Back to the Bone Festival 2026
Fenton Town Hall Ballroom, Stoke-on-Trent, ST4 3BX
Saturday 6th June 2026
Back to the Bone is a multi-disciplinary art festival (Dance , Theatre , Singing , Spoken words ) that celebrates the power, complexity, and beauty of womanhood in all its forms. The festival aims to confront silences, break taboos, and amplify the voices that are often overlooked or silenced.
This is a space for healing and honesty where the audience can engage with different art forms, exploring themes of truth, vulnerability, and the raw, radical beauty of being a woman or identifying with womanhood.
All the art companies involved in the festival have been commissioned to create a piece around the Festival theme .
Festival program :
- 10am -12pm : Mothering Women Circle holding by the wonderful Su Guest . A chance to gather with other women and reflect on your transition from maiden to mother .
- 7.30 pm Performance - Sharing
- A bitter pill by Pelican theatre company, explores the emotional impact of using hormonal contraception through surrealist dance theatre.
- More than the birth of child by Lucie Labadie Company is a dance theatre piece exploring the liminal space of birth as a ritual in which a woman sheds one identity and is reborn as a mother .
- In the midst of precarity by Rachel Rimmer- Piekarczyk and Lisa Kendall . This work explores intergenerational female friendship fuelled by 17 years of collaboration.
- A Period Drama by Take Back written by Rosa Hesmondhalgh is a theatre piece exploring the day-to-day realities of living with endometriosis.
-Gabriella Gay will enter the women's circle, holding the stories and energy. Through poetry, she will share the quiet magic that arises when women gather.
-The Pop Girl Playbook by Gin Sunday is a theatrical and comical performance. Through well know pop song song the singing duet will explore and exaggerate the stereotypes often placed on women.
Photographic exhibition by Jenny Harper, this display will capture the transition between the Maiden and the Mother. ( In the creation process, more info coming soon )
This is a space for healing and honesty where the audience can engage with different art forms, exploring themes of truth, vulnerability, and the raw, radical beauty of being a woman or identifying with womanhood.
All the art companies involved in the festival have been commissioned to create a piece around the Festival theme .
Festival program :
- 10am -12pm : Mothering Women Circle holding by the wonderful Su Guest . A chance to gather with other women and reflect on your transition from maiden to mother .
- 7.30 pm Performance - Sharing
- A bitter pill by Pelican theatre company, explores the emotional impact of using hormonal contraception through surrealist dance theatre.
- More than the birth of child by Lucie Labadie Company is a dance theatre piece exploring the liminal space of birth as a ritual in which a woman sheds one identity and is reborn as a mother .
- In the midst of precarity by Rachel Rimmer- Piekarczyk and Lisa Kendall . This work explores intergenerational female friendship fuelled by 17 years of collaboration.
- A Period Drama by Take Back written by Rosa Hesmondhalgh is a theatre piece exploring the day-to-day realities of living with endometriosis.
-Gabriella Gay will enter the women's circle, holding the stories and energy. Through poetry, she will share the quiet magic that arises when women gather.
-The Pop Girl Playbook by Gin Sunday is a theatrical and comical performance. Through well know pop song song the singing duet will explore and exaggerate the stereotypes often placed on women.
Photographic exhibition by Jenny Harper, this display will capture the transition between the Maiden and the Mother. ( In the creation process, more info coming soon )
