Touring venues in autumn 2023, including Chapter Arts Centre, Tobacco Factory and The Egg.

Cast and Creative Team:

Actor: George Williams

Director: Lee Lyford

Writer: Rina Vergano

Designer: Anisha Fields

Sound Designer: Dinah Mullen

Lighting Designer: Ceri James

FORGE is a three-day installation during which Rachel welds a replica of the stolen Dachau concentation camp gate. She is accompanied by sound artist Dinah Mullen who creates a live sound-scape in conversation with the action. Audiences enter the space, first encountering an exhibtion which puts the action in context. They then kit up in protective clothing and are invited as witnesses to spend as long as they like with the work.
FORGE also features three associated public conversations wherever it is performed, focussing on personal, local, national/international issues of memorial that are pertinent to the area.

It premiered at Transform Festival, Leeds in April 2022.
You can read a Guardian preview piece HERE.

The world premiere of Habibti Driver a brand new ‘East meets Wigan’ comedy by Shamia Chalabi and Sarah Henley co-produced by Octagon Theatre and Tara Finney Productions will run in Bolton from Thurs 21 April - Sat 7 May 2022.

Relationships are put to the test for Ashraf – an Egyptian Muslim taxi driver – and his half Egyptian, half Wigan daughter Shazia, in this heart-warming new play directed by Sepy Baghaei that explores the clashes, compromises and comedy that come with living in a mixed-culture family in today’s Britain.

George and Martha invite Nick and Honey to join them for a nightcap. It’s way too late in the evening, but what do they have to lose?

David Mercatali (Blue Heart, Dark Vanilla Jungle, Radiant Vermin) returns to Tobacco Factory Theatres to direct Edward Albee’s landmark black comedy. By turns brilliantly funny and utterly devastating, you won’t want to look away.

Two professors and their wives living the American Dream. Following an innocent invitation after a college campus party, the paper-thin illusion that all is well starts to peel away as George and Martha realise they have a captive audience for their toxic domestic games. As dawn approaches, there is only one way this party can end. And whether they like it or not, everyone must play their part.

Pull up a chair and fix yourself a drink.

Translated by Don Taylor
Directed by Kate Pasco

‘What use are people who are all words and no action?’

Two brothers lie dead.

A new leader has a city to rebuild.

One girl, Antigone, driven by courage to defend her family and beliefs, begins a fight against the tyranny of the state – no matter what the cost. A timeless thriller; interrogating loyalty and truth, honour and pride, Sophocles’ classic Antigone challenges the actions of a person who disobeys the authorities, rallying on behalf of Earth’s greater powers.

by Kate Cross and Tim Bell

Squirrel loves a good acorn. But not all acorns are good. Some are downright second rate.

And Squirrel is fussy like that. Under the light of the winter sun, between the houses and the offices, and the rivers and the factories, Squirrel has buried their favourite acorn collection.
It’s easy to remember where; it’s under the third tree from the left.

Or was it the right?

Oh hang on a minute…

This is a story of new growth,with a sprinkling of snowy magic and puppetry mayhem as you would expect from the egg’s early years Christmas show.

Age: 6mths – 4 yrs

The Paragon  is delighted to be working in collaboration with the egg to produce Squirrel this Christmas. It is a wonderful opportunity for our pupils to be involved in theatre from such a young age

Young Afghan refugee Saeed desperately wants to reconnect with his roots and find his long-lost sister. So he leaves his adoptive family in London and returns home to Kabul to work as a doctor, eager to contribute to rebuilding a new Afghanistan. But here past and present collide and Saeed must face up to the reality of his changed world.

This moving and thought-provoking play asks if a place can ever be home without a connection to family and roots?

Award Winning writer Rukhsana Ahmad has written many plays for stage and BBC radio.

“a high-paced, provocative and absorbing piece of drama”
Metro on Rukhsana Ahmad’s River on Fire.

The Soothing Presence of Strangers is an audio meditation on loneliness, usefulness, and the place a bus route can have in our lives.

Rhiannon Armstrong has had a soft spot for local buses since she was a child crossing the city on her way home from school, and Robert – the driver of the number 66 – decided to befriend her. 

This year she spent two weeks hanging out on local buses in Walthamstow (where she lived and worked for six years). The resulting work is an audio tour incorporating field recordings, music and narrative.

How to take part

The Soothing Presence of Strangers is an audio experience designed for people to listen to whilst riding a bus. You can stream the piece on your device by clicking play below.

The piece is 40 minutes long and you are free to choose any bus route: we recommend starting at Walthamstow Bus Station. A guide will talk you through your options and you will be able to pause half way through to get off of the bus and return the way you came. 

The Soothing Presence of Strangers is part of Waltham Forest Tours, a travel agency with a difference. Visit the Waltham Forest Tours section for more events.

If you would prefer to download The Soothing Presence of Strangers to your device, you can download a lower quality file from here.

Is this the time for stories?

This is the perfect time for stories. Stories show us how to overcome, to triumph. Even over death.

From Aladdin to Sinbad, genies and fl ying carpets, you all know the magical stories of the Arabian Nights. But what do you know of the storyteller, the quest for survival, and the vital magic woven by these fantastical yarns? Scheherazade must rely on her wits, skills, and creative flair to build a wondrous world in order to save her life. These tales are full of wishes made real, terror and joy, and magical transformations… but can they change a woman’s fate?

This summer join us as we soar high above the dangerous clamour of the world around us, immersing ourselves in fantastical landscapes where anything is possible. Now in its fourth year, the Theatre School Summer Company presents an urgent and extraordinary look at the power of story and the redemptive powers of empathy.

A new dark comedy about foot-and-mouth disease by Fringe First award winner Emily Jenkins.

It's the late 90s: Take That, Tamagotchis and Pog swaps. When Bobby and Amy meet, hundreds of cows dot across the fields and the sun always shines.

But when the cows begin to burn, Bobby and Amy’s sleepy Cotswold town faces a catastrophe that will change their home forever.

Bobby & Amy explores friendship and what happens when our way of life is threatened by those who don’t understand it.

“If you’d like to follow me and keep any questions until the end, then we’ll begin…”

Do you know where you’re going? What you’re doing next? What’s your five-year plan?

As the summertime tourists begin to flock, the fresh-faced, polo shirt-sporting employees of Bath’s beleaguered Adventure Tours™ have it all in front of them. Which might just be the problem.

But how can you even begin to figure your life out when you have Romans, Royals and Ross from Friends to contend with? Throw in a heady Jane Austen romance, a bottle of tequila and the threat of redundancy and everything’s getting very complicated…

Founded under the eaves of the egg and the latest company to emerge from our Theatre School programme for adults, Fourth Floor Theatre company proudly presents their debut; a comic and heartfelt exploration of friendships, connection and what comes next.

“Eyes smarting, Heart aching, From the pangs of first love”

• Writer Philip Osment | Director Philip Wilson | Artwork by Curtis Holder

• 1988. THATCHER’S BRITAIN.

• Seventeen-year-old Luke runs away to London – away from homophobic playground slurs, headlines that scream ‘Don’t Teach Our Children To Be Gay’ and a family who wouldn’t understand him – to Uncle Martin, who he once saw with his arms around another man at a march. In the capital, Mark is sacked because of fears about colleagues working with ‘someone like him’. His boyfriend, Selwyn, faces being beaten up both by the police and at home by his own stepbrother. Meanwhile, Debbie battles with her son, who doesn’t want to live with her and her girlfriend. And retired piano teacher Miss Rosenblum – who once found refuge in this country from a terror that swept away half her family in 1930s Vienna – has seen this sort of hatred and fear before.

• Soon, these individual stories – of first loves and old flames, alliances and abandonment, missed opportunities and new chances – intertwine to paint a vivid picture of Eighties Britain.

• s Island’s Mine was originally performed by Gay Sweatshop in 1988. Now, three decades after the introduction of Section 28 banning positive representations of homosexuality, Philip Osment’s passionate and lyrical play, of outsiders, exiles and refugees, is all too resonant.

BASSETT
by James Graham
Directed by Jenny Davies
At Wootton Bassett School the supply teacher has done a runner and locked
the pupils in their classroom. Outside, only yards from their confi nement, a
repatriation of fallen British soldiers is happening along the high street, as it has
over a hundred times before through this quiet Wiltshire town. But this one is
more personal than most.
As factions form and secrets are revealed, truths are revealed. An exhilarating and
startling snapshot of a generation who have inherited a world at war.

THE CHANGING ROOM
by Chris Bush
Directed by Steph Kempson
We are existing on the cusp of growing up.
Are we teenagers? Are we children? What are we? Bodies in fl ux and perspectives
shifting; knowing change is coming but not what that change will look like.
Set in and around a swimming pool, The Changing Room follows a group of teens
full of excitement, impatience and uncertainty, each with their own secret worries and
desires for what comes next.

Based on the true story, and brought to life with musical numbers, this production of Billy Bishop Goes to War transfers to Southwark Playhouse from 13 March after a critically acclaimed run at the Jermyn Street Theatre.

Billy Bishop, a failing Canadian military college student, overcomes intense prejudice and astonishing danger to receive his wings to become the most successful fighter pilot of his generation. This compelling and darkly comic drama interrogates the nature of heroism and its cost while shining a light on the often-neglected complexities of Britain’s colonial past. ‘Charles Aitken shines’ (Entertainment Focus) and ‘Oliver Beamish sparkles’ (The Stage) in this ‘absolutely phenomenal’ (Theatre Box) and ‘captivating’ (Broadway World) production, ‘Skilfully directed’ (Reviewsgate) by Jimmy Walters.

★★★★★ “Incredibly moving” London Theatre 1
★★★★ “Beautiful” Libby Purves
★★★★ “Remarkable” The Reviews Hub
★★★★ “Beautiful” The Stage
★★★★ “Captivating.” Broadway World
★★★★ “Charming and sincere” LoveLondon LoveCulture

A new dark comedy about foot and mouth disease by Fringe First Award winner Emily Jenkins.

It's the late nineties, Take That, Tamagotchis, Dib Dabs, and PogSwaps. When 13 year old Bobby and Amy meet, hundreds of cows dot across the fields and the sun always shines.

But when the cows begin to burn, Bobby and Amy’s sleepy Cotswold town faces a catastrophe that will change their home forever.

Set amongst the devastation that hit farming communities in the late nineties; Bobby & Amy explores friendship, heartache, and what happens when our way of life is threatened by those who don’t understand it.

A South African gunrunner turned Buddhist monk.
A gullible startup millionaire.
His radical feminist ex wife.
Their aid worker daughter.
The young British Muslim she met in Syria.
An ethical Serbian hitman.
And an unstable Brazilian cleaner.

Modern Britain. Moral chaos. Total nightmare.

“I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things which I dare not confess to my own soul” Bram Stoker

Darkness descends over the wind-whipped headlands of Whitby, the silence scorched as a coal-black shadow tears through the sky. A howl echoes around the town’s twisting collection of castles, convents and caves.

Dracula. Dracula has come.

This winter, Bath Theatre Academy’s final year students present a retelling of Bram Stoker’s peerless Gothic masterpiece, told at a crossroads of human evolution. To whom – or what – do we turn when the Old Ways no longer light the path? How do you fight something you can’t see? And what if the thing you fear most grows, lives and pulses through your very veins?

★★★★ “Arguably the best account of working-class life in British drama. Jack Gamble’s revival, strongly cast and steeped in authentic east Midlands dialect, does it full justice … A first-rate revival of a major play.” — The Guardian

Following a sold-out first run, and three Off West End award nominations, The Daughter-in-Law transfers to Arcola Studio 1 for four weeks only.

D H Lawrence’s groundbreaking play, never performed in his lifetime, entwines the struggles of a young married couple with those of a community on strike.

In Nottinghamshire, 1912, trouble is brewing in the mines – and simmering closer to home. When Mrs Gascoyne discovers an explosive secret about her newly-married son, it risks the hard-earned security of her daughter-in-law. But Minnie Gascoyne isn’t going to settle without a fight.

Jack Gamble’s in-the-round staging tears down the walls of the Gascoyne family home, and exposes Lawrence’s remarkable characters to a world approaching boiling point.

The sound of the drums and war-cries are getting closer. She will have revenge. She will make Rome quake in fear.

61 CE, Britannia. On the furthest outreaches of the Roman Empire – at the very edge of the known world – rebellion is brewing.

Then let them bleed. Let them
Full drain me of my blood till nought is left
And I am like a rock, my heart hard flint
From which will spring a vengeful spark so great
That all the Roman Empire may burn.

Boudica is a brand-new ancient-history play, which tells the story of one of Britain’s most iconic women: a queen, a warrior and a rebel – as she battles to reclaim what is hers. But is a gold chain still naught but a chain?

Premiering at Shakespeare’s Globe, London, in 2017, the Theatre Royal Bath Theatre School promises to deliver an epic spectacular in the intimate setting of the egg theatre, this November

Canada 1914. Billy Bishop signs up to fight in Europe and is soon in a military training camp. But one day, he spots a single-seater plane circling overhead. Overcoming intense prejudice and astonishing danger, Billy becomes the most successful fighter pilot of his generation.

This play with songs explores the complexities of heroism, the cost of war, and Britain’s colonial past. Billy Bishop goes to War is a true story. A deceptively simple and totally gripping theatrical experience.

PLYMOUTH

Wed 10 – Sat 13 October

Theatre Royal – The Drum

LONDON

16 Oct – 3 Nov Tue- Sat 7.30pm  Sat Matinee 3.30pm

Tristan Bates Theatre: Book here 

SLOUGH

9 – 10 November

Slough Curve: Book here

When Alyssa returns home from prison she’s devastated to find her aunt has put her beloved grandmother Betty in a care home. Determined to give Betty one last jolly, jingle filled holiday and recapture happy childhood memories, Alyssa kidnaps Betty and the pair embark on a campervan road trip to the seaside.  But soon Betty’s dementia and Alyssa’s troubled past catch up with them….

A compelling new play by Nessah Muthy about love, loneliness and guilt between three generations of women.

ONE NIGHT PERFORMANCE AT THE CURVE, SLOUGH – November 9th 2018

‘Muthy nails the way sensory experiences can burst through the dementia haze… The temptation of the play is to look away. The strength of this play is that we cannot’
The Guardian

‘Muthy’s dramatisation… is touching and emotionally challenging -an excellent piece of thought-provoking theatre’
Plymouth Herald

‘An outstanding performance from Hazel Maycock whose portrayal of Betty is worth the price of admission alone’ SpyInTheStalls

‘probably one of the most sensitive portrayals of dementia seen on stage. It doesn’t tiptoe around it, but it never seems to take advantage of it either…. a lovely, emotive piece of theatre.’
TheReviewsHub