Music, myth, and fairytale by: Pandvani108 Ensemble.

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When a stranger comes calling, all bets are off,
Fate sharpens her knives,
Love slips through keyholes,
And Time watches it all unravel.

Pandvani108, maestros of musical storytelling, are back with a brand new show, trespassing onto islands of magic, peering into the mouths of gift horses, and launching epic battles with the tax man.

World-class storytellers Ben Haggarty, Emily Hennessey and Steph Brittain set high energy performances of wild myth and fairytale for grown-ups against stunning soundtracks by Raoul Neumann (Trans-Siberian March Band), Sheema Mukherjee (Transglobal Underground, The Imagined Village), and Rav Neiyyar (Bollywood Brass Band, Transglobal Underground). This is gig theatre gone feral.

Expect high romance, strange seductions, and divine interventions as the goddesses and gods of Celtic, Norse, Greek, and Nart myth are cast out, called upon, or caught up in encounters with strangers.

'Playful, powerful, dynamic...'
Beyond The Border Festival

'Stellar!'
Smugglers Festival

'Mesmerising!'
UK Festival Guide

'Phenomenal!'
Wonderful Beast

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CONTENT WARNING: this performance contains descriptions of birth, death, sex, necrophilia, threat and violence, contextualised within a paradigm of mythic narrative, archetype and metaphor.

PANDVANI108

Exuberant ensemble Pandvani108 delivers a bold, physical, intelligent and contemporary performance of global epic for grown-ups. 

Balancing the comedic, the mythic and the irreverent with unsurpassed skill, this is storytelling as it should be - fast-paced, contemporary, accessible and accompanied by a stunning improvised soundtrack from world-class musicians that ranges from Indian classical music to punked versions of familiar pop songs.

Pandvani108 takes its name and inspiration from an ancient Indian epic-singing tradition that still thrives in the rural Chattisgarh region of central India. This drives their wild short-form style of performance: where the very best episodes of world mythology are performed in rotation - supported by music and song and performed in partial conversation with another (a 'Ragi'), who adds interjections that spur the narrative ever onwards. The result is irresistibly live, direct and energetic.

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Ben Haggarty is Artistic Director of the Crick Crack Club and one of the UK's most popular contemporary performance storytellers. Renowned for his playful, physical and often challenging performances, his repertoire spans Indo-European fairytales for grown-ups, Greek and Irish mythology, the epic of Gilgamesh and contemporary myths of Frankenstein and The Sandman.

benhaggarty.com

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Emily Hennessey is a playful and dynamic performance storyteller with a great love of Hindu mythology. She has travelled over 10,000 miles across India and Nepal by train, bus, rattling rickshaw and bicycle. She spent many months at the Kattaikkuttu School in Tamil Nadu, learning from the children who perform stories from the Mahabharata through music, dance, and song.

emilyhennessey.co.uk

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Steph Brittain's love for storytelling developed whilst studying kathak dance in Paris and Delhi and it continued to grow during her MA in Drama And Movement Therapy. She trained in performance at Acting International in Paris and Drama Centre London and has performed at the Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester, Arcola Theatre London, and for the BBC.

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Sheema Mukherjee absorbed North Indian classical music and the western musical tradition side-by-side, studying sitar under the tutelage of her uncle, the late Pandit Nikhil Banerjee, and then with the late Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Today she is an established sitar player and composer; a regular performer with Transglobal Underground; a key member in The Imagined Village project and a formidable collaborator with internationally renowned artists from many genres.

mukherjee.co.uk

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Raoul Neumann grew up playing in rock bands, studying classical French horn, and singing in church choirs, and eventually graduated from King's College London with a first class degree in music. Raoul is a member of London Contemporary Voices, Trans-Siberian March Band and the Kickback band. He has performed and recorded with a wide variety of talented international artists, and has touried all over the world.

raoulneumann.com

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Rav Neiyyer started playing Tabla at the age of six, and the drums soon after, and his first dhol was a present for his 11th birthday. Throughout his teens Rav played and trained with the Dhol Foundation, which led him to perform with the likes of Fun Da Mental, Transglobal Underground and the Bollywood Brass Band. He tours nationally and internationally, and has played stages at the Glastonbury and WOMAD Festivals, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, and Shakespeare's Globe, London.

CRICK CRACK CLUB

'Mesmerising. The Crick Crack Club weaves a web of enchantment.'
Time Out London

Founded in 1987 by world-class performance storyteller and sector pioneer, Ben Haggarty, today Crick Crack Club is the UK's busiest and boldest performance storytelling programmer and promoter. It creates exuberant, intelligent, wild, weird, and wonderful events in London, Bristol, Dorset, and across the UK, that draw people from all walks of life into a shared experience and the stunning content of international fairytale, folktale, myth and epic. Featuring outstanding performance storytellers and the very best new talent, its annual public programme of shows and residencies can be found in theatres, at festivals, in castles, caves, village halls, rose gardens, and derelict warehouses.

'A treasure house of humour, romance and myth.'
City Limits

★★★★☆
'Unmissable... magical performance in a unique venue... chilling, mystifying, adventurous and romantic.'
Everything Theatre

crickcrackclub.com

Every month, Crick Crack Club brings its wild haven of fairytale, myth and epic to the awesome red velvet surroundings of Bristol's finest independent cinema, theatre, and place of happenings, The CUBE Microplex; THE place in Bristol for unusual events, performance art, spoken word, and live storytelling for grown-ups.