Dash Arts and Leeds Playhouse to Present OUR PUBLIC HOUSE

Josephine Burton will direct the world premiere of Our Public House, a bold and heart-stirring new play by award-winning playwright Barney Norris, about what happens when people who feel silenced are given the tools — and the space — to speak.  This touring production will open at Leeds Playhouse before travelling to Prescot, Coventry, Cornwall and Sheffield. 

Set in The Albion, a struggling pub at the heart of a community that has turned its back on politics altogether, Our Public House is a rousing and deeply human exploration of what it means to find your voice, fight for change, and stand together when the odds are stacked against you.

The play is a love letter to the public house as a space of democracy and solidarity. It’s about the cracks in our politics but more importantly it’s about the everyday people who step up, speak out, and change the conversation.  Blending fiery speeches, live music, and the warmth of the pub itself, Our Public House sings with the struggles and resilience of ordinary lives. At its heart lies a single question: when the system has failed you, can you still find power in speaking out?

Our Public House was born out of an extraordinary three-year journey across the country, in which Dash Arts worked with schools, prisons, youth clubs, deaf communities, wellbeing clubs, and other local groups to help people write and deliver over 600 political speeches about the future they want. These speeches — raw, funny, furious, hopeful — have inspired our script, informing our characters and have been transformed into live music.

Told through a mix of spoken English, Sign Supported English (SSE), British Sign Language (BSL), creative captioning and music, Our Public House brings together an ensemble of hearing and deaf actors and community participants. Across the tour, a local ensemble of 48 people will step into the production, ensuring the community is literally part of the story.  With politics at boiling point, communities fractured, and trust in democracy under strain, Our Public House offers something vital, surprising, and deeply human. It’s a paean to connection, and a reminder that everyone has something worth saying.

Director Josephine Burton said “Over the last three years, I’ve listened to hundreds of people from all walks of life stand up and share what matters to them. Their passion, anger, humour, and hope have inspired me and Barney to create Our Public House. Now, staging it with communities at its heart, I want to give those voices a platform and tell a story of who we are — and who we could be — together.

Barney Norris’s work has received awards from the International Theatre Institute, the Critics’ Circle, the Evening Standard, the Society of Authors, and the South Bank Sky Arts Times Breakthrough Awards, among others, and been translated into nine languages. His plays include Visitors, Eventide, Nightfall, The Wellspring, The Band Back Together, and adaptations of Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Second Best by David Foenkinos; his novels include Undercurrent and Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain.

Josephine Burton as a director, theatre includes The Reckoning (Arcola), Dido’s Bar (Royal Docks/Oxford Contemporary Music/Journeys Festival), The Great Middlemarch Mystery (Coventry City of Culture) and Songs for Babyn Yar (Munich Kammerspiele/Theatre Podil/JW3). She has also served as dramaturg on Lyrical Alliance (Roundhouse) and Renegade Orchestra (British Library). A playwright and Artistic Director of Dash Arts, she co-founded the company to create award-winning cross-artform work connecting audiences with global stories, and she hosts its podcast, OffScript