Archives for Culture - Page 4
Top Girls: Coercion, Conflict, Desperation
ELIZABETH ALLEN Top Girls is a play of fast and furious talk. The characters do not merely argue and contradict, they talk over each other, each pushing her own narrative,…
Multi-Venue Dance Music Festival Returns to Hastings and St. Leonards
For the May Bank holiday, revellers will see a multi-genre range of dance music showcased across the town with the Let's Get It Together Festival. First put on as a…
One Hundred Demons
Those of you who saw Kim L Pace’s whimsical, but very unsettling pottery at Hastings Museum last year will be pleased to know that there is now a chance to…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: On the Trail of Jack-In-The-Green
Hellebore : ‘The Green Issue’Available from Bookbuster, £ BY TIM BARTON In 1977 Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull penned his classic song Jack-In-The-Green. His ‘Jack’ ‘quietly sits under every tree’,…
Collage d’Or
DAVE MILTON Rock Paper Scissors, a solo exhibition by Daniela Maria Gargiulo at Hastings Arts Forum, comprises sixty pictures made in the three years since the artist’s daughter left home.…
Ripping Yarns
VICTORIA KINGHAM French’s bar in Robertson Street is all exposed brick, chandeliers and cocktails, offering an intimate atmosphere. A couple of weeks ago that atmosphere was augmented by a literary…
Poetry Corner
NEVER AGAIN OLI SPLEEN Overwhelmed by a world That will not hear the cries That twists the truth That lies That gaslights and denies Enables genocide In self-defence disguise Labelling…
Barbed Bard
DAVE MILTON AND SMOKEY BROWN Even in a town that boasts its fair share of post-punk prodigies, sightings of DIY luminary Bing Selfish are as rare and as welcome as…
Conflict and Contemplation: A Manufactured Thrill and Quiet Promise
VICTORIA KINGHAM The name of Henry Normal is well-known to audiences that frequent literature festivals, Radio 4, and late-night TV comedy. Normal is also responsible for a raft of quality…
Jazz: Luft and Duni Reach for the Moon
VICTORIA KINGHAM Guitarist Rob Luft has been a regular visitor to Jazz Hastings, having appeared here with his own band and with other musicians celebrated for their originality: Byron Wallen,…
Stories of the Mature Woman
Stories of the Mature Woman is a group exhibition exploring the richness, resilience and evolving identities of women later in life. Curated by Carolyn Macleod and presented in partnership with…
111 Places in Hastings & Rye That You Shouldn’t Miss
Journalist and author NORMAN MILLER shares his experience of writing a book about 111 placesto visit in our patch Norman and the finished article So how do you go about…
Celebrating Past Features
Here we are at 300 issues! HIP asks DAVID DENNIS to celebrate the many feature articles written over the last 299 issues The paper’s name declares its independence, and it…
Father, Forgive Us
VICTORIA KINGHAM It’s always a joy to remember that the first person recorded as having written music down systematically, was a woman. Hildegard of Bingen was a highly-regarded, highly devout…
Small, but Perfectly Formed
VICTORIA KINGHAM Graced as we are with so many small exhibition spaces in addition to the established Hastings Contemporary and De La Warr Pavilion, it’s easy to miss some of…
Girls Still on Top
ELIZABETH ALLEN Top Girls is an extraordinary play by an extraordinary playwright. Caryl Churchill has been called Britain’s “most brilliant living playwright” and this play “hilarious, ground-breaking, gritty”. Characteristic of…
Six Characters in Search of a Meaning
VICTORIA KINGHAM On 13 April, there was a rehearsed reading of Lindsay Jayne’s play A spectacular Interview in Studio 27, the White Rock Theatre’s fringe venue. This was quite a feat…
The Sign Of Four, with Boots and Coconuts
VERA BELL Studio 27 in the White Rock seems rapidly to be gaining ground as a Hastings fringe venue for experimental theatre. Two days after the absurdist A Spectacular Interview…
Caribbean Cinema Comes to Hastings
Electric Palace Cinema in Hastings is to host Crossroads, a ground- breaking new screening series bringing contemporary Caribbean cinema to South East England for the first time. Running this May…
McNiff Sings Cohen
Talented local singer/songwriter Jason McNiff is launching a new theatre show at the Stables on 7 May, which is lined up afterwards for dates around the country. Songs of Love…
Helping Adults to Read
Last edition Nicholas Vester shared his observations of reading by the sea. This edition ANDREW COLQUHOUN is back for the National Year of Reading. You can say what you like…
Siren Spring at the Hastings Contemporary
HELEN MURPHY AND NICK PELLING If you have ever felt (along with John Masefield) that you simply “must go down to the sea again”, then Hastings Contemporary – set on…
Afrobeat legend Dele Sosimi to Galvanise White Rock Theatre
DAN MCCARTHY On 23 April, multiple award-winning Afrobeat ambassador Dele Sosimi is set to bring his signature grooves to Hastings’ White Rock Theatre. Hackney-born and UK-based, Dele has long been a…
General Medical Emergency Ward 10
Dyad Productions, known mainly for historical plays (That Knave, Raleigh, I, Elizabeth, A Room of One’s Own) have staged a brand new theatre collaboration with Company Gavin Robertson (General Medical…
Palmerama Comedy Anniversary
RUBY LAMBERT The Palmerama comedy showcase recently celebrated its third anniversary by bringing together seven distinct voices for an evening of laughter. Each comedian delivered their own unique act. The…
Film-makers of the Future
Toby Bula-Edge Local schools have been hard at work producing their entries for the Children’s International Film Festival (CIFF), which comes to Hastings on 18 June, helped by CIFF partners…
Thrill and a Promise
A joint book launch from local performance poets Henry Normal and Tim Barlow was met with great enthusiasm by a sell-out audience of 70 at Hastings Library last Thursday. Henry,…
Prizewinning Play by Local Author
VERA BELL Glyn Carter is a local playwright and novelist, whose play Carabiners will have its world premiere at Hastings’ Stables Theatre from 14 to 18 April. Courtesy of Glyn…
Stables Doors Open for Hot Tap
VICTORIA KINGHAM Dean Stalham’s Hot Tap Theatre year at St Andrews Mews is now complete, and, having had a number of great theatre nights, he is moving on to a…
International Connections
VERA BELL This small town must surely be unique in the number and extent of its international musical connections. Think of any venue – the Kino-Teatr for example with its…
On Thin Ice
COVEN CLUB Music Review Local Pink Floyd tribute Band, On Thin Ice, who pay an extraordinary nod to quintessential band Pink Floyd, drew in an extra special energy recently to…
HIP BOOK REVIEW: Unashamedly Subjective and Personal
Sheila: Portrait of an Unknown ArtistBy Teresa ThornhillPublished by Dornberger books, £14REVIEW BY FELICITY LAURENCE Sheila Denning was a brilliant painter who lived during the twentieth century, from 1920 to…
Poetry Corner: Realpolitik
WILLIAM BULLIN Realpolitik – Sweet as Lemons If Jesus had been crucified on Hastings's seafront outside a chip shop, they might have rubbed salt into his wounds and offered him…
The Republic of Letters on St Leonards Seafront
Explored by NICHOLAS VESTER It’s no secret Hastings is a friendly place. Eccentric too… maybe a bit literary as well. On balmy days when the gales we usually endure have…
TUFT in Ireland and Rome
Local performance company TUFT are bringing two fascinating theatre events to Hastings this April. First up – the Brighton Fringe previews of storyteller Helen Black’s new solo show A Dublin…
Musical Conversations on the Edge of Modernity
VICTORIA KINGHAM Sonatas for violin and piano were never my thing, really. But I dare say I have watched and listened to more of these in the past four years…
Masculine Fear of Feminine Power – Macbeth
In this classic tale of greed and guilt, Flabbergast’s Macbeth fuses a rigorous and respectful approach to text and storytelling to bring a magical, lucid interpretation of Shakespeare’s blood-soaked tragedy to…
Love of the Awkward, Different,and Strange
Xelis de Toro and ChopChop Jude Montague Xelis de Toro, writer and performance artist from Galicia, performs at the Jenny Lind music pub with the band ChopChop – a collective…
All us Women 2026
VICTORIA KINGHAM Tucked away in the Rooftop Gallery of De La Warr Pavilion is a small but intriguing exhibition underlining societally-nurtured patterns of violence, emotional imbalance and trauma against women.…
Jack In The Green wins Lottery Award
Hastings Traditional Jack in the Green is delighted to have been awarded £30,000 through Arts Council National Lottery Project Grants. This will cover many of the costs of staging the…