CRIPtic Cabaret x NOT DYING

Friday 11 November, 7.45pm

HOME, 2 Tony Wilson Pl, Manchester M15 4FN

CRIPtic Arts presents a double bill of riotous, political and joyful work by d/Deaf and disabled performers with CRIPtic Cabaret x NOT DYING. Following their sold-out Barbican Pit Party Cabaret in 2019 & 2021, CRIPtic Arts are heading to TransVegas.

The CRIPtic Cabaret includes performances by folk singer Kit Knight, comedian Sam Serrano, poet and performer Ashleigh Wilder and singer/songwriter Dennis Queen.

The Cabaret is just the start of the evening, followed by a performance of Jamie Hale’s NOT DYING.

Created by Jamie Hale, NOT DYING is a multidisciplinary solo(ish) show exposing the interiority of their experiences with disability and mortality. Fusing poetry, monologue, and theatre, NOT DYING is both a manifesto of change - boldly highlighting the way disableism sears across their life, limiting their independence and autonomy - and a love letter to wholeness, queer sex, and the bold, transgressive act of living joyfully as a disabled person. 

Deftly balancing the starkness of facing one’s death with the expansive work of being a disabled person in the world, it brings together comedy and confessional work, sexuality and self-expression, to end on a note that holds the joy of being alive, in a world that can be changed.

  • has been touring the British and Irish traditional folk scene for decades. He sings unaccompanied folk song, turning his voice to haunting ballads, industrial songs and bawdy stories of casual sex. Kit is a well known singer in DB and Ireland; a resident singer of Sunday Singaround, Manchester's monthly acapella folk night in the Gaslamp, and runs the singaround every year at Manchester Folk Festival.

  • Sam Serrano (Comedy Central Live, DAVE Disability Showcase with Rosie Jones) is a gender fluid dyspraxic comedian with Kabuki syndrome, whose endearingly dark introspective humour has seen them provide tour support to Brennan Reece and feature on the DAVE TV Disability Showcase with Rosie Jones. They were runner up for the Comedy Bloomers: LGBT Comedian of the Year 2019 and a finalist of the Leicester Square New Comedian of the Year 2019, and their background in education saw them recently provide corporate entertainment to the Centre for Education and Youth Conference.

  • is a London-based screenwriter, comedian, performance artist and theatre maker. They make socially conscious, form-pushing works about taboo or underrepresented experiences of gender, race and sexual politics.

  • is a singer songwriter. As an activist in the disabled peoples movement for 20 years her work explores disability, oppression and plays homage to the classic songs by disabled activists who came before.

  • Jamie is an award-winning theatre maker, poet, (screen)writer, charity CEO and founder and Artistic Director at CRIPticArts. Their work focuses on crip- and queer- realities, and the urgency of living as a disabled person.

    Their first poetry pamphlet, Shield was published in 2021, and was read by Jack Thorne in the 2021 MacTaggart lecture, where he described them as an “extraordinary voice”. Their solo film, NOT DYING, was described as "fantastic" by Hannah Gadsby.

    In 2021, they were awarded the Jerwood Poetry Fellowship, won Director/Theatremaker of the Year Award in the Evening Standard Future Theatre Fund Awards, and were listed in the Disability Power 100 as one of the hundred most influential disabled people in Britain, while directing the sell-out 2021 CRIPtic Showcase.

    Jamie is working on their first poetry collection, building CRIPtic Arts and developing their TV series with Channel 4.