1 February 1982, Nibelheim, The Arts Centre

...The Nibelheim Jazz Cellar when the entire Mongrel Mob arrived and started their own beer party upstairs in the centre gallery. The fire brigade was called to put out a fire in a skip bin which was licking at the second-floor windows of the Court Theatre. Your writer did not light it. In the basement, 250 punters threw cans at 6 heavy metal bands (including Bill Direen’s Builders, and Alan Meek and Charles Heywood’s The World) and Free Theatre shouted the Dada poem Ur Sonata in huge spotty cardboard suits and hats. It was claimed to be in German, therefore was art. Our naked odalisque Liz Braggins played the same note on the piano for 17 minutes (it said to do so in the score). Next morning, the entire cellar was covered in an inch of glass. Your writer knows because he cleaned it up, before the Arts Centre management could get a look at it. Our next major production was entitled: ‘Fighting an Arts Centre Injunction to remove Free Theatre from its premises’. That was 1983.

Nick Frost, early member (2008 speech at 25 Year Free Theatre reunion)

Free Theatre did some dada stuff - I recall Jo Bryant and I think Liz Braggins chanting numbers. The band line up has been lost slightly in the mists of time but think included the Bilders and the Pin Group and several other bands ? Chaotic, I think "rough elements" turned up ? By the end of the evening the floor was a sea of broken glass.

Charles Heywood, early member

Artaud: Yes, I think so Le jet de sang/Jet of Blood. I think so, if that is the one where a character keeps asking Where is my Gruyere cheese !! then it was definitely in the Jazz Cellar - perhaps also Clocktower.
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Bill Direen, early member