Say Sum Thin 9 review at Nottingham Playhouse

This year's spoken word festival 'Say Sum Thin 9' at Nottingham Playhouse on 25^th July must be the best ever. With a total of thirty plus events and workshops happening throughout the day there was plenty to keep any poet, would be playwright, word smith, rapper and even circus skills enthusiast happy for hours.

 

 

The entirety of the Nottingham Playhouse building has been given over to the event run by Nottingham's poetry collective The Mouthy Poets. This year's theme is Carnival and the grand opening starts off with a parade of colourful costumed dancing by Hyson Green's talented Zodiac Allstars Dance Troupe. DJs and musicians supplied the day long musical atmosphere on the theatre atrium.

The interior of the Playhouse is superbly decorated in a glittering display of brightly coloured fabrics and shapes plus masks and fabulous headdresses supplied by City Arts. With a plethora of workshops to attend I chose to observe a very popular workshop run by playwright Nick Wood. Situated on the Playhouse stage, it was an inspiring session culminating with professional actors reading the participants scripts.

The Mouthy Poets had two main shows happening in the event. The smaller afternoon show was delivered in the Neville Studio and showed off some incredibly mature performance poetry talents and allowed opportunities to others to show their skills through open mic. The jam packed evening show brought the day to a fantastic close through locally written poetry that carried the carnival theme in many different and emotionally engaging poems that not only used spoken word but cleverly incorporated a variety of multimedia and dramatics.

Originally published in the EG section of Nottingham Post newspaper. Monday 27th July.