EVENT: The Space
Komedia Weds 2nd
Oh how we love The Space, which always induces the sense of blindly lobbing a couple of darts at a corkboard covered in minute photos of random celebrities when it comes to predicting the line-up each month. This time it’s BBC Four controller Richard Klein – who deserves a handshake for Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe alone – and 80s new wave symbol Clare Grogan, whose fresh-faced finesse was far too good for Ian Beale’s sleazy wooings during her time on Eastenders. (BM)

DANCE: Danish Dance Theatre
Dome Fri 4th and Sat 5th
As a 30th birthday present to the company which is a dance institution in Scandinavia, the Danish Ministry of Culture and various other arty bodies have helped them embark on a first major UK tour. In a luggage haul not seen since the Vikings last invaded, they’ve brought manly contests for supremacy between the five male dancers making the trip, live drummers, duets, the immortal texts of Ecclesiastes and award-winning classical movements along for the tumultuous ride. (BM)

FILM: Back to the Future All-Nighter / Brighton Rock
Duke of York’s Sat 5th / Fri 4th – Thurs 10th
Seriously, dude, what could be better than a Saturday night watching Marty work his magic at the best cinema in the world? It’ll be like going to an 80s night, but instead of all that pesky dancing you can kick off your hi-tops and wish the Doc was your surrogate dad again. Rowan Joffe’s updated version of Brighton Rock, set in the mods’n’rockers 60s with a cast including Helen Mirren and Sam Riley, will surely push the buttons if McFly doesn’t. (BM)

EVENT: Story Studio
Komedia Studio Bar Sun 13th
At the risk of getting beheaded by less prominent yarn spinning collectives, Short Fuse was almost certainly the most consistent and long-running night of narratives in Brighton, teasing us with “vaudeville flash fiction” and performers who were enviably reliable at making your pissed up tales of woe sound flabby and tedious. Now they’re back with Story Studio, bringing the vocab, narratives, music, visuals and cabaret to the Studio Bar, including a film recounting a dodgy encounter in the Royal Pavilion, apparently. (BM)

FESTIVAL: BRIGHTON SCIENCE FESTIVAL
Various venues from Sun 13th
Three weeks of geeks, as a less charitable preview might have you believe – this is a citywide celebration of science and technology that shuns the very notion of stuffy old textbooks. The diverse and interactive programme features a bewildering array of interest-piquing topics, including soldering, underwater music, chemistry in cooking and zombie science – reignite your own passion for science or bully your kids into enjoying it. Brightonscience.com has all the details your brain can handle. (NC)

EVENT: Making BreadThe Basement Sat 19th
There’s no point waiting on those Tories to bring communities together for creative gatherings to nourish the soul, and Making Bread know it. A gaggle of individuals dedicated to art, spoken word and music straight out of Brighton, they aim to provide a stage and space for some of the best musicians, DJs and brush-sprayers. They also encourage “live art as the evening progresses”, which is possibly the most polite invitation to get drunk and be silly we’ve ever heard. (BM)

THEATRE: MARTLET’S MUSICALDome Sat 19th
A benefit for the Martlets Hospice, our charity heroes about town, this is a musical spectacular by anyone’s definition. Around 100 performers, mostly from local theatre groups, belt out extracts from shows like The Lion King, Oliver and West Side Story, all raising dough for the hospice. Previous outings have raised £150,000, so it all ends up in the right place. (NC)

ART: Pigment & LightPhoenix til Sun 20th
It’s always rewarding to see the artists based in the Phoenix emerge from the darkened upstairs corridors to reveal their genius to the world. Julian Vilarrubi has made huge, glorious oil paintings of the views he sees from the top of the building, and Andrew Gifford has made luminous cityscapes of the Palace Pier at night, becoming radiant kinetic lightworks constructed from pure pigment, neon and tungsten. June Frickleton’s richly coloured, painstakingly layered abstract paintings complement those viewpoints perfectly. (BM)

COMEDY: Tim Key
Pavilion Theatre Mon 21st
Blimey – two references to Charlie Brooker on one Culture page? Anyone would think we were mourning the demise of a certain Monday morning newspaper column. Tim Key was the resident poet on Newswipe, and he continues the verses in his stage show, full of odes to the minutiae of life rounded off with crude conclusions. Occasionally bumbling, highly loveable in a non-painful way and almost always genuinely unhinged, he’s won numerous awards and even been nominated for a BAFTA. (BM)

FILM: SEE FESTIVAL
Komedia/Old Court House Thurs 24th – Sun 27th
Documentary filmmaking returns to Brighton for its now annual celebration, with screenings, premieres, workshops and discussions across a tightly packed four-day schedule. We haven’t seen the finalised line-up yet, but the involvement of documentary legend Nick Broomfield – who seems to have headphones and a boom mic permanently grafted to his extremities – is a sure sign of the pedigree on offer. Check the festival website at seefestival.org for updates we might not have seen yet. (NC)

WORDS BY NICK COQUET, BEN MILLER
2011