The Place Theatre, Bedford

Dumbstruck Productions present Howl By Allen Ginsberg 8th to 10th March at 8:30pm Thursday to Saturday

'Howl' is part of a double bill with 'Radio', which is playing earlier on the same evenings.

After their successful Christmas show, 'George's Marvellous Medicine' designed for families and children, Dumbstruck! Productions return to The Place Theatre with a double bill of one-man shows aimed at a more mature audience. This double bill of old fashioned 'Americana' aims to explore 1950's America, with its conflicting values, competing drives and remarkable achievements.

Second show of the double bill is a rehearsed reading of one of the most seminal pieces of American poetry and spoken word: Howl by Allen Ginsberg. Written in 1955 for performance in the West Coast bars, clubs and coffee shops, and initially banned for obscenity upon publication in 1957, Howl is an epic 'beat' poem to the destruction and debasement of American society during the 20th Century.

Presented in 3 parts, Ginsberg explores the unseen, unreported world of the American drifter; speaking out for the dispossessed and downtrodden of the American Dream who have fallen by the wayside in the great quest for power and money. Ginsberg also explores the growth of consumerisation, the growth of the city and the unending quest for riches that the American Dream demands. In the final part Ginsberg deals directly with the developments in psychology and psychiatry that saw thousands of people locked away into mental institutions, subjected to electro-shock therapy and lobotomy during the post-war period.

'Howl' can be seen as one of the great catalysts in American 20th Century art. Fusing poetry and jazz together to create a new form of expression and it helped to define the period from 1955-1969 as one of protest and free love, as well as developing a language and voice for the disposed.

Please note this show contains some coarse and vulgar language and may therefore not suitable for anyone under the age of 16.

Tickets for this show are priced at £4.00

Tickets will also be available on the door on the evenings of the performance.