Niamh McCarthy & Poppy Hughes
Spoken Word

Niamh is studying Theatre Design at Edge Hill University and Poppy Hughes is a Fine Art student at Liverpool Hope University. Both aged 20, they've been YEP Actors since 2012 performing in The Grid, Alice in Wonderland, Until They Kick Us Out and The Wonderful World of Dissocia. Further performance and writing credits beyond YEP for both include; Take Back Togetherness (Royal Exchange) and Take Back: America (The Comedy Store).

"As students we know how to drop the ball, leave everything to the last minute, pull an all nighter to get your work done, nearly die on presentation day but still pass, even sometimes get a first, and that's how we get by. To us getting by means scraping the barrel to reach the bare minimum requirements of being a human being who contributes to society but we still have fun in the process."

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Gabriel Jones
Spoken Word

Gabriel is a published poet (Mud Press/Smiths Magazine) from West Wales, currently studying Anthropology and Sociology. He is a member of London-based Spare the Poets and Barbican Young Poets and co-runs a spoken word and improvised music night Human Gloop. He’s performed work across the UK including the Amphitheatre (Bestival), Guardian Literature tent (Camp Bestival) and Bradford Literature Festival. Most recently he competed in the 2017 Uni-Slam with a team from Goldsmiths and came first.

"If we met our society, like a wide-eyed inventor in sweat bands, running shoes, with deep frown lines, spending each night crying in their time-machine and each day drinking red bull and shooting people from their hoverboard, we’d know something was clearly wrong. However it’s harder to see it and change when you’re living in a madness that has been normalised. This is what I tried to speak about in a less specific and more rhymey way."

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Laura Connolly
Artist

Laura Connolly is a Liverpool John Moores University Drama graduate. She is a Liverpool based performer and her credits include Crime and Punishment (Burjesta Theatre), Jason and the Argonauts (Off the Ground Touring Production) and Faraway (YEP Directors Festival at the Everyman).

She is also a YEP Directors graduate (2016), and has since worked on various productions as a director/movement director: Blackout, In Wonderland (Everyman, ev1 studio) One More Fortunate and Ghost Street (Unity Theatre).

"I've always choreographed my pieces to music. For Gabriel’s poem I thought it would be great to play with working the movement to his voice. Trying to get by in life is something we all relate to and this piece can go either way, which resonates quite nicely with the theme. Poppy and Niamh’s piece was inspired by my uni days, the routines and expectations you have to meet at such a young age. It can be very overwhelming and getting by is a lot harder than it seems."

Fuse is a festival of multi-medium performance presented by YEP producers. Responding to the theme of 'getting by', 12 emerging artists will create a performance that includes spoken word, music, dance, physical theatre and classical art. See it at the Everyman for £2, Thu 9 Mar & Fri 10 Mar 2017.