Archives for Arts - Page 3
Departure Lounge: A Double Elle Theatre Production
Writer/performers Lucy Pappas and Lisa Harmer have both worked professionally with the bereaved and experienced their own personal grief, inspiring them to write this one-act drama. They are delighted to…
The Special Effects of Ben Wheatley
Toby Bula-Edge A full house came out in force to see Ben Wheatley’s new film Bulk at the Electric Palace on Thursday 14. The screening was accompanied by a Q&A…
Andrew Kötting at the Electric Palace
This weekend, Electric Palace present an Andrew Kötting weekend, a celebration of films by the Hastings-based, internationally recognised filmmaker and artist. Andrew shares a studio with his daughter Eden on…
Comedy Festival
Hastings Comedy Festival returns on 1 June for its 11th year. The week-long celebration of live comedy kicks off at The Printworks and The St Leonard, with shows from Lara Ricote, Tez…
Hot Tap Flows Creatively On
There are now more details on Dean Stalham’s progress from the Hot Tap Theatre to his new venture, Pen to Paper Productions. This new project connects creative talent with real…
Let’s Get It Together 2026 Introduces Special Ticket Deal For Local Residents
The Let’s Get It Together Festival have announced a special deal on tickets for local people wanting to join their three day celebration of dance music culture, which is taking…
Open Doors: Fine Music for Free
VICTORIA KINGHAM Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, under the redoubtable leadership of Marcio Da Silva, have deservedly secured funds to enable them to perform no less than seven free concerts…
Adventures in Pop
JUDE MONTAGUE Adventures in Pop has been running original creative rock and pop nights at the Jenny Lind for over a year. The scene has built up, and the First…
Utopian Dreams
HARRY HAWKINS It’s a Tuesday evening, and someone can’t quite get the Zoom camera working.”I like it when you’re visible!” says one. “I like it when you’re risible,” replies another.…
Sweet Georgia
Last year we were privileged to see the eminent Rustavi choir from Georgia, who filled the Henry Ward Hall with their powerful voices and love of song. Now it’s the…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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.…
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…