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Samaritans want you to shush and listen

Harness the power of listening – Brighton, Hove and District Samaritans want you to SHUSH! and listen. 

Samaritans the suicide prevention charity’s annual month-long awareness campaign Talk to Us in July encourages people from all over the UK to take a few minutes to improve their listening skills by following the charity’s simple SHUSH! listening tips.

Samaritans volunteers at Brighton, Hove and Haywards Heath railway stations will be handing out SHUSH Listening tips and highlighting the support they provide for the community, which centres on good listening skills.

Every six seconds, someone in the UK and Ireland contacts Samaritans, and every 90 minutes in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, someone takes their own life.

Samaritans believes that listening is crucial to helping people find their way through their problems, and the charity would like to encourage people to seek help early, rather than when they reach a crisis.

Samaritans Listening Tips or S-H-U-S-H:

  • Show you care:  focus just on the other person, make eye contact, put away your phone
  • Have patience:  it may take time and several attempts before a person is ready to open up
  • Use open questions:  that need more than a yes/no answer, and follow-up e.g. ‘Tell me more’
  • Say it back:  to check you’ve understood, but don’t interrupt or offer a solution
  • Have courage:  don’t be put off by a negative response and, most importantly, don’t be afraid to leave silence

Good listening is hard but Samaritans believes it essential in bringing down the number of suicides.

Director Alison from Brighton, Hove and District Samaritans, said: “Suicide is everybody’s business and we can all do our bit to encourage people to be better listeners and reach out for help if they need to. We’re a culture of people who love to give advice, love to give opinions and love the sound of our own voices. But this year we’re asking people all over the country to SHUSH! and take time out to listen to others. Sixty years of Samaritans’ expertise has taught us that just listening is the greatest gift you can give to somebody, and that it can save lives.

“Samaritans’ aim is to bring down the high numbers of suicides in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. It wants to encourage people to ask for help early if they are struggling, rather than waiting until they reach a crisis.”

 

REVIEW: Shirley Valentine @Theatre Royal

Shirley Valentine

Theatre Royal

Brighton

Written by Willy Russell, Shirley Valentine is a superb one women story of triumph, of recognising the worth of being in the moment, the importance of living for yourself and knowing that things have a shelf life and sometimes you need to break open the walls that keep you safe, to really experience living again, and learn to love yourself.

This 30th anniversary stage production directed by Glen Walford, who commissioned and directed the original Shirley Valentine in Liverpool in 1986 is a love affair with the Theatre. It’s a touch perfect production, the set and direction tight and clear, the lights and soundscape just the right amount of suggestiveness and it all centres on this utterly beguiling, convincing and engaging performance from Jodie Prenger.

She is playing Shirley, the middle-aged housewife heroine of Willy Russell’s award-winning play who first challenges then decides to join her friend and escape her domestic drudgery in Liverpool for a Greek holiday which will open her to differences in living and ultimately change her life.

Prenger’s performance is  a masterclass in understated brilliance, her comic timing so sharp is seems effortless, her small silent pauses just enough for us to fill them with our sighs, possibly our tears and empathy before she whips it up and away from us, like her ultra animated tea towel, and throws us into laughter. From eyes welling up with the brutal honestly of her self-regard to laugh out loud finishing of sentences this is a stylish switch back performance of a women volcanically rising into her prime.

Prenger is a slightly more glamorous Shirley than the Pauline Collins version but this makes her feel more contemporary and for a 30-year-old script this holds up superbly as the observations of her family’s behaviour are not beholden to the technology they use.

Russell’s writing of female working class characters is superb, he voices them in an authentic, considerate and empowering way and there are not enough roles this powerful for women. It’s an inspiring story and Shirley’s journey is a deliberate and easy to follow map towards the unknowns. From the same and stifling life she shared with a man she’s grown familiar with, to a foreign holiday with the potential to change everything.

Shirley stays with us, conversationally giving us insight and understanding, ostensibly taking to her ‘confidant’ –the Wall- and then ‘the Rock’ when in Greece but actually talking directly to us, the audience and Prenger appears to connect to each and every member of the audience, she’s superbly there and present in a role which is all about being utterly present in the moment.

Her change of voice for neighbours, family and husband are superb and she’s physically funny, a shifted shoulder and sideways hop across the stage getting huge laughs, her body is as agile as her voice and I seriously enjoyed watching this superb animated acting, she made me laugh and laugh again with her psychical shifts of tone.

I could gush more, I will gush more, but book yourself a ticket now, this was an unexpected treat and I left feeling notably empowered by Russell’s life affirming writing, as relevant now to everyone as it was thirty years ago, but also enchanted by this tour de force performance from Prenger. With the audience on their feet giving her a tumultuous applause, well deserved, Prenger offers some of it to ‘The Rock’ sitting next to her in the second half beach set. Modest, charming and seriously funny, Prenger herself rocks!

Utterly perfect and a flawless performance of the oncoming renaissance of a woman lost to other people’s low expectations of her and her own re-founding of her pure self through the realistic realisation of a simple dream and the unconditional acceptance of the consequences.

Book now: Recommended.

Theatre Royal Brighton until Saturday, July 22

 

 

RuPaul’s Drag Race superstar rounds off Pride in Hull line-up

Courtney Act
Courtney Act

RuPaul’s Drag Race runner-up Courtney Act sashay onto the stage this Saturday, July 22, 2017 to entertain the crowds at Pride in Hull.

Courtney, who appeared on season six of the hit TV show, starred in Little Mix’s latest music video Power alongside fellow Drag Race alumnae Alaska and Willam, performing with pop-star LGBT+ advocate Jade Thirlwall and the other Little Mix girls in the girl power anthem.

During her time on the show, Courtney impressed the judges, never having to Lipsync for her life and reaching the final alongside Adore Delano and eventual winner Bianca Del Rio along with appearing in the video for RuPaul’s iconic Sissy That Walk.

Member of the Pride in Hull organising committee Andy Hastings, said: “We are so excited to have Courtney joining us on Saturday. RuPaul’s Drag Race is such a huge part of LGBT+ culture, so getting a contestant to perform in Hull was always top of our wish list for 2017 but we were bowled over by the number of requests from our audience for one of the Ru Girls to join us. We’re sure Courtney will charm the crowd with her charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent.”

Pride in Hull takes place on Saturday, July 22 beginning with a parade at midday, before the main event in Queen’s Gardens starts at 2pm.

For more information about Pride in Hull, click here:

Tigers parachute team to open Brighton Pride Community Parade

The Princess of Wales’ parachute display team, to open Brighton Pride Community Parade on Saturday, August 5.

The world famous Princess of Wales’ Parachute Regiment also known as The Tigers will perform a free-fall parachute team jump at 10.45am to deliver the Brighton & Hove Pride 2017 rainbow flag to the head of the Pride Community Parade at 11am on Hove Lawns.

The Tigers free-fall parachute display will be the most spectacular start to a Pride celebrations the city has ever witnessed, as the display team drops onto Hove Lawns on Saturday, August 5, smoke trailing and flags flying, while performing amazing formations both in the air and under the parachute.

The Tigers are the flagship team for the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, whose seniority stems from the Tangier Regiment of 1661, thus having the distinction of being the senior English Infantry Regiment of the line.

Soldiers of the Regiment are recruited from Kent, Surrey, Sussex, London, Hampshire, Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands. Members of The Tigers consist of volunteers from various battalions of the regiment.

The Tigers have performed at many events throughout the years as far a field as Berlin, Kosovo, Cyprus and at the opening of the birthday celebrations for Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. Now they will add the Summer of Love Brighton Pride 2017 celebrations to their long list of credits, flying high for Pride, with style, with grace and with rainbows.

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To book tickets for Brighton Pride, 2017, click here:

 

‘Abigail’s fundraising Party for MindOut

Abigail’s Party, a play for stage and television, was devised and directed in 1977 by Mike Leigh.

Described as “a suburban situation comedy of manners”, and a “satire on the aspirations and tastes of the new middle class” that emerged in Britain in the 1970s, it is perfect for screening in Brighton in 2017!

Bear-Patrol the social networking fundraising group will be screening the film on Friday, October 6, at the Bedford Tavern with added surprises from ‘Spice’ and a 70’s style finger buffet, all to benefit MindOut, the LGBT+ mental health service.

Money will be raised via bucket donations on the door and a raffle.

All monies raised will be ring fenced by MindOut towards the running costs of their new Counselling Project.


Event: Abigail’s Party – A fundraiser organised by Bear-Patrol

Where: Bedford Tavern, 30 Western St, Hove, Brighton BN1 2PG

When: Friday, October 6

Time: 7pm- 11pm

For up to date information, click here:

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