The Inn Crowd project brings free live performances of music, comedy, poetry and theatre to village locals as part of inivative project to breathe new life into local pubs.
An arts-based scheme helping put local pubs back at the heart of rural communities is set to bring a new series of performances to bar rooms in Norfolk.
The Inn Crowd project aims to support rural pubs across East Anglia by hosting high quality spoken word inspired events.
Run by Creative Arts East, its goal is to reinforce pubs as central to rural community life by bringing cultural experiences to new audiences.
It has proved popular with landlords looking for new incentives for customers to visit their local.
A diverse range of international artists, everything from theatre companies to musicians and comedians, have already given live performances in village pubs and in the process helped to make hostelries more popular and profitable.
Now the new season of 'Inn Crowd' events kicks off on October 5 with John Peel's Shed the award-winning performance by Norwich poet, writer and comedian John Osborne at The Crown in Banningham.
The popular show tells the unusual tale of an extraordinary box of records won on John Peel's Radio 1 show in 2002. It took him eight years to listen to them all, many being rare recordings by obscure bands. It is also an ode to radio, anyone who's ever sought solace in wireless, and give a unique glimpse into the soundtrack of the life of the late DJ.
Internationally renowned BBC Slam Champion Sophia Walker will then bring her show Around the World in 8 Mistakes to The Crown in Burston on October 10. It tells her riproaring tale of adventure, roaming the world from the USSR to London, via the USA, North Vietnam and a brush with the Ugandan war, in a true-life story of reasons never to move, and the quest for love and home.
Meanwhile Team Viking by James Rowland, also at the The Crown, Burston, on October 17, combines storytelling, music and comedy theatre. It is the remarkable, hilarious and heart-lifting tale of how a young man fulfilled his best-friend's final wish for a full Viking burial. Tangram Theatre's production was a runaway hit at the 2016 Edinburgh Festival.
A cocktail of poetry, short stories and classic literary extracts, Scary Little Girls' Storysmiths will be performed at The Fox in Lyng on October 26. It sees literature brought to life in the pub through music, song and storytelling.
Events head to Suffolk when award-winning Norfolk poet Martin Figura casts a satirical eye on life's trials and tribulations with warmth and humour in his show Boring the Arse off Young People at the The King's Head, Orford, on November 2.
Then Scary Little Girls will return to perform The Full Bronte, their cabaret celebration of the famous literary sisters, their lives and times at The Lodge, North Tuddenham, on November 8. Plans go hysterically awry, as storytelling, music, audience games and sketches all mix, to create a show of wuthering delights.
• For further information of 'Inn Crowd' events visit: creativeartseast.co.uk/inncrowd
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