Tom Powell

ASYLUM Arts has announced 2024 program featuring UK Tour of Papatango Prize Winner's show Surfacing. Dive into the latest from this neurodivergent-led theatre company.

Leading national and international disabled-led theatre company Vital Xposure has announced the appointment of award-winning neurodivergent director and producer, Stephen Bailey as its new Artistic Lead.

Fans of his four-decade back catalogue and readers ready for a ride through half a century of popular culture, with Head as their guide, will delight in news that his long-awaited autobiography, Ciao Ciao Bambino: A Magical Memoir, is also announced for publication by Nine Eight Books on Thu 15 August 2024.

Papatango has announced that their 2024 New Writing Prize will open for submissions at noon on Wednesday 17 January, until noon on Monday 11 March. Plus, this year's winning play, Some Demon by Laura Waldren, will transfer to Bristol Old Vic from 9 to 13 July.

As the first new music to emerge since Head's unanimously-praised second solo album, Dear Scott, hit the UK Official Album Chart's Top Ten in June 2022, the revered former Pale Fountains, The Strands and Shack figurehead has saved a radiant, ‘vintage Mick' return just for when the year's finishing line looms into view.

Papatango has announced that Laura Waldren has won the 15th annual Papatango New Writing Prize for her first full-length play Some Demon, from 1,468 entries. Learn more about Waldren and her play here!

Raw, brutal, twisted, and full of rich wordplay, this play makes its political points and highlights a relationship which uses regret, mistakes, and teasing to hide what is really happening at its core. It is less the star-crossed young lovers of Shakespeare than the smack-stained children of a modern wasteland. 

Ultimately, Powell is asking who helps the people whose job is to help others. He correlates the ideas of protective isolation and arbitrary family connections, blame and regret, death and survival. The play is thought-provoking in all the right spots, but somehow the text has an unfinished feel to it. Powell has proved himself an accomplished writer. We wonder what happened this time.

FlawBored present their pitch-black satire of the monetisation of identity politics: a self-aware, intersectional, disabled-led dissection of identity and access.

Pentabus are launching their Spring/Summer season which features one new commission, two new Digital theatre premieres, two new Writers-in-Residence and the return of Pentabus Young Writers live production with eight brilliant new plays.

At VAULT Festival 2023, neurodiverse production company ASYLUM and their creative team present an enticing exploration of reality and mental health in SURFACING.  Applying new technology to visualise the journey of a young therapist with a repressed past, this production offers a beautiful and thrilling blend of theatre and immersive technology with motion sensors, responsive video design, and dialogue portraying the several realities we navigate through. 

The Papatango New Writing Prize, now in its fifteenth year, opens for submissions on 6 December 2022, until 9pm on Sunday 5 February 2023.

Papatango announced that Clive Judd has won the 14th annual Papatango New Writing Prize for his debut full-length play, Here, from a record 1,553 entries. Also announced were the other shortlisted writers: Georgia Bruce for Time, Like The Sea; Jennifer Lunn for Core; Esme Mahoney for Wishbone, and Dilan Raithatha for Little India.

Today Pentabus announced their 2022 Season which features a new commission touring in the autumn, the return of Pentabus Young Writers live production and three new digital projects. 

In a reimagined iteration of the annual awards, in partnership with ETT (English Touring Theatre), the audio productions will play from free listening stations or via a QR code in theatres across the UK, with copies of the scripts including braille translations available.

Also announced today are the shortlisted writers: Billie Collins with But The Heart Stayed Behind; Rebecca Jade Hammond with Hot Chicks; Emma Hemingford with Foreverland; Joe Ward Munrow with Home; and Rían Smith with Endless.

Tom Powell's latest fast-paced drama sees its international premiere at Islington's award-winning The Hope Theatre.

Gilligan and his fellow castaways are stranded on an island with Archie and Edith Bunker, George and Weezy Jefferson and The Golden Girls!

Theatre 503 announce winner of 2016 Playwriting Award and Spring 2017 highlights.

Seven new plays by emerging playwrights in response to the current political climate in the UK. 'State of Fear. Responsibilty to...?' explores society's challenges, prejudices, perspectives and uncertainties, because we believe theatre should ask questions and spark debate. Refugee crisis? EU Referendum? Islamophobia? Immigration? Whose opinions do we have and who do we trust?