Spring/Summer Contemporary Arts Programme at the Parsonage

A press release from the Brontë Parsonage Museum

Lip Service headline Bronte Parsonage Museum’s Spring/Summer Contemporary Arts Programme

Literary lunatics Lip Service return to Haworth this summer to perform their cult-classic Brontë spoof Withering Looks. The performance, which will take place on the evening of Saturday 4 June, is one of the highlights of the Brontë Parsonage Museum’s new season of contemporary arts events, the full programme of which is released today.

A new commission by artist Catherine Bertola, opening on Saturday 16 April, will feature a haunting sound installation, To be forever known, in response to the Brontë sisters’ letters and writings. Inspired by the history of the Parsonage, Catherine will also curate a series of special evenings at the museum, called ‘Conversaziones’, as part of her exhibition. Conversaziones were gatherings held by the Victorians in their homes to discuss topics of the day, and the evenings will take place after hours in the museum, featuring a small audience in conversation with expert speakers on subjects such as the domestic life of the Parsonage. Speakers will include Lucasta Miller and biographer Kathryn Hughes.

Also visiting Haworth to talk about their work as part of the new season of events will be novelist Salley Vickers, and writer and journalist Blake Morrison, who is writing a new play about the Brontës for Halifax theatre company Northern Broadsides.

The museum will also be hosting the second Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing in September, following the success of the first festival in 2010. The weekend of readings, talks, workshops and family events takes place 16-18 September and will feature an event with Moira Buffini, the screenwriter for the new film version of Jane Eyre which will be released later this year. The festival programme will be announced in July.

Full details of the new contemporary arts programme, which will run from April to September 2011, are below:

Saturday 16 April – Friday 8 July
To be forever known: Catherine Bertola
Brontë Parsonage Museum
Catherine Bertola creates installations, objects and drawings that respond to particular sites, collections and historic contexts. Using scientific methods of revealing the resonant harmonies and tones of architectural spaces, she will capture the sounds of the Brontë Parsonage Museum. Extracts from the sisters’ letters are spoken aloud and recorded. These recordings have been played and re-recorded over and over again into the space, until the words become whispers and the resonances of the room are revealed. The resulting sounds will be exhibited as an audio installation; the sisters’ thoughts and feelings once again echoing within the rooms of the house.


Catherine Bertola was born in Rugby in 1976, grew up in Halifax, and studied Fine Art at Newcastle University. She has created site specific installations for a variety of sites and contexts, for organisations such as Whitworth Art Gallery (Manchester), V&A Museum (London), Millennium Gallery (Sheffield) and the National Trust. Catherine Bertola has work in several public and private collections and is represented by Workplace Gallery, Gateshead and M+R Fricke, Berlin. She lives and works in Gateshead, UK.

Exhibition free on admission to the museum.

Conversaziones
‘Conversaziones’ were small social gatherings held by the Victorians in their homes to discuss topics of the day. As part of her exhibition, Catherine Bertola has curated three Conversaziones, and together with a series of invited speakers and small audience, will invite discussion on a series of themes relating to the exhibition. The evenings will take place at the Brontë Parsonage Museum after hours, and refreshments will be provided.

Thursday 12 May, 7pm
Radical Women
Lucasta Miller and Jane Robinson discuss the role of radical women, from the original Bluestockings to the 20th Century suffragettes, who like the Brontës, transcended perceived ideas of femininity.
Jane Robinson is author of Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education.
Lucasta Miller is a writer and critic, and author of The Brontë Myth.

Thursday 16 June, 7pm
Everyday Lives
Ann Dinsdale and Suzanne Fagence Cooper take us through the domestic rituals of an early 19th household, to discover how the Brontë sisters would have occupied their time outside of writing.
Ann Dinsdale is Collections Manager at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
Suzanne Fagence Cooper is V&A Research Fellow at Buckinghamshire New University, has written several books on Victorian art and culture, and has been a consultant for BBC programmes including What the Victorians Did for Us, and Simon Schama's History of Britain.

Thursday 7 July, 7pm
Between the Lines
Historian and biographer Kathryn Hughes explores how artefacts and historical evidence can help us to access the people and places of the past.
Kathryn Hughes is Professor of Lifewriting at UEA. Her biographies include George Eliot: the Last Victorian and The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton. She is a journalist and critic, regularly writing for The Guardian and appearing on BBC Radio 4.

Tickets £14 from jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188 includes refreshments and private view of the museum. Please note places are strictly limited to 18 per event, so early booking is recommended.
Conversaziones is supported by Art In Yorkshire - supported by Tate, a year long celebration of the visual arts in 19 galleries throughout Yorkshire. Works from Tate’s collection of historic, modern and contemporary art will be showcased through a compelling programme of exhibitions and events. Visit http://art.yorkshire.com

Thursday 19 May, 7.30pm
Blake Morrison
West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth
Blake Morrison is a novelist, poet, journalist and critic, and has written libretti as well as plays for the stage. He visits Haworth to speak about his work, including his upcoming stage play, We Three Are Sisters, which combines Chekhov with the story of the Brontës. Chekhov read about the Brontës’ lives shortly before writing The Three Sisters and their story influenced his famous script.

Born in Skipton, Blake Morrison worked as literary editor of The Observer and Independent on Sunday before becoming a full-time writer in 1995. He has published two memoirs, Things My Mother Never Told Me and And When Did You Last See Your Father? which was made into a film starring Colin Firth and Jim Broadbent. His most recent novel is The Last Weekend  (2010). Blake Morrison is Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Tickets £6 and should be booked in advance from jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188.

Friday 3 June, 3.30pm
Salley Vickers
West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth
Novelist Salley Vickers discusses her work, including her most recent novel, Dancing Backwards and her new short story collection, Aphrodite’s Hat.

Salley Vickers was born in Liverpool and read English at Newnham College, Cambridge. She worked as a teacher and lecturer in English and Ancient literature, and as a Jungian analyst, before publishing her first novel, Miss Garnet’s Angel (2000) which became a word of mouth bestseller and sold over a million copies. This was followed by Instances of the Number 3 (2001); Mr. Golightly's Holiday (2003); The Other Side of You (2006) and Where Three Roads Meet (2007). An admirer of the Brontës, Salley Vickers has written the introduction to the Hesperus Press edition of Charlotte Brontë’s The Secret.
Tickets £6 on the door and there is no need to book in advance.

Saturday 4 June, 8pm
Withering Looks
West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth
Lip Service, Britain’s favourite literary lunatics, dust off their crinolines and return to Haworth with their cult classic Brontë spoof, Withering Looks. The show gives us an intimate look at the lives and works of the Brontë sisters…well, two of them anyway, Anne’s just popped out for a cup of sugar. But they do have maniacal laughter from the attic, consumptive coughing, and some tormented souls to compensate. Peopled with some of the great characters from the Brontë canon, and some that, quite frankly, Lip Service have made up, Withering Looks is an irreverent and hilarious theatre treat to savour. Not to be missed.

Withering Looks has won a Manchester Evening News Award and Critics Award for Comedy at the Edinburgh Festival.
Tickets £20 (£10 under-16s) and must be booked in advance. Ticket price includes admission to the Brontë Parsonage Museum on the day of the performance. For further details and booking please contact jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188.

Sunday 5 June, 10.30am- 2.30pm
Piano Recital
Brontë Parsonage Museum
Pianist Maya Irgalina from the Royal Northern College of Music performs on Emily Brontë’s cabinet piano. Visitors can look around the museum as the music, chosen from the Brontës’ music books and including Beethoven and Händel, drifts throughout the house. The cabinet piano was restored in 2010 and this is only the second time that it has been played in over 150 years.
Free with admission to the museum.

Brontë Women’s Writing Festival
Friday 16 – Sunday 18 September
Brontë Parsonage Museum and other venues
Following the success of the first Brontë literary festival in 2010, we are delighted to be hosting a second festival dedicated to Women’s Writing. The full programme will be announced in July and will include talks by prominent and emerging women writers, creative writing workshops, and family events at the museum. Festival highlights include screenwriter for the upcoming Jane Eyre motion picture, Moira Buffini, discussing how she adapted the novel for film, Mills & Boon meets Wuthering Heights, plus lots, lots more!

Brontës on Stage and Screen
2011 is a big year for Brontë adaptations, with major feature films of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights released in September. On the stage, there is another chance to see Shared Experience’s Brontë this Spring (see www.sharedexperience.org.uk). In We Three Are Sisters, Blake Morrison’s stage play brings together Chekhov with the Brontës (www.northern-broadsides.co.uk). More locally, Encore Theatre present Brontë Boy which focuses on the life of Branwell Brontë (www.encore01.com).

Categories: Brontë Parsonage Museum