MARIA DUARTE, JAMES WALSH and ANDY HEDGECOCK review The Invite, My Father’s Island, Nirvanna: the Band, the Show, the Movie, and Oh My Goodness!
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‘Yes to everything for the many’
MIQUEAS ‘PIKI’ FIGUEROA, lead singer and songwriter of one of Venezuela’s top hip hop groups, tells Michal Boncza what Bituaya are all about
PAUL DONOVAN is chilled by the contemporary resonance of Harper Lee’s coming of age tale amidst racism and white supremacy in this excellent production
GEOFF BOTTOMS recommends the unashamedly light-hearted escapism on offer in this stage version of the 1963 film
Full of mysterious religious references and radical sound design, the Scottish duo’s new offering is candidate for album of the year, suggests SIMON DUFF
MARY CONWAY revels in a powerful reminder that human lives are not defined by physical perfection
PAUL DONOVAN recommends the fine performances in this account of the pre-war meeting between the US president and the British king
TECLYN AROD relishes an intimate celebration of jazz improvisation that mixes local and national musicians
ALTHOUGH separated by a telephone line “Piki” Figueroa’s calm and eloquent yet emotionally charged take on art, politics and the Bolivarian process is utterly compelling.
His band’s name Bituaya is a generic one for the Venezuelan root vegetables “you make soup with,” he tells me and it’s an apt summation of the band’s quest for the ancestral soul of the continent they call by its native name of Abiayala.
The band evolved in the Tiuna el Fuerte (“Fort”) political and cultural collective in the working-class neighbourhood of El Valle in Caracas.
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