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PREVIEW: Invisible Woman

Maxine Jones starts the UK tour of her show Invisible Woman at the Other Place, Brighton on January 23.

Maxine Jones

THE UK comedy website Chortle, lists Maxine in the top ten ‘feminist fatales’ calling her “outstandingly funny.”

A review from the Buxton Fringe festival said: “Maxine raises questions and issues around gender roles in a gentle yet probing way. The audience loved it”.

“I’ve some lovely dates lined up,” said Maxine. “As well as the Other Place, I’ll be at the Leicester Square Theatre London, the Palace Theatre Redditch and the Rondo, Bath, as well as a few festivals.”

Maxine runs a comedy club in Blackrock, Dublin, upstairs at the Wicked Wolf, every Tuesday fortnight.

“I particularly encourage women to get up and have a go – just to balance things out a bit. There are some excellent young – and older – women comics now getting a foothold on the circuit. Wicked Wolf always has some on the bill.”

Maxine came to comedy late in life, though she’d always been a fan. She studied French at Durham University and worked as an EFL teacher and secretary in northern Italy and Paris before settling in London, where she worked for Methuen publishers, several magazines (including the launch issue of Hello) and for the BBC, before leaving a staff job at the Independent to move to Dublin on a whim in 1990. Mercier published her book Successful Irish Businesswomen in 1992.

Working on the Sunday Tribune she met the father of her three sons, whom she divorced in 1996, when divorce was introduced to Ireland. She set up her own magazine, Suburb, from home and worked as a freelance columnist, reviewer and travel writer.

Maxine has cycled from Turkey through Syria, the Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Egypt; and around south India; drove an old VW Scirocco across the Sahara to the Gambia; and a Citroen 2CV over the Atlas mountains to Morocco and back. Mostly during these years, she was trying to keep the house clean and the boys fed and out of trouble.

Now they are reared Maxine is focusing on writing and performing comedy and is busy preparing for her third Edinburgh show.

“I’ll probably call it Full Circle,” she said. “I’m interested in how little we learn over a lifetime and in the circular nature of practically everything. This is in line with my wish to return to England, which I’ve spent most of my life rejecting, but which I’ve recently come to appreciate.”


 

Event: Invisible Woman with Maxine Jones

Where: The Other Place, above Bar Broadway, Steine Street, Brighton

When: Friday, January 23

Time: 7.30pm

To book tickets online, click here:

For more information about Maxine, click here:

2015 is the year of the musical at Eastbourne Theatres

Dirty Dancing
Dirty Dancing

Musical Theatre fans in Eastbourne will be spoilt for choice in 2015 with productions of Dirty Dancing, Calamity Jane, Anything Goes, Oklahoma, Sound of Music and Annie.

Eastbourne Theatres will be offering musical theatre fans The Time of Their Life next year as Dirty Dancing kicks off an unprecedented year of large-scale musical productions at the Congress Theatre from January 13-24.

Jodie Prenger (Oliver!, Spamalot and One Man Two Guvnors) travels on the Deadwood Stage as Calamity Jane in a new production of the classic musical, from February 24-28.

A few weeks later, March 23-28, Cole Porter’s musical comedy Anything Goes arrives with a star cast including Hugh Sachs (Benidorm) and Jane Wymark (Midsommer Murders).

Calamity Jane
Calamity Jane

With just a pause for breath Gary Wilmot and Belinda Lang arrive with Rodgers and Hammerstine’s Oklahoma! from April 7-11. Expect classic tunes and boot-stomping dances as Curly and the girl of his dreams, Laurey travel down love’s highway on a bumpy surrey ride.

Summer is sizzling with musicals too as The Sound of Music makes a welcome return from July 7-18, starring Danielle Hope (winner of BBC TV’s Over the Rainbow) as Maria Von Trapp in the true story of a world-famous singing family.

Annie
Annie

Family favourite Annie will offer great entertainment for kids of all ages during the school break from August 10-15 with Craig Revel Horwood from Strictly Come Dancing bringing his caustic tongue to the role of Miss Hannigan

Tickets for all shows are available now from the box office on 01323 412000.

To book tickets online, click here:

New studios for RadioReverb

RadioReverb invited people to check out their new studios in Brighton last month, to have a drink, a chat and see their new facilities.

The team at Radio Reverb
The team at Radio Reverb

RADIOREVERB  is one of the largest voluntary organisation in Brighton with more than 100 volunteers working on programmes and behind the scenes. They have no paid staff to manage or run the station.

Melita Dennett RadioReverb chair said:We are dedicated to making the kind of radio you won’t hear anywhere else on the airwaves in Brighton & Hove not only with music but the way we do our speech content.

“We don’t have adverts or playlists and want our presenters and contributors to sound like real people, not stereotypes or cliches.”

RadioReverb broadcasts throughout Brighton & Hove and westward through Worthing, Littlehampton, and Chichester. They estimate they have at least 70,000 listeners who are adults, mostly professionals, listen to Radio 4 and BBC 6 Music and are engaged socially, culturally and politically with what’s happening in Brighton & Hove,

Kathy Caton, is the presenter of Out in Brighton, the city’s only LGBT show on FM. Kathy was named as one of the UK’s 100 most influential LGBT people in this years Independent on Sunday Rainbow List, up from 81 last year to number 45 in 2014. She has also recently been presented with a MindOut award for her broadcast coverage of mental health issues in the LGBT community.

Kathy along with Claire Parker, producer and presenter of Time 4 T, the UK’s first and possibly only regular Transgender show on FM, were both finalists in the 2014 Ultimate Planet Awards – LBQ community awards for Radio Show of the Year.

RadioReverb was recently shortlisted in the Radio Production Awards for the Production Hero Award alongside some major national players and they are now an approved Creative Skillset training provider for the South East and offer courses tailored to specific groups’ needs and also for the wider community.

Recently they have been awarded a grant to employ Kathy Caton, as a part-time training manager and they have now started running training workshops, aimed both at people in the wider community, and also for specific groups such as people with mental health issues, LGBT people, and others whose voices and life experiences are traditionally marginalised from mainstream media.

RadioReverb is alway looking for financial support and promise that every penny goes back into the running of the station. There are no shareholders and at the moment nobody is paid a penny to produce programmes or run the station.

If you would like to sponsor a show or become a station sponsor, click here:

A Different Kind of New Year’s Resolution

This New Year’s resolution is 31 days long; will you take the challenge?

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YOU ARE not good enough. You are a second-class citizen. These are the messages you get when you look through Facebook ads, magazines, billboards, watch TV and go to the movies – In order to be loved, you need to change your body.

But it’s not true. What if I told you that in order to be at your healthiest and your happiest that you had to stop focusing on your appearance? Likely, you’d think me crazy, radical or impractical.

Would you die for the perfect body?

According to the Succeed Foundation and the Centre for Appearance Research at UWC Bristol, 48% of gay men would willingly give up a year of their life to have their ideal body, and ten percent of gay men would exchange 11 years of their life for the perfect body.

Is that more culturally acceptable than changing the focus of the most common New Year’s resolutions: losing weight and staying fit?

Brandon Ambrosino, author of The Tyranny of Buffness, an article in The Atlantic, wrote about the unrealistic and unhealthy body image that gay male culture perpetuates.

“I didn’t know I was skinny-fat until my Russian boyfriend told me so,” said Ambrosino.

“I did, however, suspect something was wrong with my body the first night I stayed over his house … I went into the bathroom. I looked at myself in the mirror. Sure, I was a professional dancer, and I did yoga, and went running, and watched what I ate. And yes, I was probably in pretty good shape. But I didn’t look good enough.”

Developing an eating disorder, wanting to lose weight, build muscle, modify your body – these issues do not discriminate against sexuality, gender, race or any identifying factor.

These issues impact everyone, and here’s the kicker – your weight and your body are not the problem. They’re a scapegoat for the deeper issues you are discontent with: whether that be stress from work or the faulty belief that you are not good enough due to past trauma.

The answer isn’t dieting, steroids or over exercising. The answer is self-love.

A lot of people think self-love sounds hippy-dippy, too abstract or it makes them uncomfortable, but doesn’t living in a culture where people prize their appearance over their lives make you uncomfortable?

Michelle Minero, MFT commented on our culture’s need to change our bodies in her book Self-Love Diet: The Only Diet That Works.

“If you have ever hated your body, ever wanted to lose weight or believed that if you lost weight you would feel better about yourself, you have mistakenly thought that your problem was your body. It is not. Changing your outsides has never been the solution. The problem has been your inability, up to this point, to understand that you are not your body, to know without a doubt that you are good enough, precious and lovable exactly as you are in this moment.”

“Any problems you may have with accepting yourself and your body is a reflection of hurtful experiences and faulty beliefs that can be reversed through the process of living the Self-Love Diet,” said Minero.

What is the Self-Love Diet? In short, it’s regularly offering yourself love. In full, it’s regularly offering yourself love in all aspects of your life: your spirit, body, thoughts, emotions, relationships, culture and world.

This January, instead of having an appearance focused New Year’s resolution, I challenge you to join the 5th Annual 31-Day Self-Love Diet Writing Challenge.

It’s an online event hosted by the Love Warrior Community, an online community that uses creative expression to foster healing, self-acceptance, body acceptance and self-love. The Love Warrior Community is co-founded by a mother-daughter duo, out lesbian and LGBT journalist Emelina Minero, and her mom, Michelle Minero, a marriage and family therapist who specialises in eating disorder recovery.

Every day throughout January, the Love Warrior Community shares a Self-Love Diet writing prompt on their Facebook event page, and invites you to use January and your New Year’s resolution to develop a daily self-love practice.

Last year, 100 people participated, submitting over 500 self-love posts from the UK, the US, Australia and Costa Rica.

This year, people have already started to share their self-love intentions for 2015.

“My self love diet goal is to stop the negative and destructive self talk,” one person shared.

Another shared, “My personal challenge is to STOP, and take a few moments each day for me! Mentally, emotionally, and/or physically! Need to take care of me.”

Will you make self-love your New Year’s resolution for 2015?

To join the Facebook event to get started, click here: 

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