"We're the nearest thing to fair-trade theatre the city has,"

says co-actor-manager Alister O'Loughlin.

With a clear policy of not charging performers to play under their roof, The Nightingale is a year-round home to fringe performance and eight out of ten of the shows it hosts in this year's festival were developed with the venue.

Short Cuts launches the programme utilising dance, physical theatre and abstract puppetry to explore what happens when our masks break down.

The Art Of Catastrophe takes a darkly comic and poignant look at the underbelly of love and bgroup's The Diminishing Present is an intimate dance triple bill choreographed by Brighton-based artist Ben Wright.