Emerging theatre coming to Greenwich

One thing I have always been proud of at Greenwich Theatre is our support for new and emerging artists. Producing theatre in London can be daunting, not to mention financially precarious, and for many writers, directors, actors and creative teams, the risks can outweigh the rewards of making your own shows – but very often that is the only way to kickstart a career as a new theatre-maker.

If you graduate as an actor without an agent, the only way to catch their eye and secure representation is to be in a show that agents can come and see, but being cast in a show without an agent is next to impossible. As a director or designer the same applies – nobody will hire you if you can’t present evident of your work, so how can you do that without being hired? And if you have a show that you want to take on tour, you need a chance for other venues to see it, to film it, to be reviewed.

Therefore, alongside the big titles like our forthcoming star-led revival of Jez Butterworth’s Parlour Song, the programme at Greenwich will always feature smaller shows, often in the studio, where emerging creatives are trying out exciting new ideas.

One of the best ways to see theatre right at the grassroots level is to go to one of the many scratch nights in London, with a whole selection of short excerpts of new writing being presented in a single evening. A number of young producers now come to Greenwich with those kind of events – the next being TomBoy Productions who join us on the 6th March to share 10-minute glimpses of five new plays.

Then on 25 March, audiences can catch Pot Licker, Ed Viney’s new comedy about a group of teachers who find a bag of drugs in school lost property. Of course it’s obvious – they’ll hand them in, right? With the school already at risk of closure, they have other ideas…

On 4th April, Nineteen Productions take us into the mind of the artist with 99 sleepless nights of painting Basquiat. The show tells the story of Boris who, driven by the desire to surpass American neo-expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, isolates himself for 99 days to prepare for a competition, resulting in madness and hallucinations.

On 12th April, Chloe Bezer and Alys Torrance present Stoopid, a madcap, music-laced misadventure. Plunging into the Grimm brothers’ folktales, Wilder Mann and clown traditions and the daily news, Alys and Chloe have created a show exploring how we try to keep control of the uncontrollable.