Nine Lives is a one-man show about asylum seeker Ishmael, played by Lladel Bryant, from Zimbabwe and his struggle to gain asylum in Armley. Bryant does a superb job of bringing the character to life, he is animated and convincingly plays Ishmael, and the characters he comes across, with lightness and ease.

The play explores what happens when Ishmael, who is seeking asylum because he is gay, starts the asylum process in Britain. The production focuses on the loss, creation and slippage of identity when faced with such a situation. How much of himself does Ishmael leave in Zimbabwe, how much does he hang onto and how much does he make himself anew?

This production, with beautiful African music introducing new aspects of the story, is a very honest and human account of this confusing, heart breaking and totally transformational time in Ishmael’s life. The script is excellent, the performance strong and honest and the design is elegant. There are no theatrical fireworks here, but there do not need to be, a simple story of Ishmael’s arrival and the difficulty in the decisions he has to make are powerful enough.

The script is written by Zodwan Nyoni, for Leeds playhouse where she was writer in residence in 2014. One of the effective aspects of Ishmael’s story is that it is entirely individual, prompting audience members to realise that asylum seekers are not a homogenous group in the same situation with the same concerns and problems, but each one is a person with their own very particular set of circumstances. Ishmael has to decide if he tells other African asylum seekers about why he is seeking asylum with the knowledge that he might be persecuted by his own countrymen or keep it quiet so he can seek the comfort of those with a shared background.

The narrative never rests, Ishmael is not allowed to settle, his story has no resolution. This echoes the transient, ever changing and never-resolved state that he is in. While he awaits the government’s decision as to whether Britain can harbour him, he has no firm ground to stand on. This production is very pertinent and has a lightness of touch that allows it to transcend the media coverage of this plight and depict one person’s difficult journey to a new start.

Written by Zodwa Nyoni

Performed by Lladel Bryant

Directed by Alex Chisholm

Presented by Leeds Studio in association with West Yorkshire Playhouse

Fleeing from his home in Zimbabwe where a fresh wave of homophobia threatens his life, Ishmael has sought sanctuary in the UK. Dispersed to Leeds, he waits to hear his fate, he waits for a new life to begin amongst strangers. Strangers who don’t trust him and don’t want him there. But not everyone is bad… can he find a place to call home again?

Some of us wanted to stop being afraid.

Some of us wanted to find ourselves.

Some of us wanted to belong.

Zodwa Nyoni (West Yorkshire Playhouse/Channel 4 Writer in Residence 2014) threads together humour and humanity to tell the real personal story behind asylum headlines.

‘the wit of the writing and lightness of the playing style gives the play its depth’ The Herald.

"Nine Lives sheds some light on the reality of being an asylum seeker in modern Britain. Turns out it isn’t huge flat screen TVs and cooking the Queen’s swans. Who knew? "

Nick Ahad, The Yorkshire Post

“ a cracking piece of theatre that offers a glimpse into an issue that’s present in the country and around the world today.”

Adam Bruce, A Younger Theatre

Doors: 7pm
Show starts: 7.30pm

Running time: 55 mins no interval

Age Range (12+)

View the trailer here

Excellent review here too by City of Sanctuary

The play is accompanied by a pre-show creative workshop on 17^th October at 5pm:

Imagine you arrived as a stranger in a strange town. You don't know anyone and you think the people might not be friendly. What do you do?

Using drama and writing techniques, the workshop will explore issues of seeking asylum, and welcoming people who may be new and different. Lead by members of the Nine Lives company it will enable students to create their own responses to the topic and examine the play in more depth.

If your organization would be interested in participating then please contact Harriet Morgan-Shami for more information: harrietjoy78@yahoo.co.uk

This year has seen even more bold, curious and talented young people come to NextGen-Sounds at Trinity Centre to learn more about music production, DJing, and playing musical instruments. Whether writing lyrics, jamming in bands, rapping on the mic or beat matching on the decks- it's all been going on.

Image: Nathalie Codsi in Arnold's Big Adventure by Tessa Bide Productions, photo by Kai Taylor

Spilt Ink Theatre Company have been awarded Trinity’s Young Audiences Commission to develop a new piece of work for 3-10 year olds. The £6,000 commission has been made possible through the support of the Cultural Recovery Fund.

Spilt Ink are a physical theatre company who create playful, joyful and fun work with and for communities and children. During their development commission they will be exploring the themes of home and identity.

“We will create a fantasy ‘home’ rooted in real stories of our multicultural community. It will explore both the physical sensation of home and the cultural meaning of home.  We will question what home means to ourselves, as diverse artists, and to the multicultural local community of East Bristol.”

They will work with Trinity and local community partners to deliver creative and playful workshops with local children and families; sharing and exploring the stories of the many communities living in Lawrence Hill and Easton.

Spilt Ink were selected for the commission following an open call out that received 20 project proposals. Their project, Home, stood out to our parent-led selection panel - made up of staff, volunteers and community reps - for the way it placed co-creation at its core and young people at the centre of deciding where the project journey would take them.

Between its members - Lebanese/Italian actor and theatre maker Nathalie Codsi, Bristol-based international theatre director, community arts facilitator and performer Hester Welch, and British actor, puppeteer/ theatre maker Sarah Cribdon, Spilt Ink have a wealth of experience of working with diverse communities across the world and we look forward to seeing where Home will take them.

If you are interested in finding out more about how to get involved with the Young Audiences Commission as it emerges, please get in touch or sign up to our mailing list.

6.30pm* - 9.00pm ‘Nest’ Anushiye Yarnell

The choreography of NEST has been accumulating over a period of 4 years since the early stages of my pregnancy with my daughter. It is a performance that shows life and art as the same. It is a piece about the function of love in ordinary life. The choreography took form as a settlement- a transformative relationship between my body, mind and memory. It examined in detail the repetition of forms that generated unique variables and deviations of meaning within the dance. This encompassed adaptations on the journey? through pregnancy to motherhood.

The work began to interrogate strands of survival and began to be a piece which related to everything around me. I began to translate the mythological female ability to multitask as an instinctive predisposition to reside within an inter-connective continuum. I began to unravel encounters with evolution and alternative creationist belief systems questioning news as a window to the world. How can I re-map my beliefs through relativistic perspectives- using real and imagined scenarios with my mother and family, negotiations with nature and civilization, the origins of sex, propositions of gender, interfaces with cars and strangers.

NEST examines the utilitarian aspects of fantasy, the fabric of humanity’s constructed reality, both of which are inter-dependent with our ability as human beings to fabricate and imaginary realms.

Part of  Emergenc(i)es  Exhibition, 6th - 17th June: Control and Calculation : Inheriting Liberation : Improvised Publics

*amended time from 7pm

Set between states of being – past and present, dream and waking life, colonised and free, male and female, memory and prescience – Neptune Frost is an invigorating and empowering direct download to the cerebral cortex and a call to reclaim technology for progressive political ends.

This is an Afrika Eye & Trinity Presents partnership with poetry from Shakara followed by a post-screening discussion.

See Afrika Eye's 2023 programme at www.afrikaeye.org.uk.

About Trinity Presents:

This event is part of Trinity Presents - our in-house programme of music and performance, bringing world-class artists and emerging talent to inner-city audiences.

The National Youth Theatre of Great Britain is bringing Auditions to Bristol’s The Trinity Centre on Mon 17th February and Sun 23rd February in 2020 as part of their search for talented young performers and creatives across the UK.

Are you a young performer aged 14-25? Auditions are now open to join The National Youth Theatre of Great Britain, a company of talented actors, musicians, designers and technicians.

Take part in a 3 hour audition preparation workshop followed by a 1-2-1 audition with a monologue of your choice. Bursaries are available.

Please visit our website for more information: www.nyt.org.uk/apply

Successful auditionees will take part in a 2-4 week summer course in London and become members of the National Youth Theatre until they turn 26. National Youth Theatre members have access to professional castings, perform in our National Tours and West End Shows, gain free Creative Leadership and Inclusion training and more.

Be part of something bigger. Join the National Youth Theatre in 2020.

Find out what happens at an audition day: https://soundcloud.com/nytofgb/naitonal-youth-theatre-what-happens-at-an-audition-day

Image credit: To Kill A Mocking Bird, 2018 REP Company directed by Meghan Doyle, photo by Helen Murray

The National Youth Theatre of Great Britain is bringing Auditions to Bristol’s The Trinity Centre on Mon 17th February and Sun 23rd February in 2020 as part of their search for talented young performers and creatives across the UK.

Are you a young performer aged 14-25? Auditions are now open to join The National Youth Theatre of Great Britain, a company of talented actors, musicians, designers and technicians.

Take part in a 3 hour audition preparation workshop followed by a 1-2-1 audition with a monologue of your choice. Bursaries are available.

Please visit our website for more information: www.nyt.org.uk/apply

Successful auditionees will take part in a 2-4 week summer course in London and become members of the National Youth Theatre until they turn 26. National Youth Theatre members have access to professional castings, perform in our National Tours and West End Shows, gain free Creative Leadership and Inclusion training and more.

Be part of something bigger. Join the National Youth Theatre in 2020.

Find out what happens at an audition day: https://soundcloud.com/nytofgb/naitonal-youth-theatre-what-happens-at-an-audition-day

Image credit: To Kill A Mocking Bird, 2018 REP Company directed by Meghan Doyle, photo by Helen Murray

The choir will perform existing songs from their repertoire as well as new songs chosen to reflect the avian theme of the visuals. There will be iconic murmurating starlings and some extraordinary Bees from Martin’s award winning film ‘My Garden of A Thousand Bees’ (featuring a previous collaboration with the choir), building to a finale with the dazzling murmurations of winter waders from The Wash estuary in Norfolk.

Support will be an improvised piano performance by the choir’s Jakob op den Brouw with visuals by Steve White.

Performance starts at 8pm

Find out more about the choir from their website and instagram.

"It’s your world, but I make my way in it..." (Beaumarchais)

In a grand house not too far away, the high melodrama and petty squabbles of its residents are played out in glorious technicolour. Love, jealousy, class struggle, and families lost and found are staged on a household scale. At the centre of it all, an artful Figaro and his beloved Susanna, together with an unhappy Countess, conspire to show a philandering, arrogant Count the error of his ways. As events unfold in escalating absurdity, it will take all of Figaro's wiles to explain away squashed geraniums, boys dressed as girls, and contractual marriage obligations. Will contentment and happiness ever reign again in this household?

Award-winning opera company Opera in a Box bring you their production of Mozart’s "The Marriage of Figaro". Following their recent NODA award for ‘Innovative Production’ for their winter performances of Puccini’s "La bohème", they have brought together a cast and crew of some of the finest young talents in the south-west, both on and off stage, promising for an extremely enjoyable and entertaining show.

THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO Performed in English
Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, Translated by Thomas Martin, Edited by Ruth Martin.
The Trinity Centre – Trinity Road, Bristol BS2 0NW
Sunday 28th May 2017, Matinee: 2pm & Evening: 6:30pm (approximately 2h 20m)

Local children took part in What I Want To Be, What I Want to See in April 2021

In 2021 we asked the people of Bristol to tell us their hopes and dreams for the future as part of our ambitious community arts project, What I Want To Be, What I Want To See.

Trinity collected over 70 responses that ranged from a community mural, celebrating heroes, a daily protest, listening posts of voices we should listen to - young & old, a playlist for Newtown, a silent disco, a place for tea and cake, a zine to remind us ‘how to be nice’ and a day of art and dolphins.

In Autumn 2021 we sent an open call for an artist, collective or company to creatively respond to these. The successful project The Wish List by artist Michelle Roche was selected by Trinity’s programming forum. The forum, are made up of local residents, Trinity Members and regular groups and classes, chose Michelle’s project as it connected with the local community in a fun and playful way.

Working with grassroots organisation, Newtown Network, The Wish List will make the hopes and dreams, collected during the call out, a reality by co-creating creative happenings with local communities this December and January.

Newtown Coffee Mornings Throughout December local residents joined artist Michelle Roche for a cup of tea coffee and cake and creative activities.

Catch sight of The Newtown Dolphin Parade

In January keep an eye out through the curtains and look for the Dolphin Lantern parade that will take place in the streets on Newtown.

Get involved:

If you would like some further information on the project contact Stefan Boakye on stefan@trinitybristol.org.uk

After a few years testing the mainstream stage with a major record deal Pepino has moved back to her roots as a leftfield rock and electronica songwriter. As well as drawing influence from contemporary electronic passions like Caribou, Grizzly Bear and Sylvan Esso, Pepino also draws from late 60s and early 70s folk and popular music such as the song-smithery of Carole King, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. The song content for ‘Heterogaster’ is based around ideas of family, sex, trust and disconnection, using rich vocal harmonies, beautifully layered to musically represent these issues.

In Mesadorm’s debut album ‘Heterogaster’ listeners will find songwriter and lyricist Pepino in happy harmony with producer Aaron Zahl, fleshing out her musical world with his electronic soundscapes. Each musician then adds his or her unique musical touch to every song, resulting in a truly special and original sound. Having known each other since they were teenagers and weathered various phases of life and musical outfits, Zahl, Pepino, Palmer, Johnston and Silverston have a unique connection that plays out in their music with depth and assuredness. Their writing sits somewhere between the domestic observation of Suzanne Vega and the powerful, elemental other-worldliness of Bjork.

Blythe Pepino - Vocals/Keys

Aaron Zahl - Guitars/Keys/Bvs

Jo Silverston - Cello/Keys/Bvs

David Johnston - Bass/Keys/Bvs

Daisy Palmer - Drums/Bvs

“Blimey! That’s the sound of Mesadorm!” - Huw Stephens, BBC Radio 1

“Loving the sound of Mesadorm. I reckon the next 12 months could be chock-a-block for those guys" - BBC Introducing in the West

“Mesadorm have that uncanny ability to find that perfect line between pop and experimentation. They achieve a rare and colourful psychedelic minimalism that is strikingly engaging.” - Folk Radio UK

Meet Selina Thompson

“How can you write about lives you have never lived. Spaces you have never visited” Immersion is key for critically acclaimed artist and performer Selina Thompson. She has worked as a hairdresser, spent time with job centre employees and service users in order to create shows that shows that are intimate, playful – she's worn a giant dress made out of cake - and deceptively poignant.

For her latest show 'Salt', Selina has undertaken an intensive tour of the UK, talking to old friends, hairdressers, academics, teenagers, artists, her nan, granddad, & god daughter before boarding a working cargo vessel, retracing the ancestral voyage from England to Ghana to Jamaica in a quest to connect past and present Black experience. She has returned rich with ideas for her new show but she is missing one crucial ingredient. You. She needs to know what's it like to be Black in Bristol. She needs our help.

Meet Selina, listen to her tales of travel, and share your experiences at an informal afternoon gathering at the Trinity Centre. Music and buffet provided.

Selina's show 'salt.' will be performed at the Arnolfini as part of Mayfest on the 12th, 13th, 18th & 19th May. Tickets available here:

http://mayfestbristol.co.uk/mayfest2016/salt-2/

Salt is co-commissioned by Theatre Bristol and Mayfest as part of the Mayfest 2016 programme.