Day One - a good one

Today was the opening day of our eleventh Looping the Loop festival and it was a good day. A really good day, filled with lots of activity, sunshine, people and a real sense of presenting live performance that was relevant, embracing and truly accessible. 
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At 9am we arrived outside Turner Contemporary with the #MadVentureVan to set up for our 11am start with Adventure in Space and the Stranded Space Cadets. 3 actors, 1 director, 1 actor/director, a trainee production assistant, a producer, a volunteer helper and a photographer, all working together to give 7 performances of Adventure in Space  (it may have been 8!) and to have the Space Cadets descending on the Old Town, Dreamland and the Margate seafront. By 5pm we'd had up to 12 people at a time inside #MadVentureVan for a performance (amazing what a tardis this little 70s caravan theatre space can be!), handed out hundreds of festival programmes and talked to lots of people about what's going on this week. Then it was off to Theatre Royal Margate for the penultimate performance of Hannah & Hanna in Dreamland which we supported and are very proud to have as our opening weekend production.

​Over the weeks of its first tour the show has matured into a very special, engrossing piece of theatre, performed by Thanet actor Lisa Payne and Celia Meiras, who was in the original Hannah & Hanna play, premiered at the Theatre Royal in 2001. The last performance of this tour is on Sunday 4 November at 3pm. It's great, it's coming home, try it and enjoy it! There's so much to laugh, groan, squirm and rejoice at. By the time we all left the theatre at 10.30pm, it felt like a long, joyous, creative day, doing the stuff we love and having the reward of seeing people of all ages excited and inspired by what they'd encountered. 
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There's a whole wealth of performance on offer this week. Don't waste this opportunity for Thanet, come to something, tell others, check it out. Teatime Tales, Ground Control, Rendezvous in Bratislava - creative performance that's about life, family, the world around us - www.loopingtheloopfestival.org.uk

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