April might be the cruellest month, but it brings with it an intriguing new festival — a multi-disciplinary celebration of one of the 20th century’s best-known poems, taking in everything from live readings to DJ sets and flamenco quartets.
Fragments is a six-day exploration of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, bringing together a series of short performances to mark 100 years since the modernist masterpiece was first published.
It’s certainly an ambitious project — many artists will appear more than once within a programme spread out across multiple venues — but it looks as if it’ll be well worth taking the time to delve into.
Here’s what you need to know.
Where is Fragments taking place?
The festival will be hosted by 22 medieval churches in the City of London — the same areas that crop up in The Waste Land, and near to the bank at which Eliot worked while he was writing the poem.
How does the festival work?
The events will, like the poem, be split up into five separate sections, referred to by organisers as “celebrations”. Each celebration will comprise a number of 15-minute performances (and a handful of longer ones), with 15-minute gaps in between them to allow festival-goers to walk between venues.
The majority of performers will take to the stage more than once — for example, folk musician Sam Lee is booked in at St James Garlickhythe for shows at 3.30pm, 4pm, 4.30pm and 5pm on Saturday April 9 — which means ticket-holders can pick and choose from the line-up, and devise their own routes between the churches, which are all within walking distance of each other (around five to eight minutes, on average). Organisers have also plotted out a number of suggested routes for each celebration, which can be found on the website.
What does my ticket give me?
Tickets are sold separately for each celebration, priced at £20. This gives attendees access to all the events within that celebration — between seven and 10 performances.
What are some of the highlights?
Around 30 actors, writers and musicians are taking part in Fragments, and the offering is vast.
Some names do pop out from the line-up — Tamsin Greig (April 8, St Olave Hart St), Fiona Shaw (April 9, St Botolph’s Aldersgate) and Toby Jones (April 9, St Magnus Martyr) are among the starriest bookings, and are all set to deliver poetry readings — but there are plenty of fascinating prospects dotted around the programme.
Be sure to make time for the boundary-pushing Gavin Bryars Ensemble (April 10, St Katharine Cree), who will be dropping in for one of the festival’s longer performances, at 50 minutes, as well as Maya Youssef (April 10, St Ethelburga) the Syrian virtuoso dubbed “the queen of the qanun”, a 78-stringed instrument.
Elsewhere, there are “in-coversation” events with writer Will Self (April 10, St Mary-le-Bow Crypt) and neuroscientist Anil Seth (April 10, St Ethelburga and St Mary-le-Bow Crypt), as well as shorts bursts of sea songs and shanties (April 8, St Mary-at-Hill) and Portuguese fado (April 9, St Michael Paternoster Royal).
There’s plenty more, too - head here for the full line-up and timings.
