University of Winchester students and recent graduates will be performing an array of new and innovative work as part of the Top Hat Competition at the city’s annual Hat Fair next month (5-7 July).
Performance will take place at St John’s Lawn between 12.30pm and 1.30pm on Saturday, 6 July.
The line-up is:
A panel of judges including: Majid Dhana (spoken word artist), Victoria Hancock (performance artist), and Richard Hurford (dramaturg and writer) will help select 2024’s winning act which will be announced at 5pm at St John's Lawn.
Top Hat entrants, The Coney Island Pirate Show
The last three Top Hat winners will also be back to perform at this year’s festival.
Last year’s winner, Billstar returns with The Reflection of a Shadow, a spoken word poetry performance which explores the feeling of not being seen or heard.
Billstar (real name Bill Saunders) can be seen and heard at the Jane Austen Lawn at 2.40pm and 4.10pm on Saturday, 6 July.
How to Disappear is an autobiographical, interactive 'Escape Room' created by Georgina Willis. It was inspired by Georgina’s experiences during Covid when a disabling illness left her mostly housebound.
Georgina’s show, a winner in 2022, is on at the Abbey Gardens on Saturday, 6 July at 3.40pm.
Joint winner from 2022, Holly Foskett performs her one-woman show Keep It Civil! – a comedy centred on Winchester in the Civil War – at the Jane Austen Lawns on Saturday, 6 July at 11.45am and 1.30pm.
Another alumni, actor and poet Arthur L Wood, will be bringing to life a selection of well-loved classic monologues and poems in his 60-minute show at Abbey Garden on Sunday, 7 July from 12.30pm
Arthur who won Tony Buzan Prize for Poetry in 2022 appeared in Winchester last year with his one-man show of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land.
He will be heading to the prestigious Italia Conti drama school in September to undertake three years of actor training.
The Hat Fair celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. For more details of other performances visit News | Hat Fair.
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