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Reviews of Opposition, Edinburgh Fringe, ZOO Southside, 2011
Radical, political, courageous….This is a virtuoso avant-garde performance of a virtuoso avant-garde text by a virtuoso avant-garde artist. Go to listen, marvel, participate. Go to be amazed. Just go.
This whirlwind of humanity explodes onto the stage with striking force and energy, seeming to make sense as she seeks to inspire and at the same time commune and empathise with her distinguished audience, as all political leaders do. Yet, as your ear becomes attuned to the dialogue, you realise that what she is spouting is utter gibberish. Complete and utter twaddle in fact, in the best absurdist Beckett or Campton styles.
Here opposition does not just mean choosing a different political party, another side, making another argument, but an intervention: a decision to change the very terms of the discussion. Hannah Silva is in Opposition. Join her.
Silva succeeds in both creating an inventive and arresting piece of performance and in making the audience actively think about language, its uses and misuses, the potency of words.
Opposition is bizarre, clever and totally unique. Vote with your feet, and go see it now.
Silva subtly highlights how language can be used to control, asking us to question the motivations behind those who try to bamboozle us with words.
General nice things people have said about my performances...
Sarah Ellis, Head of Creative Programmes, The Albany Theatre:
Hannah Silva is one of the most exciting, original artists on the UK poetry scene. Her unique word play has a piercing intelligence and genuine warmth that never fails to charm audiences.
The Times Online, Top Ten Literary Stars of 2008 Her physical performances, fast-talking delivery and innovative use of cut-up text make her one of the most ambitious and entertaining poets in the country.
Tom Chivers, (Penned in the margins) on Poetry Hearings, Berlin
Hannah gives an incredible, spine-tingling performance.
Radio 3's The Verb:
She uses techniques like cut-up and collage, sound poetry and physical theatre to create something that's unique but nods to older forms like shamanism, pre-religious ceremonies, Dadaism, and the kind of games that children play with language. Sound and Music, Ashley Wong: I was particularly impressed by Hannah Silva’s cut up spoken word poetry that began as a nervous introduction of herself and then spiralled into a cryptic play of words and the expression of speech by using only the same words used in her first intro. It played on the psychological understanding and meaning of tones and words spliced together almost at random and expressing something quite new. Baroque in Hackney, Katy Evans Bush: It was really quite astonishing. A really good take on what the meanings are of language itself, as an entity. Her shtick was to make her own speech sound like a recording – a recording manipulated, at that. You don’t get this in the usual poetry readings I go to – not the performancey ones, either. Gists and Piths, Simon Turner, on Threshold: A headon collision between Bob Cobbing and Alice Oswald. Silva’s work is extremely exciting, representing as it does a marriage of performance poetics, and more ‘academic’ tendencies in modern poetry. The results were/are invigorating.
Jenni Doherty, Guildhall Press:
Innovative, experimental, raw, sexy, brave, original and a breath of fresh air. SOME PAST PERFORMANCES Wales, October 2010 BAYLIT, TXT2, with Byron Vincent and others at Baylit festival, Apples & Snakes national tour. Autumn 2010 Newcastle, Birmingham, Southampton, London & Plymouth REVOLUTION IN FORM #3 Caroline Bergvall / Ross Sutherland / Laura Dockril / Hannah Silva Stoke Newington International Airport | £6.50 adv / £8 door | 7pm 5th April: Hannah Silva. APPLES & SNAKES at THE GALLERY SESSIONS PANOPTICON Shown at 'In the Flesh', Barbican, Plymouth, Nov2009. A solo multimedia poetry/theatre performance. 'Panopticon' is named after an architectural model designed by the Benthams in the 18th century around the central principle of 'seeing without being seen'. The Panopticon was originally conceived as a possible model for a school, a factory, a hospital or of course...a prison. Panopticon is a darkly humorous investigation of language, solitude, belonging, and what it is to be British: 'Being a British Citizen is a meaningful and celebratory event not a bureaucratic experience!'. Poetry Hearings 2009, Berlin, Cafe Burger. The Fifth Annual Berlin Festival of Poetry in English...me, Andrew Shields, Tom Chivers, Tim Turnbull, Maurice Scully, Matthew Sweeney... Tom Chivers blogs about it here: This is Yogic
at the Bluecoat, Liverpool
Sunday 17th October, 9.00 – 11.00
The third in Mercy's occasional series of language-in-performance events returns to its roots with four of the top practitioners of innovative poetry in performance – seeing out the Bluecoat's Chapter and Verse Literature Festival.
Sun 28 Mar: LONDON WORD FESTIVAL: LEAFCUTTER JOHN: BRIGGFLATTS REWIRED
+ Peter Finch
+ MacGillivray
+ Hannah SilvaPRAGUE: THE ALCHEMY READING & PERFORMANCE SERIES
The Alchemy Reading & Performance Series is an eclectic mix of poetry, prose, music and more.
Since 2002, Alchemy has presented new and unique voices from the Czech Republic and abroad. Each evening features a guest reader or performer, followed by a lively open mic.
Events take place on the 1st Monday of every month starting at 8 p.m. at the Globe Bookstore and Café, Prague.
Admission is free! But get there early if you want a seat.
Apples & Snakes brings the UK's finest performance poets to the Gallery Sessions. Headlining tonight's event is Jacob Sam-La Rose, a poet of striking charisma and intelligence whose roles as a writer, performer, playwright and educator make him one of the hardest working artists on the scene.
He will be joined by five times winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year competition Helen Mort, purveyor of reggae-infused rhyme El Crisis, and Hannah Silva, whose unique physical, fast-talking style is making her a rising star. Hosted by Naomi Woddis.
When: Wednesday 28 October, 8pm
Where: Gallery Café, Queens Theatre, Boutport Street, Barnstaple, Devon EX31 1SY
Tickets: £8.50 / £5 concessions
Book: 01271 324242 or www.northdevontheatres.org.uk
Boat on the Water: SUMMER 2009 Site specific performance: poetry, dance and theatre on a boat big enough for eight in Plymouth.
You Said/I Said: 14-16th August 2009
Summer Sundae Weekender in Leicester.
Phrased & Confused commissioned myself and the composer Alexis Kirke to create a spoken word/musical multimedia feast that responds to the question: Which comes first? The Music or the Words? A documentary from the festival can be viewed Here Commissioned by The Hub for Phrased & Confused and funded by Arts Council England
You Said/I Said asks....if the poet is the words and the percussionist is the music, what would happen if the two of us got together? What kind of a relationship might we have? How would we communicate with each other and an audience? What happens when my speech becomes rhythm and his rhythm starts to communicate?
In a fifteen minute show, with Alexis behind the drum kit, me in front, and projection behind us both we tell the story of our dysfunctional relationship and try to figure out what it was that brought us together then drove us apart - Was it the Words or the Music?
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