From Thursday – Sunday this week, Shout Festival celebrates queer arts and culture with a long weekend of theatre, performances, workshops and exciting activities throughout the city. This is Shout’s sixth year of bringing the best in LGBT arts to Birmingham.
The festival kicks off at mac Birmingham with Fierce & Fabulous, a high energy gay comedy cabaret extravaganza hosted by comedians Dana Alexander (Russell Howard’s Good News).
At the REP, festival goers can experience a theatre double bill of Only On Sundays and Dorothy Towers – where a group of LGBT residents from the city centre tower blocks known as Dorothy Towers share their memories of LGBT life in Birmingham.
Shout takes over Library of Birmingham for a whole Saturday with poetry and musical performances, theatre, literary discussions and workshops. This includes the day long performance Love Letters & Lehman Brothers by Brian Lobel, where Brian splices together words of the 2000-page Lehman Brothers Examination Report (which Brian’s boyfriend Grant wrote shortly before his death) to recreate emailed love letters written between Grant and Brian from 2005-2006.
Literary lovers can attend London’s award-winning LGBT literary salon Polari at mac Birmingham, a Polari Writers Workshop at the Birmingham LGBT, a Bards & Books panel discussion at Library of Birmingham and a performance by artist Tom Marshman about hiding yourself in a good book.
The weekend closes with MY Comedy night at Eden in Birmingham’s Southside, starring the hilarious Barbara Nice (“Imagine a hybrid between Mrs. Merton and Victoria Wood” – The Times).
For more information and event times visit the Shout website.