Contact In The City Part Three

Kristy Stott, Theatre Editor

Book now

Contact In The City Part Three

1 February-13 June 2019

Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.

Contact in the City Part Three
Dean Chalkley
Book now

Since the building redevelopment for Manchester’s Contact Theatre started – we’ve seen trail-blazing and progressive programming spilling out across Manchester. As work advances in transforming the iconic building on Oxford Road, Contact continues to delight with the next installment of their programme – Contact In The City Part Three. Bringing radical, ambitious and urgent work from around the globe to the city of Manchester – we couldn’t be more excited about this diverse and entertaining line-up.

Contact In The City Part Three, which runs from February to June 2019, will seek to examine pressing intercultural debates around politics, protest and community.

We’re absolutely thrilled that this season sees Contact presenting a major show from their regular collaborator, writer and poet Inua Ellams. The critically acclaimed Barber Shop Chronicles will run at the Royal Exchange Theatre this March.

Contact will be staging a compact weekender of their annual Queer Contact Festival in February, presenting many of the best-loved elements of the festival. Most pleasingly, the multi-award winning Bristol-based Ad Infinitum will be kicking off the Queer Contact weekender and launching In The City Part Three with their most recent show, No Kids. Hilarious and utterly absorbing, No Kids explores the chaotic social anxieties relating to same-sex parenting.

The brilliant Contact Young Company will be presenting two shows this season, the first – Ramping Up – in partnership with Battersea Arts Centre, will explore some of the issues faced in a post-Brexit society; the second, Old Tools >New Masters ≠New Futures is a collaboration with Manchester spoken word collective, Young Identity.

ColetivA Ocupação will bring this phenomenal season of art and activism to a climactic head with When It Breaks It Burns – a sensational show devised by a group of young activist-performers from Brazil, created as a reaction to their protests about cuts to education.

In the City Part Three showcases the best of Contact, its produced work, partner artists and the award-winning Contact Young Company.

Check out our listings for In the City Part Three.

Where to go near Contact In The City Part Three

Side view of mixed race business colleagues sitting and watching presentation with audience and clapping hands
Theatre
Burnley Youth Theatre

Burnley Youth Theatre is a vibrant youth arts organisation based at our purpose built venue in Burnley, Pennine Lancashire.

Bar pub 3
Leeds
Restaurant
Arcadia Ale House

Arcadia Ale house is a sports bar located in the Headingly area of Leeds with a range of drinks offers throughout the week.

Restaurant
Leeds
Restaurant
Pasta Romagna

Pasta Romagna is a family owned, independent restaurant in the heart of the city centre. Bringing you homestyle Italian cuisine since 1982.

wine bar 2
Leeds
Restaurant
Farrands

Farrands is an independent bar located in the heart of Leeds city centre, specialising in a range of fine wine, beer and specialist cocktails.

Restaurant
Leeds
Shop
George and Joseph Cheesemongers

George and Joseph is Leeds’ only specialist cheesemongers, serving some of the city’s best cheese from its home in Chapel Allerton since 2013

Wine bar
Leeds
Restaurant
Wayward Wines

Selling natural wines since before it was cool (well, 2017), this tiny suburban wine house is so much more than just a bar.

Beer shop
Leeds
Shop
Caspar’s Bottle Shop

Independent craft beer and spirits den Caspars Bottle Shop is a quirky Chapel Allerton favourite that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Dry Dock
Leeds
Restaurant
Dry Dock

Dry Dock has carved out a reputation as a fixture for students and locals alike over the last thirty plus years

Manchester
Bar or Pub
The Rat & Pigeon

A slice of alternative Manchester in pub form, down a grotty, gritty backstreet and with a disgusting name. What’s not to love?

Manchester
Restaurant
Butter Bird

Butter Bird is a newly opened casual but stylish restaurant in Ancoats, based around the very delicious concept of tea-brined chicken.

What's on: Theatre

TheatreManchester
1984 at Waterside

Box Tale Soup’s inventive puppetry reanimates Orwell’s vision of surveillance, obedience and the erasure of truth.

From £18.00
A man (Macbeth) stands in a dark studio lit in vivid green light, with vertical neon-green light bars glowing behind him through light fog. He wears a dark suit jacket over an open-collared shirt, one hand in his pocket, and looks directly at the camera with an intense, brooding expression.
Until
TheatreChester
Macbeth at Storyhouse, Chester

For its first Storyhouse Originals production of 2026, the Chester theatre presents a bold new staging of Macbeth, directed and adapted by Jamie Sophia Fletcher.

From £20.00

Culture Guides

Music

From underground festivals showcasing emerging talent to global icons unveiling new work, here are our latest live music highlights.

Food and Drink in the North

Spring has arrived, bringing with it Mother's Day, al fresco dining and a rush of high-profile food and drink-related events in Manchester.

A pair of white angel wings displayed against a dark, black background. The lower parts of the wings are stained with vivid red, resembling blood splatter.
Theatre

This month’s theatre highlights span dystopian classics, political thrillers and bold new opera.

Ceramic Sculpture
Exhibitions

Across Manchester and Salford, exhibitions are thinking hard about how things are made – and how materials carry stories.

Emily Lloyd-Saini as Grace in Space and Harrie Hayes as Lieutenant Strong in Horrible Science
Family things to do in the North

Whether you’re after storybook theatre, museum wanderings or illusion-bending play spaces, there’s plenty to keep curiosity ticking through winter and beyond.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
Cinema in the North

There's no shortage of great films out at the moment, whether you're looking for the latest blockbuster, that hot arthouse flick fresh from Cannes or a cosy classic.