April has been a busy month at The Riverfront, in additional to the shows taking place on our main stage and welcoming thousands of people through the doors over the easter period, we have been planning and organising lots of new projects as well as the firm favourites that we’ve got coming up.
Shows
Continuing with our commitment to grow and develop the arts within Newport, we aim to programme a variety of genres and types of performances. At the beginning of April, The Rest of Our Lives was performed by Jo Fong and George Orange at The Riverfront. The show was a wonderful drama about two middle-aged lives in an eclectic, spontaneous, predictable, and random decline. This performance was extremely popular and performed to a sold-out audience.
This month we saw a lot of comedy in both our Main and Studio theatre. Jayde Adams, Tom Houghton, Dragma’s Late Night Natterbox, Ceri Dupree and our monthly Comedy Shed evenings brought hundreds of people through the doors and they didn’t disappoint.
In the studio theatre Mackenzie Steed showcased her work-in progress performance ‘That’s My Win!’, which was originarrly showcased at one of our Cultivate events last year. We were delighted to see Mackenzie further her development work. Cultivate gives artists the opportunity to showcase their work-in-progress performance to a receptive audience who provide feedback. Mackenzie has since received funding to continue the next development phase and this month we saw the next stages of the performance at her sharing. The performance was well received by the audience and we’re looking forward to welcoming the finished product.
If you’d like to see more up-and-coming artists share their work, you can come to our summer Cultivate in May. Tickets are now available on our website: Newport Live | Events
Easter Holidays
As always, we make sure we have an action-packed programme during the school holidays. Over Easter we were excited to launch How To Defeat Monsters (and get away with it). This was a Flossy and Boo and The Riverfront Theatre co-production. The production was an interactive, immersive theatre experience for children of all ages to come and investigate and find the monsters before the baddies did.
The building was decorated top to bottom with monster stickers, stories of strange monster activity were dotted all around Newport and everyone was in the monster seeking spirit. On the 1 April we began to welcome all the brave Monster Seekers who rose to the challenge. The production was a huge success, and we were over-joyed to see so many smiling faces in the building.
The Monster Seekers were also joined by Hatch, our youth theatre group who devised their own monster plans and shared their performance to a small private audience. Hatch is a weekly youth theatre group run by Tin Shed Theatre Co, in Partnership with The Riverfront. During the sessions the children and young people have the opportunity to investigate and explore skills in all elements of creation. There are three classes to cater for different age groups.
We also ran several classes and workshops including Tots Disco and Oh! Susannah Sewing Club, both of which are always a huge hit!
To find out more about our workshops, head to: Workshops & Classes | Take part at The Riverfront Theatre & Arts Centre (newportlive.co.uk)
Across other programmes, rehearsals for our Playhouse project have started and will continue throughout the next couple of months until the performances in July. This project is led by Theatre Iolo and supported by our community development team. Professional playwrights are commissioned each year to write short plays in both Welsh and English for large casts of school children. The aim of the project is to provide young people with a wonderful opportunity to experience live theatre. Tickets for the end performances will be available soon for families of the performers, other schools who may be interested in the project and the public.
At the beginning of the month, we welcomed Connor’s Creations exhibition to our mezzanine gallery. Connor is 14 years old and is profoundly autistic. All of his artwork is drawn completely from memory and has been displayed in various locations in South Wales. His love of drawing only began last year, before which he was unable to hold a pen properly. Connor’s exhibition will be displayed at The Riverfront until 9 June 2023.
On 15 April we celebrated World Circus Day with Circus of Positivity, who hosted free circus skills workshops throughout the day. All sessions were a sell out and were thoroughly enjoyed by all attendees.
Coming Up
Our Summer Season has now started and our new programme has begun, we have an action-packed summer planned with more live music, comedy and family shows. Preparations are well underway for the opening of our new project, Reflekt in our studio theatre, our new co-production, Bitcoin Boi and May half-term activities.
