THE Armitt is hosting a forthcoming performance by Paul Brightwell of his one-man Merzspiel play.

Staged at the Ambleside museum and library on Saturday, October 20 (2.30pm), actor Paul's piece of drama sees the legendary German painter, sculptor, printmaker, typographer, performer, writer and poet Kurt Schwitters hijack the mind and body of the British performer Paul in order to re-present Merz, his one-man art movement, live on stage.

Paul's recent stage appearances include a national tour of Pygmalion, playing Colonel Pickering opposite Alistair McGowan as Higgins, Thomas Putnam in The Crucible at Manchester's Royal Exchange and the Duke in The Revenger’s Tragedy at Nottingham Playhouse.

The Armitt is home to one of the UK's most important collections of artwork by Kurt Schwitters, who influenced the development of 20th Century art and lived in Ambleside during his final years.

Kurt Schwitters was born in Hanover in 1887 and lived there until in 1936 he became an exile, first in Norway and then, for the last eight years of his life, in Britain. Since his untimely death in Cumbria in 1948, where he had continued to work in relative obscurity and poverty, his standing in the art world has rocketed, his work having had an incalculable influence on the subsequent development of post-war art.

Meanwhile, the Armitt's current exhibition is A Woman’s Place - Ambleside's Feminist Legacy and is part of Celebrating Women of Cumbria 2018, a year of special events hosted by Cumbrian museums.

The Armitt Sisters, Sophia, Annie and Mary Louisa from the 1880s brought a plethora of educated talents to Ambleside which became a focus for the intellectual life of the town. The Armitt legacy lies in the books the sisters collected, and in her will Mary left the entirety of this collection to form a library for students and scholars. This collection, together with the Ruskin Library, the old Ambleside Book Club of 1828 and numerous other gifts from private individuals, forms the nucleus of the present Armitt Library.

A Woman’s Place - Ambleside's Feminist Legacy is open Tuesday-Saturday, from 10am-5pm, until the end of October.