LIVERPOOL/TOURING THEATRE
The Broke ’n’ Beat Collective
Unity Theatre, Hope Street
Until February 13

The excellent 20 Stories High theatre company and Theatre-Rites join forces to create this unique mash-up of hip-hop, theatre and puppetry, which unites beat-boxer Hobbit, b-boy Ryan LoGisTic Harston, singer-poet Elektric and puppeteer Mohsen Nouri. Co-directed and written by Sue Buckmaster and Keith Saha, this gritty, moving and funny piece combines gripping tales, transfixing poetry, hip-hop and imaginative puppetry, to explore the hardships faced by young people in Britain today. Not to be missed — it’s touring nationally until April 2.
20storieshigh.org.uk

LONDON EXHIBITION
Red Africa
Calvert 22
Calvert Avenue, E2
Until April 3
Drawing on film, photography, propaganda and public art, this exhibition reflects on African connections to the Soviet Union and other socialist countries from the 1920s onwards. It is, says the blurb, “particularly focused on ambitions to influence the development of political structures through film and art” and explores representations of black people in the Soviet media, the relationships built during the height of the cold war and contemporary traces of communist street art and propaganda. And it explores the lasting impact of liberation struggles on the continent, along with the legacy of North Korea’s Mansudae Art Studio which produced socialist realist artworks such as The African Renaissance.
calvert22.org

LONDON EXHIBITION
Walter’s Way: The Self-Build Revolution
Architectural Association School of Architecture
Bedford Square, WC1
Until March 24
This exhibition on the revolutionary architect Walter Segal focuses on his work with the Lewisham self-builders of the 1980s and displays the application of Segal’s method today. Housed in and around a newly constructed section of a Segal house, from which visitors can experience the fundamental elements of the style, are original drawings, documents and furniture designed by Segal alongside archival films and photographs, plus contemporary photographs by Taran Wilkhu and a new interpretation of his technique by 2015 Turner Prize winner Assemble. Highly recommended.
aaschool.ac.uk

H NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE EXHIBITION
Peripeteia
The Gallery, Tyneside Cinema
Pilgrim Street
Until February 24
John Akomfrah’s Peripeteia intersperses early representations of black people in Albrecht Durer drawings and Hieronymus Bosch paintings and 19th-century documentary photography of slaves in Africa into a short film. In it, two ghostly black protagonists wander through a hostile northern moorland landscape and threatening soundscape in a creative exploration of the untold histories of violent colonialism and exclusion and the appearances and disappearances of black people in images and in reality across the centuries. Should be well worth a look.
tynesidecinema.co.uk