Hotbed is a festival of new writing produced by Menagerie Theatre Company. This year a snapshot of the festival will take place at Soho Theatre with 3 new One Act Plays and 6 monologues which have been commissioned as part of the What’s Up Doc? series of plays.

What’s Up Doc?
What’s up Doc? is a project designed to bring ideas and people together. Each commission is a play written and created in response to a question or challenge established by a ‘Doc’ in conversation or correspondence with a writer. The ‘Docs’ are people who sit as Thought Leaders in their field (e.g academic, scientific, political).
Professor Guy C. Brown, who is researching ‘the death of death’, collaborates with writer Esther Shanson on issues of mortality; Astronaut Alfred Merrill Worden, one of only 24 people to have ever flown to the moon, gives insight on his life on earth and the moon to poet Lucy Sheerman; Professor Ferreira Da Silva, an expert on Ethics, challenges the thinking of playwright Ros Martin; Man Booker Prize Shortlisted writer Hisham Matar is working with Devorah Baum, an expert in Critical Theory; Craig Baxter will be getting into bed with Professor Richard Horner, the world’s expert on sleep and its disorders and Dr Adrian Fegan, Pharmaceutical Advisor and Researcher, will be letting Live Art artist Hester Chillingworth into some of the ‘tricks’ of drug companies.

What’s Up Doc? Plays:

Somniloquy by Craig Baxter
What Did It Feel Like To Go To The Moon? by Lucy Sheerman
Return Of The Vanishing Peasant by Ros Martin
How To Begin by Hisham Matar
Agent Everywhere by Hester Chillingworth
The Art Of Dying by Esther Shanson

One Act Plays:

Why Can’t We Live Together? by Steve Waters (Donmar Warehouse, BBC, Channel 4) is a kaleidoscopic vision of our times through the lives of one man and one woman.

bloominaschwitz by Richard Fredman presents us with Leopold Bloom – a charming, vain cuckold, wrenched form Joyce’s Ulysses to follow his Jewish family line through the dark heart of European history and out the other side.

Swimming by Jane Upton explores connection, disconnection, the pressure of making your mark and what it is like to be trapped by your hometown. Jane’s first play Bones won critical acclaim at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe.

Swimming is a co-production between Menagerie and Colchester Mercury.

Tickets
10 / £8 concessions
Buy tickets for for 2 events on the same night: £15 / £12 concessions