SQUARE Chapel Arts Centre in Halifax is celebrating LGBTQ+ History Month with a series of live events and special film screenings.

The annual festival highlights lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history as well as the history of the gay rights and related civil rights movements.

Headlining the Square Chapel’s entertainment is This is Not a Safe Space, a sensitive and witty theatre piece from Jackie Hagan, on February 15.

Jackie was annoyed at television programmes like ‘Benefits Street’ and ‘Undateables’ which she thought portrayed working-class and disabled people as one-dimensional idiots, so she had a chat with 80 people living on disability benefits.

In the new show Jackie plays audio excerpts of those chats interwoven with poetry, comedy, puppetry and storytelling, drawing on her own visceral experience of growing up in Skelmersdale on a council estate, stays in psychiatric hospitals, the “utter stupidity” of PIP forms and the joys of signing on in 2019. Sensitive and witty, she also downs a pint out of her false

The Tempest, a film directed by Derek Jarman and starring Toyah Willcox and Christopher Biggins, will be screened on February, 13, followed by a question-and-answer with Biggins.

Fitting is part theatre show, part magic show, following artist Matt Miller’s adventures in dresses and suits, visibility and invisibility, and finding new places to fit. The “theatrical genderqueer glamour fest” can be seen on Thursday 36.

Guy: The Musical is described as Queer As Folk meets Bridget Jones with a cat-fishing electronic-pop musical twist, about fat, gay and nerdy Guy, on February 12.

Visit squarechapel.co.uk for further information.