3 May), Laura’s lost her temper in Sainsbury’s, Genevieve’s discovered online fan fiction and Nans been radicalised by Facebook.

First Time Out: Duck Pond (Thursday 5 May). Testing family relationships in the wake of activism. A young girl’s plight to save nature unlocks the parallels of home. Kerry L Marsh was a Grow Artist-in- Residence in 2019. Duck Pond was written by Kerrie during the residency.

Family Catwalk Extravaganza (Saturday 7 May). Bring your glamour, glitz and grace and come together with Darren Pritchard / Ghetto Fabulous in a fabulous celebration of self-expression. Four dancers go head-to-head in a dance, fashion, and lip sync competition in an interactive event where the audience decides the winner.

Join the Feeling Fabulous Workshop (Saturday 7 May) to learn to pose and catwalk like a supermodel with Ghetto Fabulous to some classic queer anthems and then sit back and enjoy The Alternative Catwalk Extravaganza (Saturday 7 May). Get involved with this special performance to launch Grow Season as four performers go head-to-head in a dance, fashion and lip-synching competition where the audience once again decides the winner.

Gabby: Open Rehearsal (Friday 12 May). Be part of an open rehearsal of Gabby and help Clem (writer & performer) and Zoey (director extraordinaire) fine-tune a piece of theatre for Edinburgh Fringe ’22.

Grow Launch Party (Saturday 7 May), hosted by The Roaring Girls. Join Hull Truck Theatre for a raucous celebration of Hull’s creative scene. Expect games, laughter, cocktails, mocktails and music as everyone makes new friends.

Gabby: Open Rehearsal (Thursday 12 May). Be part of an open rehearsal of Gabby and help Clem (writer & performer) and Zoey (director extraordinaire) fine-tune a piece of theatre for Edinburgh Fringe ’22. Gabby has been watching humans since she was banished from the pearly gates. She has been a witness to the earth heating up and the ice melting, to the corporations taking over the economy and politics, to plastic slowly invading our oceans and to agriculture destroying our rainforests. And now she has her jury in the form of an audience

Skank (Thursday 12 May). Kate could be a successful writer if she could just concentrate. Instead, she needs to recycle this bean can, shag sexy Gary and stop obsessing about her inevitable untimely death. Clementine Bogg-Hargroves delivers “a painfully accurate slice of life” in this witty, dark, and often filthy, one-woman show.

Write a Play in a Day (Saturday 14 May). Join Hull Truck Theatre’s Associate Director Tom Saunders for a deep dive into the fundamental principles of playwriting. Over the course of the FREE session, you’ll develop ideas for dialogue, character and story and create an original ten-minute play by the end of the session.

The Indecent Musings of Miss Doncaster 2007 (Friday 20 May), is a one-woman comedy with balls, heart, and Yorkshire grit. Life for Miss Donny hasn’t quite turned out the way she thought it would when she accepted her sash and crown in Trilogy nightclub back in 2007. No one goes out anymore. Tinder is shit. And she’s pretty sure her dad is dying. Things couldn’t get much worse. Until she sits on a cactus…Naked.

Richard Stott: Afterparty (Saturday 21 May) welcomes the audience to take a seat but not to stay forever! Richard contemplates whether he has missed the boat. His friends have families, 6 figure salaries and houses. He has a level 2 food hygiene certificate and acid reflux. Can you make it through the night after the music has got weird, and your heartburn is saying, “you’re too old for this”? Then join Richard for Afterparty: Stand Up Workshop (Saturday 21 May) to learn or improve your techniques in stand-up comedy. From joke writing to stage presence, this workshop gives an introduction for those new to stand up, and support to develop their act for people with some previous experience.

Leaving Vietnam by Richard Vergette (Thursday 9 June) is a gripping new solo performance by the playwright of Dancing through the Shadows and Dark Winter. When Jimmy Vanderberg leaves the Ford factory in Detroit and volunteers to serve in Vietnam, he wants to prove himself a man. But after the war, Jimmy returns to a country more humiliated than grateful and feels abandoned by those he served. Years later, he is persuaded by the ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign, but a chance visit by the son of a fallen comrade forces him to doubt his convictions.

Farm Fatale (Saturday 11 June). Katie is an actor, comedian and the original ‘Farm Fatale’. Join her in this one-woman west country cabaret so she can show you how to strangle a goose with your bare thighs. Katie is one half of critically acclaimed comedy duo, Norris & Parker, join them for All The Men Are Dead (Saturday 11 June) as they dream for a surreal hour of wild, watery, madness. A debauched late-night sketch show for lovers of the strange, the sordid, the musical and the dark.

The Damned United (Thu 16 June – Fri 17 June). Brian Clough, the enfant terrible of British football, tries to redeem his managerial career and reputation by winning the European Cup with his new team: Leeds United. The team he has openly despised for years, the team he hates, and which hates him. Don Revie’s Leeds. Originally co-produced with Leeds Playhouse, The Damned United takes you inside the tortured mind of a genius slamming up against his limits and brings to life the beauty and brutality of football, the working man’s ballet.

Joined by Annie Kirkman, Alex Mitchell, Kofi Smiles and a host of amazing guests, Social Justice Wizards Live (Saturday 18 June) is a silly, salacious, and shameless Dungeons & Dragons podcast, where a bunch of 30-somethings tackle big topics whilst pretending to be wizards. Join them for a live recording of their real-play adventure and big chats about fantasy, pop-culture, and generally ruining things boomers love.

Contradicktion – Sharing (Saturday 16 July) celebrates LGBTQIA+ culture in all its fabulous forms whilst also questioning some of the toxic cultures that make LGBTQIA+ people feel excluded from within their own safe spaces. Same Circle has worked in collaboration with local LGBTQIA+ people to listen to their far-ranging experiences to create a fun, cheesy and informal show that everyone can enjoy.

White Sun (Wednesday 31 August) is lo-fi solo symphony of words and movement. Conjuring the ghosts of the men who have dominated the stage before him, Will takes us on a journey, navigating the tensions of inheritance, privilege and addiction.

Bloody Elle – A Gig Musical (Wednesday 31 August) is a heart-warming and belly-achingly funny story stuffed full of those stomach-flipping-time-stopping moments, a touch, a glance, a kiss, that everyone will recognise Lauryn Redding (71 Coltman Street) plays Eve in this one woman show about Elle – a young, working-class girl growing up and coming out in the North.