Ian McKellen Will Return to the Stage in LEAR at The Yard Theatre's New London Venue
The Hackney Wick theatre's opening season includes six productions, featuring Diane Page directing Ntozake Shange's FOR COLORED GIRLS.
The Yard Theatre in Hackney Wick, London, has announced its first season in its new building. Six productions running from July 2026 to April 2027, including a 50th-anniversary revival of Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf directed by Diane Page, Holly Robinson's adaptation of Mrs Dalloway, and Ian McKellen returning to the stage in Lear, reimagined by Artistic Director Jay Miller and playwright Simon Stephens.
The Yard opened in 2011 in a Hackney Wick warehouse built with a team of fifty volunteers, a £9,000 Arts Council England grant and materials reclaimed from the Olympic Park. It was meant to last six months. Fifteen years on, the original building has been demolished and replaced with an entirely new venue on the same spot. Designed from scratch by RIBA award-winning Takero Shimazaki Architects, the new Yard is more than twice the size of the original. A 220-seat curved auditorium. A six-storey natural ventilation chimney. Reused brick from the original building. Low-carbon products throughout. A dedicated space for the venue's artist development programme working with young people from primary age through to young professionals. New backstage, dressing rooms and office facilities.
Tickets start at £10 across every production. There are £5 tickets on the door for under-27s through No Empty Seats, the venue's scheme running since 2017. Premium tickets fund the cheapest ones. Every production starts at £10, McKellen's Lear or a debut play.
Founder & Artistic Director Jay Miller says “In 2011 I opened The Yard as a DIY theatre that was supposed to be here for six months. On The Yard's 15th anniversary, I'll open it again. Same spirit, this time in a better, bigger theatre.
In the twelve months we've been closed, we've been playing with shows that pop. A debut play by Troy Hunter; toy dolls playing with Jackie Collins; a brilliant actor playing in ways he's never played before. Virginia Woolf, Ntozake Shange, and the world's worst band, all on the same stage in the same season. They said it wouldn't happen. It's happening. Deep breath in.”
Also soon to be announced, Metamorphosis. A new strand of commissioning running through the new Yard Theatre's opening year. New artworks, including collaborations with artists from visual arts and music, alongside theatre makers. New partnerships with the cultural and community organisations based in and around Hackney Wick, from Gainsborough Primary School to V&A East. And new experiences for audiences, residents and young people. All enabled by a major project grant from Arts Council England.
The Yard also announces the appointment of writer Dipo Baruwa-Etti as New Work Associate. Baruwa-Etti, whose An unfinished man, premiered at The Yard in 2022, joins the artistic team to lead on developing new writing and supporting the next generation of artists through The Yard's commissioning programme.
Tickets for all newly announced productions will go on sale to members first: Yard Residents on 21 May at noon, Yard Regulars on 22 May at noon, and to the general public on 28 May at noon. Tickets for Lear will go on-sale at a later date.
Architect, Takero Shimazaki commented, “The design journey of the new Yard Theatre has been the most unique and extraordinary experience in my career as an architect. We began in 2019 following a competition process to be selected as the architect for this special project, from a group of outstanding architects.
The whole of the Yard team, led by Jay Miller and Ashleigh Wheeler have been the most ambitious, creative, resilient and fun-loving community to design a new space for. Their ever-uncompromising quest to express the architectural language for The Yard will result in the truly maximalist experience for their new 220 seat theatre, its bar and the community spaces. We have studied, visited and were inspired by some wide-ranging architecture and spaces, such as classical Greek and Italian amphitheatres, contemporary performance spaces across Europe, Art spaces, old West End theatres, Churches to Villas. We have questioned and debated what it means to be building in Hackney Wick today with its changing city landscape. We have challenged ourselves and our network of specialists on how we could build sustainably and what it would mean to re-use in this context of the existing industrial built language.
We have engaged with diverse community members and theatre goers, hosting and debating in person and on-line. We have not designed a building like this before. We are not sure if we ever can again. This building will be a genuine special homage to the pop, classical, messy, refined, surprising and generous being that is The Yard Theatre.”
The World Is Full of Married Men
Monday 20 July - Saturday 1 August 2026
Adapted and directed by Malmö Stadsteater
Translated from Swedish by Lulu Raczka
The London premiere of Jackie Collins' bestselling debut novel.
David and Linda are married. Linda Sees to the house. David sees to business. Business being Claudia, an aspiring actress who'll do anything, and anyone, to get what she wants.
London, the sixties. In hotel rooms, nightclubs and film studios, a world of millionaires, models and Hollywood directors play out their desires. Careers. Parties. Sex. Power.
The set: dollshouses. The performers: dolls. This is Malmö Stadsteater's outrageously sexy production, translated by Lulu Raczka.
for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf
Wednesday 2 September - Saturday 3 October 2026
Written by Ntozake Shange
Directed by Diane Page
Music composed by Jammz
A landmark of theatre. Long overdue in London.
Stories of love and violence, joy and survival - and what it feels like to come out the other side.
Ntozake Shange's choreopoem returns - fifty years on from its first performance - in a new production, directed by Diane Page, with original music by Jammz.
Grief becomes chant. Movement becomes prayer. Together, they reach for something beyond.
Fifty years on. Still enuf.
A season of events runs alongside the production. Writers' Night on 10 September, a post-show conversation with writers from theatre, film, TV and poetry on Ntozake Shange's influence on the canon, included with a ticket. A club night curated by Jammz on 11 September, tickets on sale separately. Black Out Night: Femme on 17 September. Diane Page in conversation with Bernardine Evaristo on 24 September, included with a ticket. Film Club on 25 September, a programme of short films curated around the production, tickets on sale separately.
LEAR
November 2026 - January 2027. Dates and press night to be announced.
Reimagined by playwright Simon Stephens and The Yard's Artistic Director Jay Miller.
Ian: I mean, I've organised my life for good or bad, so that acting is the main thing I do.
LEAR: My wits begin to turn—
Ian: So if I'm not acting, what's the point?
Shakespeare's King Lear, reimagined by Simon Stephens and Jay Miller, with Ian McKellen.
There's Something About Adam Black
Wednesday 13 January 2027 - Saturday 20 February 2027
Written by Troy Hunter
Directed by Tatenda Shamiso
No one knows their way around Grindr like Adam Black.
Tonight it's LittleWhiteLucifer. Tomorrow it's WontSuckItself. Yesterday, it was Uncut3000. Adam's got a tight schedule, a loose hole and absolutely no interest in a relationship.
And then comes a dream.
Daniel is from Yorkshire, he writes poetry. Daniel has no idea what he's walked into.
Because Adam has a past. It has been waiting. It is done waiting.
Troy Hunter's (Sex Education) hilarious debut play, directed by Tatenda Shamiso (Eat the Rich, Choir Boy).
Mrs Dalloway
Wednesday 10 March - Saturday 10 April 2027
Written by Virginia Woolf
Adapted by Holly Robinson
Directed by Anna Himali Howard
You're throwing a party. You bought the flowers yourself.
Everyone you have ever loved is coming tonight. The girl you kissed once. The man you married. The one you didn't.
They're all on their way. Across one London day, a woman moves through the city and through her own life. The choices she made. The choices that made her.
You want her to choose right. You don't know if she will.
Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway adapted for The Yard by Holly Robinson, directed by Anna Himali Howard - the glorious duo behind The Secret Garden.
PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD
Tuesday 14 July to Saturday 25 July 2026
By IN BED WITH MY BROTHER
New Hampshire, 1940s. A boy gets a palm reading. The psychic tells him three things.
He'll marry a woman with strawberry-blonde hair. He'll have two sons. His daughters will form a world-famous rock band.
The first two come true. He makes the third happen anyway.
PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD is about The Shaggs: the quintessential outsider band, the best worst album ever made, and the father who decided his daughters would be stars. It's about who gets to define a legend, who owns the rights to a life, and what happens when the story you were told about yourself turns out to be someone else's idea.
It's the show Edinburgh couldn't shut up about. And it's about dads.
IN BED WITH MY BROTHER twist rock 'n' roll history into something sticky, sweaty, and searing rebellion.
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