Happening this year over one electrifying weekend between 17 and 19 June, Fuse Medway is an arts festival bursting with fun for everyone. Everything from tea ladies wandering the streets, nautical nonsense, street dance through to pyrotechnics is on offer so don’t miss this brilliant FREE event. The programme takes in the centres of Chatham, Gillingham and Rochester and promises a huge array of outdoor theatre, street art, dance, circus and wicked humour.
After a week of workshops and preparatory performances, FUSE Medway kicks off with an ‘Illumination Parade’ along Gillingham High Street beginning at 4.30pm on Friday 17th. It continues on Saturday 18th with Chatham Street Art Day, running from 12 noon till 5pm. Finally, on Sunday 19th, The Big Tea Party will take place in Rochester Castle Gardens, also between noon and 5pm.
Visiting the Festival will be an amazing range of colourful performances and characters. These include: from Kinetika, Medway’s much-loved puppets Sparky Champion and Magma Eternal, who will lead the Illumination Parade specially dressed in light for the occasion; from The Central School of Speech & Drama, the March Hare, Caterpillar, Dormouse, Mock Turtle, Cheshire Cat, Duchess and White Rabbit, who are lost and searching Medway parks for the elusive rabbit hole back to Wonderland; and a return by popular demand for the endearing Tiny Travelling Tightwire Show from Dizzy O’Dare Presents.
If you’re looking for something edgy and urban, try the surreal ‘Greyscale World’, celebrating all things grey, while Bicycle Ballet bring to the Festival their dynamic new outdoor show fusing dance, circus and physical theatre - on bicycles!
Add to all this some real quirkiness - just a few of the acts include two enormous topiary bushes providing horticulture on a grand scale, the world’s largest underwater pop-up laboratory, an attempt to revive the traditional seaside snapshot, a hungry troll in trouble and an eccentric old traveller and his Bedouin tent - and you have one of the most extraordinary events in the country.
FUSE Medway Festival is for everyone and will be making its presence felt across the weekend and in different locations with numerous opportunities to get involved, including circus workshops. It’s Funded by Arts Council England and Medway Council and runs from 17-19 June in Gillingham, Chatham and Rochester. Events are free. For more information go the website at www.fusefestival.org.uk, or you can join them on Facebook or Twitter.
