A spoken word show about rebellion and imagination, performed by Pete Bearder, at Theatre@41.
Pete Bearder brings his spoken word show Say Owt: Romantics, Mystics & Revolutionaries to Theatre@41 on Thursday 3 September. It's a night of spoken word built around two things that usually sit at opposite ends of the room: rebellion and imagination. Bearder is the one on stage, and the show takes its title from the local phrase say owt — to speak up, to have your say, to not keep it all in.
That's a good starting point for what the show is about. Rebellion is the easy part to talk about — the shouting, the protest, the refusal to take things as they are. Imagination is the other side of it: the capacity to picture something different, to imagine a world that doesn't exist yet. Bearder brings them together, looking at how the two feed into each other, and how one without the other doesn't quite get you anywhere. It's a spoken word show, so it's all in the writing and the delivery — Bearder's voice and the words he's put together.
The title Romantics, Mystics & Revolutionaries gives you a sense of the ground he's covering. The Romantics were all about the individual and the power of the imagination; the Mystics looked for something beyond the surface of things; the Revolutionaries were the ones who wanted to tear it all down and start again. Bearder pulls on those threads, weaving them into a single evening of spoken word. It's less about a history lesson and more about how those ideas still show up in the way we think and the things we fight for.
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It's all happening at Theatre@41 on Monkgate, right in the heart of York. The date is Thursday 3 September, so it's a mid-week night out rather than a weekend one. If you're into spoken word and the kind of thing that asks you to think as much as it asks you to listen, this is one to keep on your radar.
