The Place of Our Earlier Days
The Play People and SHED (Super Human Entertainment Devisors) will once more be bringing their own inimitable brand of entertainment to Mannifest this year, with The Place of Our Earlier Days Theatre and Circus tent. As always we promise a buzzing hub of entertainment and atmosphere in the heart of the festival giving you a little something you won’t find anywhere else, with a different treat for you on each visit. Every night there will be a show featuring a range of quality sketch comedy, improvisation, and physical theatre, with a healthy dash of acrobatics and parkour action thrown in to keep you on the edge of your seat / beanbag. You’ll soon feel like we’ve replaced your heart with a jazzband.
Alongside the entertainment there’ll be plenty of opportunity to get involved with daytime circus workshops including sessions on Acrobalance, Tightrope, Juggling and all kinds of circus skills. The host of talented performers – both local and UK-based – will be on hand throughout the day to help you get to grips with a trick or two yourself, and spread the circus love. So whether you fancy yourself as a potential recruit for cirque du soleil, or you’ve never even held a juggling ball before, there’ll be something for you each day.
Into the bargain each night in the tent will have SHED’s own Mike and Matt presenting an evening of entertainment featuring sketches and skills from their latest show, along with a highly-skilled eclectic crew of international performers flying in from the UK to bombard your senses with wit, skill and (we daresay) eye-searingly bright shell suits.
Running late into the night we’ll have entertainment including our trademark Silent Talkies commentary game. It’s dead simple; we play a film with the soundtrack muted, pass around a bunch of microphones, and allow our performers and the audience to improvise dialogue. This is where cinema meets improvised comedy – and we always end up with a far more exciting story than the Hollywood scriptwriters could have thought. Guaranteed to get giggles out of you.
And as if that wasn’t enough, The Place of Our Earlier Days will also be providing the hotspot of relaxing wind-down entertainment later in the night. At the end of each evening we will host a selection of short films curated by our ongoing partnership with Danny Smart of ‘Short Films of the Internet’, projected on our big screen for you. So guarantee yourself good dreams by pulling up a bean bag and catching a few movie shorts with us before you head back to your tent each night.
On the Sunday we will as ever be hosting our famous Mannifest Olympics with some old-School games coming at you faster than Usain Bolt on a Segway. You and a partner had better start practicing your egg throwing, to be in with a chance of winning the title of Chief S.W.E.T. (Supreme Warrior Egg Thrower), and feature on the Play People and Mannifest website and win a prize, which may or may not be an egg.
Keep your eyes peeled elsewhere during the festival for a variety of walkabout acts and stiltwalkers from SHED and The Play People, who’ll be bound to find a way to surprise and delight you wherever you are.
And to top it all off look out for our Sunday night fire show.
www.theplaypeople.com
www.shedquarters.com
