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It isn’t often that an all Femmes of Colour cast takes the stage in Wales; and so when Hive City Legacy burst onto the floor with riotous onslaught of spoken word, dance and aerial acrobatics, it feels powerful, poignant and refreshing. It’s a fast-paced show that explores how the collective experiences of the cast intersect through stories of race, mental health, identity and sexuality, with empowerment and liberation at the core.

A production by Roundhouse in collaboration with Australian collective Hot Brown Honey’s Lisa Fa’alafi, Busty Beatz and Yami Lofvenberg, the show feels like a rebellion; it is fighting back with a sting of unapologetic boldness and daring with a powerful message of self-love. It has at its heart an empowering message for any femme of colour living life in a country that wants to oppress and silence. Inevitably, Hive City Legacy is an emotional journey packed with personal experiences of the performers. One moment the audience is thrown into an emotive dance sequence exploring the manifestation of the weight of prejudice, and the next into a satire of an office Christmas party scene exposing microaggressions and white privilege. In a particularly hard-hitting scene, a performer is crouched and quivering whilst a montage of voices fill the room with words of homophobic and racist abuse. These shifts in tone should be jarring, but they snap from one to the other effortlessly with brilliant direction from Lisa Fa’alafi. From spoken word to acrobatics to twerking to body-popping, it is the perfect organised chaos.

The stage is headed by the image of a bee with the message ‘pollinate, activate, liberate’; the empowering call to action that is the clear message of the performance. Stacks of boxes are used as a storytelling mechanism to detail the everyday experiences of the cast. We follow stories from navigating theatre spaces when black, through battling with mental health, to embracing natural hair. A performer declares: ‘I am not your piece of meat’ in response to the predatory gaze of a white man sat opposite her on a train, while another tells of physical self-acceptance through breakdancing and rapping. The performers take the tropes and stereotypes of femmes of colour and don’t just turn them upside down, but also chew them up and spit them back out too. Each cast member enriches the show with their unique talent and experiences, and it is clear how much they are personally invested in the performance. They come together as a collective with infectious energy and find strength in numbers, picking each other up and amplifying the voices of one another.

Hive City Legacy shows that brilliant things happen when those that are marginalised in both the arts and society are given the spotlight. By the end of the show you’ll be right there with the performers, dancing and revelling in the anarchy.

Recently, I spent a week with Nescio Ensemble, a 13-person classical string orchestra from the Netherlands, on their Welsh tour. We spent the week at Chapel Cottage Studio, a beautiful self-built open home and artists’ retreat nestled in the Welsh countryside. Spending the week outside of my city-reality, surrounded by farm animals and the sounds of violins was idyllic. It also served as a reminder of the importance of stepping outside of yourself, to talk and eat with strangers from different walks of life to you, and the ways this can enrich your perspective of your own life and environment.

Before our first gig, we spent an intense day-and-a-half rehearsing. Taking my poetry and their music apart and working to make them fit as one coherent performance. We worked to modify the music and my words to accommodate each other. We were all surprised by how naturally they fitted together; their instruments amplifying and complimenting my words, my words adding another layer of meaning to their set. The more I write and perform, the more comfortable I am with sharing this part of myself with people who are complete strangers — I thrive on this strange intimacy.

Over the week we performed nine gigs in different parts of Wales; from small village churches to city architects’ offices. Before the tour, I knew nothing about classical music. To be honest, I thought of it in a generalised, stereotypical way as being snobby, intimidating and ‘not for me’, an attitude I think many share. Nescio, though, an innovative group of passionate and talented musicians, have encouraged me to think of the genre in a different light. They work to break down the barriers between performer-audience and challenge the formal conventions of classical performances. Each song is introduced to the audience and explained with a personal approach. Nescio also seek to collaborate with artists of different mediums on their tours (luckily this time they found me), and aim to create something unique to bring to their audiences. They were all clearly very passionate about bringing classical music to everyone, especially those, like me, who viewed it as not for them or inaccessible. I think their personal approach, performing outside of the typical concert hall environment, and the fact that most of the gigs were free to attend helped to make our performances more accessible.

Performing with the ensemble was a completely different experience to how I’m used to performing. Instead of just getting up, reading a piece from start to finish then moving onto another, my pieces were picked apart and spread out between musical interludes. I had time to really savour the experience, to reflect on how the music was informing the words and how the audience were reacting. It was a challenge for me to bring my work to people that may not be my typical audience, or knowing that many would have been attending primarily for the music and not for my poetry. But our audiences listened intently and gave useful, positive feedback post-concert.

Lately, I’ve been lucky to work on some collaborative projects. This year I’ve worked on other music collaborations, made videos and co-written an audio story. It’s opened me up to the different ways in which my work can grow and develop under the influences of others. With the ensemble, my performance was more than just standing up and reading but a shared experience between us as performers and our connection with the audience. I’m certain that my work and myself personally will benefit from the tour and everything I learned along the way.

An evening with Hollie McNish at her sold-out show at Wales Millennium Centre’s Ffresh, supported by Clare Potter, consisted of poems about boobs, strange turn-ons, motherhood and granny’s, along with many belly laughs.

McNish started by reminisced about her first Cardiff gig, at Womanby Street’s Moon Club, which was attended by drunken members of a parent’s club. Cardiff was happy to have her back, as the audience were completely captivated by both performers. McNish read poems spanning her collections, taking the audience on an intimate journey from adolescence through to motherhood. She often paused between lines to comment on or explain a piece, breaking down the barriers between performer and audience, which encouraged a relaxed and intimate atmosphere.

Launching into her poem ‘Embarrassed’, which is based on being forced to resort to breastfeeding her daughter in public loos, McNish criticised a society that is made uncomfortable by women breastfeeding ‘In a country of billboards covered in tits.’ Her poems celebrate womanhood in a way that is uncensored, without shying away from the ‘ugly’ parts, and their relatability is apparent in the reaction of her audience, as there are many all-too-knowing nods and laughs in response. McNish turns the ordinary things about sex and womanhood that people only discuss with hushed voices and turns them into bold, matter-of-fact poems that demand the attention of the room. A success story of the slam and spoken word scenes, McNish is a natural behind the mic. Her poems, frank and un-filtered, need to be heard aloud to be truly experienced.

Clare Potter’s support set was intimate and personal, exploring similar themes of motherhood, family and the female experience. She treated the audience to new and in-progress carefully crafted poems that were playful with rhythm and sound, many rooted in her Welsh upbringing. A particular highlight was her final poem ‘Still’, a tender and nostalgic piece about her grandmother’s house and garden. Both performers held a warm stage presence—shy, humble and willing to be open—which enabled them to really connect with the audience.

The topics of McNish’s poems vary, often taking inspiration from her everyday experiences; from chats with her gran about the legalisation of gay sex to her doctor telling her she was ‘ready to have sex again’ after giving birth. Some highlights of her set were ‘Bricks’, a poem about her pregnancy turn-ons of bricks and ice, ‘Breast’ about sharing her body with her partner and daughter post-birth, and ‘Magic Show’ which explores the orgy fantasies that she indulged in when bored at children’s birthday parties.

McNish’s style is simplistic, no-fluff-around-the-edges, rhyming poetry that clearly appeals to a contemporary audience. Honesty and accessibility are at the core of this movement, which allows poets to connect with a wider audience via social media and video platforms. This style has come under fire by critics concerned with craft and linguistics, such as a PN review which hit out at Hollie and her style, which she rightfully responded to in detail on her website. As consumers of poetry expand, this kind of accessible, uncomplicated and relatable poetry is what thrives. Hollie McNish addressed this head on when introducing her poems, which were often squeezed in between being a mum. The power of her poems is evident in the way she makes the women in the room feel empowered, the reactions of her audience when she spouts off all of the different names for a vagina and tells of the time she slept in the hallway to avoid sex with her partner. Poets like McNish challenge the ideology that poetry is only for the elite, and are testament to the fact that poetry has room for everyone. Go and see her for laughs, education, or even a hen do, and you’re guaranteed to be won over by her charm and honesty.

Bringing The Other Room’s Spring Fringe to a close, Bottom, Willy Hudson’s comedic one-man show unpicks what it means to be queer and lonely in a generation that searches for love through substance-fuelled one night stands and swiping right on Tinder.

Hudson breaks the barrier between audience and performer from the very beginning, bursting onto stage in nothing but a pink towel, searching for his clothes which are hidden underneath the audience’s seats. This intimacy runs throughout the show, as Hudson squeezes in with the audience and gives members his phone to hold. He lets us in on his sex life, his quest for love, his mental health. It’s Hudson’s honesty and openness that encourages the audience to be comfortable and to get invested in his story. The performance feels casual, barely acted, so that by the end of the show you feel you’ve just been told a story by a close friend.

The storytelling in Bottom is non-linear, it jumps around as Hudson himself jumps around the pink, Beyoncé-shrine set. In one timeline, Willy is serving burnt fish to his date, his only date who hasn’t asked the deal-breaking top or bottom? question. In another he is working at one of his four part-time jobs, a London burger joint, with a manager that just loves gay guys. In another, he is locked in the bathroom trying to feel ready to be the Top in a sexual encounter. The movement is chaotic, and it can be difficult to keep up at times. Though the chaos reflects the whirlwind that is Willy’s life at the time, and direction from Rachel Lemon helps to keep the chaos at bay. The re-occurring mantra also helps to focus the course of the narrative — Hudson returns to a moment with the bottom half of chocolate-smeared shop mannequin representative of his own body — and analyses the progress of his love for Beyoncé, his self-esteem and his quest for love.

There’s light-hearted, belly-laugh inducing moments, there’s Beyoncé (a lot of Beyoncé), a pink ukulele and chocolate spread but also so much more that’s explored. Sound design by Tic Ashfield fits the tone of each scene perfectly, enhancing the emotion in some and the energy of others. Bottom is going to make you laugh but it’s also going to make you think about queer identity, being working class, the fetishisation of gay men and sexual anxiety. It’s so important to see the queer experience told beyond the stock queer character, beyond the coming out story — though of course, that’s part of it. Hudson challenges the gay male stereotypes that echo those of heterosexual ones; the effeminate ‘bottom’ and the machoistic ‘top’. When Willy Hudson loves both dancing to Beyoncé and drinking pints at the pub, who decides where he fits?

These anxieties and struggles are relatable to many regardless of your sexual orientation. Navigating the influence of technology on dating apps that encourage no-strings-attached casual sex can make seeking genuine connections difficult. There are things that will be assumed about you because of your identity, whether they apply to you or not. There is comfort to be found in Bottom in that it reassures that nobody has it all figured out. To explore queer culture and identity with such honesty, not afraid to criticise, shouldn’t be brave, but it is. Willy Hudson is opening himself up for all to see, we owe it to him, and ourselves, to listen.