An Evening with Carol Leeming presenting LOVE THE LIFE YOU LIVE…LIVE THE LIFE YOU LOVE
Dare to Diva productions presents a provocative evening of music, dance and theatrical entertainment with Leicester poet, musician and theatre-maker Carol Leeming on Monday 29 Jan at Curve.
Love the Life You Live…Live the Life You Love is a magic realist staging of a brand new theatre show, performed with live musicians and a vocal chorus drawn from the community. Set in the St George’s area of Leicester, the performance will transport audiences back to the 1980s and First World War, exploring race, class, gender and queer identity, history and our place within it.
Love the Life You Live… will be staged as the second part of a full evening of music, poetry and Diva songs performed by Carol Leeming and musical guests.
Maz a 24 year old dual heritage Queer window dresser, is a larger than life, troubled, vain, Helsinki-Bar clubber. During an alcohol & drug fuelled night out in the St George’s quarter, he fatefully meets a rather strange eccentric man….this seemingly random but disturbing encounter, changes them both in unforeseen ways forever…
This choreopoem is the second in Carol Leeming’s trilogy of staged monologues. Audiences first met the character Maz in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Diva, which was staged at Curve in 2012.
The Siobhan Logan Award winning script is published in the Hidden Stories anthology, commissioned by the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester. The Centre’s Director Dr Corinne Fowler said:
“Carol Leeming’s choreopoem was commissioned by the Centre for New Writing. It provides unique insights into Leicester’s formerly industrialised past. Written in the tradition of the Leicester-born playwright Joe Orton, Love the Life You Live… explores the untold stories of gay people in Leicester, mined from the newly digitised Leicester Mercury archive.”
Dare to Diva has been awarded Arts Council England Grants for the Arts funding to develop the script for the stage and Carol Leeming is currently supported by the Artistic Development programme at Curve. The special performance on 29 Jan will offer audiences the chance to see and feedback on a fully staged preview of the production, which will be developed into a 60 minute theatre piece and is set to tour theatres in 2018/19.
Love the Life You Live… is written and directed by Carol Leeming and will be performed by actor Emile Clarke. Choreographed by Leicester-born Kwesi Johnson of Kompany Malachi, music for the production has been composed by Carol Leeming with musical arrangement by Neil Hunter. The performance will be staged with a specially commissioned digital backdrop from Gopi Degala.