Spice Up Your Life
Monday 20 June
The Castle Hotel
7.30pm – Free
An evening of pop, girl power and downright silliness as our performers take to the stage to tackle our latest prompt, from brilliant writer and regular First Draft contributor Benjamin Judge.
Take a look at the challenge he’s set us for our June event below…
The Prompt
Trying to come up with a theme for the next First Draft, I thought about my own life and what has inspired me as a writer. I didn’t want to pick a theme that seemed frivolous. I wanted a theme that was universal, significant, dare I say it, spiritual.
Three years ago I became a father. You don’t need me to tell you how a child changes your life. The fear that will do something wrong. The anxiety that you aren’t fit or healthy enough, that you aren’t rich or upmarket enough. And I thought, “what links these things? What says, “baby, scary, sporty, posh?” And I realised, “The Spice Girls after Geri Halliwell left!”
But ‘The Spice Girls after May, 1998’ is too narrow a theme for a night as eclectic as First Draft, so my theme is: ‘The Spice Girls: 1994-2016, Their Music, Image, and Legacy’. Yeah? Cool.
It is easy to forget that The Spice Girls, like The Who, and Queen before them, managed to be hugely popular and influential without actually having any good songs. And unlike those other bands, they also changed the way we think about the actual our world that we actually live in. Victoria’s marriage to David Beckham forever redefined the celebrity couple; Mel B’s go-getting attitude paved the way for Jamie Oliver, the relaunch of the Wispa, and ultimately, tragically, Donald Trump; Mel C is still my favourite; Emma Bunton has a flat in Brighton and a popular show on Heart FM (I think); and Geri’s Union Jack gusset remains the last, late night thought of a million pyjama slathering Brexiteers. We all live in Spiceworld, whether we know it or not.
Spice Up Your Life at the next First Draft. Say You’ll Be There. Viva Forever guys, Viva Forever.
Line up of performers
Benjamin Judge – spoken word
Becca Audra Smith – spoken word
Megan Holland – drama & spoken word
Thom Bee – comedy
Thom Hammersley – music/spoken word
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Sophie Galpin – comedy
Adam Farrer – creative non-fiction
Anna Percy – poetry
Nyela Asad – poetry
Fat Roland – spoken word
First Draft 