'�without her and that camera I think I'd have ended up with a sheet round my neck swinging from the bars.'

4.48 Psychosis is Sarah Kane's brutal and poetic exploration of a mind preparing to shut itself down.

'You know, we sit here on the edge of it, on the precipice, just waiting to fall. And when we do it will be a plunge into the deep dark, and our green island will be engulfed by the silver sea'.

“Zenzi Zenzi: The Pursuit” is a new physical theatre piece by Adam Marvel, which explores two overlapping stories of possibility. The stories are told in vivid colours, pulsing with opportunity and exclamation.

The Arcola Theatre is proud to present VIVA LORCA, a festival celebrating the life of Federico García Lorca and his work as a poet, playwright and artist. Arcola Theatre will be transformed by productions of Mariana Pineda, Yerma and When Five Years Pass and readings of his poetry, as well as plays about Lorca’s life, flamenco dance, Iberian cuisine and live music in the foyer.

Buried in the depths of the Ohio Penitentiary, the cruellest prison in American history, an inmate known as “The Smilemaker” keeps his brothers’ spirits buoyant and their hopes of survival alive with stories of love and sacrifice amongst the tenements and theatres of Manhattan.

Lynette, Ruby and Jodie, three young women from Doncaster, tell their stories of one summer, eight years ago.

Arthur is a man with problems.
His army is under siege, his new wife is acting suspiciously,
and his old friend and counsel Merlin keeps turning into animals.
Defeat seems inevitable.

A Family Affair is the story of a nouveau riche Russian merchant who decides to rip off his creditors by declaring bankruptcy.

Back at Arcola after it's SELL OUT run in December 2006.

Winner of a Time Out award for �Best Fringe Production�.

How do you become a true jazz player? Does it involve more than just talent?

Everyone’s favourite child is having difficulty adjusting to adulthood. Surely after a while ‘just good friends’ just becomes more…

VERSION THEATRE presents:
In a remote deserted house Adam and Beatrice, both scarred by their previous relationships, agree to commit one year to each other.

STELLA QUINES THEATRE COMPANY PRESENTS:

The pioneering Clean Break makes a welcome return to the Arcola with Black Crows, a powerful story of three women and their love for one man.

A compelling combination of satirical wit, biting humour and irrepressible humanity – new writing at its provocative best.

“If Superman was here there’d be no bombs”

“Aye – he’d hear them ticking with his x-ray ears”

ORIGINAL SIN presents:

Ionesco’s devastating satire on education reimagined for 2007 by Mike Bartlett (My Child, Royal Court Theatre). Cast includes Louise Bangay, Fiona Button and Michael Gould. Directed by Lyndsey Turner.

What does it mean to be Turkish and how did modern Turkey come in to being?

This deeply moving and personal play, a world premiere from the young Turkish author Leyla Nazli, is set in the turbulent political climate of the 1970’s Turkey.

"All you who enter the earth through a cradle, and leave it via a grave, your Director is looking down today, to see how his actors behave."

That is fact one about Hamlet. But how does the chain of events lead there? Surely a talented and intelligent young man such as Hamlet could have found solutions to his problems – how does it happen that he dies, taking half the court with him? If Hamlet had a second chance and could advise himself in every crucial moment, maybe the story could happen differently

Incest, Religion, Death, Cabaret, Love, Murder, Jazz, Vice Vampires...and a Talking Crocodile.

Welcome to Arcola's new Opera Season.

This is the first English performance of a comedy masterpiece of Japanese post-war drama focusing on the survivors of Hiroshima by Japan’s leading contemporary theatrical voice, the dramatist and novelist Hisashi Inoue (born 1934).

The most desperate acts, are those commited in love.

Sweet William is a heartfelt accolade to the life and works of Shakespeare, seen through the eyes of a Shakesperean great who has played most of the major roles with the RSC and the ESC. Performed as Pennington’s ‘memoirs’, Sweet William is a one man show that gives its audience a unique insight into the lifelong friendship between the playwright and his actor.

Caroline Williamson gives a "masterclass in subtlety and simplicity" as a young Catholic girl in this compelling tale from the new generation of Northern Irish writers.

Waiting for a guide who, unseen, lies dead amongst them, the blind sit our their fate...

Following the success of Les Enfants du Paradis, Simple8 return to the Arcola to resurrect a true and forgotten story. On the 90th anniversary of the end of First World War, this poignant production is a timely reminder of the fallout from conflict, questioning our moral responsibility towards returning servicemen, and exploring the fragile frontier between imagination and memory.

Greg Hicks stars in a devastatingly relevant drama about the true price of honesty.

'In times of deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.'
George Orwell

Based on the true story of the final victim of Jack the Ripper, this haunting play, by award-winning poet and playwright Glyn Maxwell, promises to be one of the most talked-about productions of 2008.

Lia Williams stars in a sensuous and erotic play about the power of the past

Ten of Saki’s best known flippant fables of Edwardian irreverence are brought together in an episodic comedy by Mitchell and Webb writer Toby Davies.

TORN
by Femi Oguns

Kelle Bryan, Jocelyn Jee Esien and Wil Johnson lead an all-star cast in this updated version of last year's sell-out sensation.

Baraka returns to the Arcola Theatre with the UK Premiere of their latest production. Bursting with colour, live music, physical theatre and dance Lorca Dreams is a poetic journey through the life and work of Federico Garcia Lorca. The play presents a collage of “Federicos,” in love with life and freedom, stirring emotions which live inside each and every one of us, as actors and people. Discover Lorca’s voice, the characters in his plays, his family and friends, most importantly the eccentric Salvador Dali.

Ever since he first saw her Frederick has been obsessed with Miranda. But Frederick’s a repressed, introverted butterfly collector, and Miranda is a beautiful, privileged art student. The opportunity to invite her to his new country house goes horrifyingly wrong, and in the tense, claustrophobic reality of the cellar prison, their relationship leads to a devastating climax.

A shadow puppet’s revolution into a new dimension.

I’ve lost the capacity for being surprised, so completely lost it, that if I woke up in my bedroom late some night and saw that fantastic fish swimming right over my head, I wouldn’t be really surprised.” Quentin

Tennessee Williams creates his most intimate self-portrait through Quentin, the washed-up queer screenwriter, one of nine castoffs who gather at Monk’s seedy bar one foggy night in 1972, Southern California.

A darkly funny and intimate exploration of the balance between duty and love Welcome to Ramallah is the compelling new play from iceandfire.

A community is in crisis. Two young Pakistani girls run from their families: one is hunted, the other forgotten.

The internationally acclaimed Wrestling School makes its first visit to the Arcola in the Premiere of a new play by Howard Barker, described by the Times as ‘Britain’s greatest living dramatist’.

“I don’t know what goes on in the minds of these men who look for women to end the loneliness of their lives. To each of them I have a thing to give. In the end it’s all the same.”

A graveyard cabaret.

Strange but true stories unearthed from the Old West's most famous bone-orchard and brought back to life in a lively and often hilarious evening of comic, bizarre, pathetic and tragic tales.

"Most of Tombstone's stories pass through here, one way and another. Like all roads lead to Rome. Lift a stone and listen – they'll whisper it to you. Ask nicely and they'll sit up and sing it for you. They may even get up and dance it for you.”

“If two dogs are stuck together,
Fucking each other,
You throw a bucket of water.
Someone had to separate us.
We were killing each other.
We were dead.”

A bitingly funny parody about the psychology of oppression.

Tsuladze last charmed London audiences with his production of Faust as part of the Gate Theatre’s East Meets West Festival in 2002. he makes a bold interpretation of Schniztler's classic, employing his particular brand of satirical humour and warmth to convey the absurd tragedy of an indulgence in loveless sexuality.

Hotel Medea is a trilogy that runs from midnight till dawn.

Britain’s first ever professional Capoeira production based on Euripides’ epic play comes to Arcola for a limited run as part of the 2009 Brazilian Season.

A Classic comedy with a twist, Company Along The Mile is Tom Dalton Bidwell's debut play

ROAST: ‘Mrs Bradshaw, the Government is in possession of your husband’s body'

BALL: ‘Oh, Brian is so poop official! We have the rat-gnawed, stinking thing you clutched in bed once. That is what we have.’

Joe Orton

This intimate view of Joe Orton’s world reveals the complex, challenging and confused life of Orton who survived a damaging childhood, nourished his ambition in amateur drama and went to RADA. There he met Kenneth Halliwell, who became his friend, mentor, lover and… murderer.

MONSTERS
By Niklas Rådström, translated by Gabriella Berggren

1993. A play about the killing of James Bulger.
Stripped to the bone, faithful to the facts. Unflinching.

Thyestes
by Seneca, translated by Caryl Churchill

Coming home from the wilderness, Thyestes is about to uncover the unthinkable. This ancient horror story comes alive through the latest in twenty-first century technology

I AM MONTANA

Trapped between his concerned best friend and the ardent admiration of a meth-addicted co-worker, Eben carries a flower, a suitcase and a secret.

Dr Korczak’s Example
by David Greig

Summer 1942. Warsaw Ghetto. Dr Januzs Korczak, founder of the Jewish orphanage, finds his pacifist principles pushed to the limit, not only by the Nazi regime, but by the arrival of Adzio, a spirited boy who believes in fighting back.

A Lament For Medea

A flooded house is the playground, prison and sanctuary of Medea and her maid. Lost in time, locked in obsessions and stalking lost memories, this is a place to which they are bound and where lives start and finish.

DIRT

An illegal immigrant tells his story. His name is Sad. He walks our streets and sells roses. He loves to speak English but nobody listens. Will you?

“If I worked in a petrol station, all it would take is one cigarette to blow everything sky high…

On the first day of winter, a foreigner appears. Will he be welcomed, or cast out?

In an imaginary, pre-industrial landscape, a profound and strange love triangle unfolds between a ploughman, his wife and a miller.

How many doors have you been through today?

Austria, 1988. For the Schuster family – intellectual, Jewish, Viennese to the core – the country remains as uninhabitable as it was when they fled in 1938.

The British premier of two short absurdist plays translated by Kate Eaton. Performed by the Central School of Speech and Drama.

“One extraordinary day, someone extraordinary arrives. And this day, on this very estate, turns out to be very eventful.”

Three people get locked in a catholic church for the night. They are Harry; the Jewish ex circus strongman, Maudie; the sixteen year old run away, and there’s the Irish blackguard Francisco, who doesn’t want anything…..

A thrilling take on the run up to the Berlin Olympics in 1936, seen through the eyes of American journalist William Shirer.

Alarum presents the UK premiere of award-winning actor Laurence Fishburne’s powerful hit play.

Sondrine's customers are deserting her restaurant in the seedy backstreets of Paris, until Didier decides to vary the menu with choice cuts from the local zoo.

In a post-holocaust future, people are divided into the physically ‘perfect’ and mutants.

The Roman Bath is a ferociously paced satire about where the little man stands and sleeps

A twelve year old girl discovers she has acquired a supernatural ability to interpret her community's darkest problems.

Stitch is hitting the gay scene of Hull. Or at least dipping his toe in the water.

If you were given a jar and told never to open it, how long would it take you to unscrew the lid? Just a little peek …

Naz is 10 and he loves stories. But his world is changing; he has to escape his country and begin his own adventure.

Fugard once again tell a story that finds hope in human relationships and in the power of the imagination.

Helen has spent fifteen years transforming her house into a haven of light and colour against the desolate South African plains. But following an accident, Helen is forced to make a decision that will determine the rest of her life.

A tough and touching story of a mother rebuilding a relationship with her daughter who has Down’s syndrome.

For ten years in the middle of the seventeenth century, Britain was governed by religious extremists.

Murder, torture and forgiveness explored through one man’s discovery of his past – a journey into one man’s existence of justice.

Performances from Hackney Young People ages 13 – 19
Songs from Eisler and Weill

Young tongues licking life into old lyrics. Fresh works given birth before your ears.
The will be feathers on the bird... Grimeborn is back.

An adaptation of Ernest Hemmingway's world renowned novella.

4 days, 2 gladiators, 1 death.

Euro-Japan Theatre and Theatre Du Signe present two performances of Shakespeare’s comedy The Merchant of Venice.

Nine lives fractured by the events of one tragic day.

“By what right do you burn my art?” Egon Schiele.

“There’s not a limit to what can be said, only a limit to how honest we are prepared to be”

Joe Penhall’s multi-award-winning Blue/Orange is a contemporary classic.
Tiata Fahodzi’s radically new all-female production delivers a uniquely African perspective.

“I’m beginning to think that it’s the greatest sin of our time. Knowing, and pretending that we don’t know”

This musical marks the end of an era – the 10th anniversary of Arcola theatre and the very last time you can see a production at the Arcola Street location.

As her confused husband struggles to keep the wife he once had, this playful, surprising and moving play asks if it’s better to be sane or happy?

Small but perfectly formed since 2005

What makes a play a classic?

"The fashionables...They just want to know if a painting's hot. Whether it will gain. They've got one or two facts. And they string them out like they were classicists..."

Ensemble 52 presents

AS WE FORGIVE THEM
by Richard Vergette
Directed by Andrew Pearson

Ellis Sanfey presents ...

One word, six new plays...

Earl is lost. When a bizarre business card seems to offer spiritual answers he's going to grab them. But is a phone call really all it takes?

The beautiful and lyrical play by award-winning playwright, Bryony Lavery, explores the horror of war and it's ability to corrupt the human heart.

Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is one of the greatest novels of all time and in Helen Edmundson's celebrated adaptation it becomes a deeply moving meditation on the nature of love.

An intriguing double-bill of rarely performed plays from acclaimed
American writer David Mamet.

A haunting ensemble represent the mysterious layers of Dr Jekyll's mind as we witness Hyde's darker thoughts take a tighter hold and Dr Jekyll begin to lose control.

George Orwell's Animal Farm is re-imagined by Arcola Youth Theatre.

This brand-new production looks at Chekhov's masterpiece afresh, clearing the lens of accumulated theatrical convention to rediscover the heart of the play.

Following their acclaimed productions of Les Enfants du Paradis and The Living Unknown Soldier, simple8 transports this story of wanton cruelty – as pertinent and as visceral as when Hogarth first scratched it – to the London stage.

Through both comedy and tragedy, Seagull explores lives that are precariously balanced between love and indifference success and failure, hope and despair. This is classic Chekhov with the original censor's cuts restored.

An intoxicating new production of the Ibsen classic.

This evocative production combines a female chorus, stylised movement and fantastical set design to immerse its audience within the world of Nora Helmer.

"When I'm writing articles, I'm not scared at all. I'm on a high. It's such a rush. The fear comes later."

Sri Lankan brothers Lal and Lasantha dare to publish stories that others won't touch, but at what cost?

The black night of apartheid South Africa. An isolated farmhouse descends into ruin.

The rain will never come. And in the dust, Sussie and Frikkie play out the punishment rituals of the past. Nothing is prohibited. There are no taboos. What will happen when an unwelcome visitor enters their world?

Grimeborn Opera Festival

A theatrical fable of globalization set in your local takeaway.

"Number 6: Thai soup with chicken, coconut milk, Thai ginger, tomatoes, button mushrooms, lemon grass and lemon leaves (hot)."

When words begin to lose their meaning, they lose their weight and men their sense of direction…
Sellig Furaya in What Is Gravity Without Stories?

Greed. Hospitality. Sacrifice. Knowledge. Truth. Freedom. Friendship.

News. Another rape. Child murdered. War somewhere. Few thousand jobs gone. But none of this matters cause its a royal birthday.

A major revival of Sarah Kanes blackly comic reworking of Senecas classical tragedy of monarchy, incest and fatal obsession, which premiered in 1996: Pure theatre. Or rather impure theatre: dirty, alarming, dangerous (Observer)

What is our life? A game!

A mental patient is confined to his cell, refusing to answer any questions. He keeps muttering Three Seven, Ace! Three, Seven, Queen!
His past life is revealed to us in a series of dreams that take us from the bedroom of an old, dying Countess to the gambling tables of St. Petersburg.

An extraordinary story of two girls struggle to be heard

Shared Experience (Bronte, After Mrs Rochester, Jane Eyre) presents the astonishing story of identical twins June and Jennifer Gibbons.

European Premiere

Susan, a science teacher from Manhattan, starts work in a small rural Kansas town that’s been ripped apart by a tornado.

A passionate new musical

Tells the story of Sam, who joins the Brigades and goes to Spain to help fight the fascists in 1936, and Rebecca, his mother, how(who) follows him there. We follow their journey as they fight for freedom alongside the people of Spain.

An urban sequel to the ugly duckling.

American Psycho by way of V for Vendetta. Chilling, thrilling and terribly relevant.

A powerful story of seduction, greed and betrayal.

21 years after it came kicking and screaming into the world, The Pitchfork Disney has come of age...

A gripping story of misguided love, hope and betrayal.

Burgess's disturbing little masterpiece – a portrait of a corrupt state, a bankrupt civil society, and a populace in fear of feral youth seems urgently familiar.

Belka Productions is proud to present the UK premiere of this landmark Russian love story, by one of Russia's greatest twentieth-century playwrights.

Sanju: Do you like acting?

Lizzie: Of course I like it. Well, I mean, I've never known anything else. Only acting and travelling. Travelling and acting.

On holiday with her streetwise son in Lagos, a British-Nigerian mother is in turmoil. An unmissable and moving new tragicomedy.

Manfred Karge's The Conquest of the South Pole has its first major revival in the UK since the original helped launch the careers of Ewen Bremner and Alan Cumming.

Renowned for being banned by the BBC in 1976 this is the first ever major London revival of Dennis Potter's most controversial play.

Il Tabarro is the first opera of Giacomo Puccini's Triptych known as Il Trittico; a sinister story of doubt, revenge and murder amidst solitude, depression, escapism, grief and marital breakdown.

Presented by Aylin Bozok

Humperdinck describes the opera as a
Märchenoper (fairy tale opera). The libretto was
written by Humperdinck’s sister, based on the
Grimm brothers’ Hänsel and Gretel, and the
performance includes an original arrangement
for chamber ensemble. The performance has
music dialogue in English with all the magical
creatures singing in the original German.

From the isolation of a mythic forest to the buzzing Tokyo metropolis, The Sound of a Voice weaves together two stories of Modern Japan. Haunted by the ghosts of the past, two couples try to free themselves from a lifetime of longing and loss.

Presented by Volta Theatre

Following three sell-out successes at Grimeborn, Nina Brazier directs one of Mozart’s earliest juvenile operas; Bastien & Bastienne – written when he was 12 years old – alongside Wolf-Ferrari’s vivacious romantic comedy Susanna’s Secret. Both are retold in new translations by Music Director David Eaton in an unrivalled evening of unfounded jealousy.

An adventurous double bill pairs Handel Furioso a piece of music‐theatre using arias and duets from Handel’s greatest operas, with a production of Viktor Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis, a haunting satire written in the Terezin concentration camp before the composer’s deportation to Auschwitz. Two rising stars, Anna Starushkevych (Winner of the 2012 Handel Singing Competition) and Robyn Allegra Parton (Kathleen Ferrier Award Finalist), appear in the Handel. Max Hoehn’s 2011 production of The Emperor of Atlantis returns with a new cast.

La Voix Humaine

A one-act telephonic opera for one woman, with music by Francis Poulenc to a libretto by Jean Cocteau, based on his 1930 play.

Presented by In Motion Pictures

and

An excerpt from TONSEISHA: THE MAN WHO ABANDONED THE WORLD

A new opera based on Erik Patterson’s play, Tonseisha. This international collaboration takes us on a dreamlike journey through Tokyo.

Presented by saltpeter

and

UNLEASHED: an anti-opera about maleness.

UNLEASHED is an opera about coping with a violent world, exploring sex at the limits and why we find ourselves there.

Presented by Fourfortytwo and the Blackburn Company

Heritage Opera follow their 2011 Grimeborn hit Mansfield Park with a brand new translation of Mozart's sunniest comedy. Ravishing melodies accompany a farcical story centring on the wedding day of Seville’s favourite barber, Figaro, to the winsome Susanna, maid to the Countess Almaviva. The only fly in the ointment is the Countess's errant husband, the Count, who has designs of his own on Susanna. The plot thickens, with a randy pageboy hiding in a cupboard, a drunken gardener making a nuisance of himself, bridesmaids, letters, midnight trysts in the garden, shocking revelations, and, eventually, a happy ending.

Presented by Heritage Opera

Heritage Opera bring their critically-acclaimed production of Verdi's dark masterpiece to Grimeborn, a tale of passion, kidnap, curses, seduction and murder!

In October 1962, President John F. Kennedy uncovered Soviet missiles on the island of Cuba. The days that followed were the closest the world has ever come to being wiped out by nuclear war. This powerful new musical follows the lives of three lovers, three leaders and three nations during this critical period, by means of a memorable score that fuses Western, Eastern and Latin musical styles.

Grimeborn Opera Festival returns.
‘An alternative to the “picnics and Pimms” version of English summer opera’
Financial Times

The improvised movie live on stage. Oscar has every movie ever made... every film you could ever imagine. Join Oscar for a special Halloween movie night to watch a never before seen, never to be seen again horror film!

The movie is created before your very eyes, complete with awesome action sequences, captivating plot and a thrilling live film score. Oscar pauses and rewinds the best bits and cuts to hilarious DVD extras.

UK PREMIERE

An abandoned dance hall. Six young people desperate for fame, fortune and next week’s rent. An unscrupulous promoter. A ravenous audience and a stranger with a past he’s trying to hide.

Money…Marriage…Mothers….Multi-Tasking…Madness…Magasines….Media…Mistakes...Muffs….Menopause…Men….MakeOvers…

How & Where do women share their stories, information, facts, myths, truths, wisdom, old wives tales & secrets? And why do all these things begin with M? If you liked Caitlin Moran’s ‘How To Be A Woman’ you will love this show. Things beginning with M….it’s gonna be a long list.

Ted and his son escape from broken Britain to create a perfect nation seven miles out at sea. They are joined on their abandoned sea fort by another family and together they battle to raise their children and create a new society. Based on a true story, Sealand is an imaginative, witty look at one man's obsession with utopia.

A new life awaits you on Sealand, the off-shore colony.

Following their Sell out smash at the Edinburgh Fringe and hoping to capitalise on their seven five star reviews, puppetry's Balkan bad boys Boris & Sergey; Simply the greatest vaudevillian double act ever conceived for the small stage, present for your viewing pleasure a plethora of pleasing plays and skits! Expect riotous exploits, malarkey, molestation and mirth of a magnitude hitherto unseen in on the Kingsland Highroad!

There was meant to be a play. About Paul Renner. About Futura typeface. The moon landing. Historicism. The Weimar. The rise of mechanization. Nazis. The future. But this play does not exist.

The improvised movie live on stage. Oscar has every movie ever made... every film you could ever imagine. Join Oscar for a thrilling murder mystery special. The movie is created before your very eyes, complete with awesome action sequences, captivating plot and a thrilling live film score. Oscar pauses and rewinds the best bits and cuts to hilarious DVD extras.

America. 1970. Black Vietnam veteran Beau Willie Brown is held in custody, accused of a heinous crime. A story comes to light that sticks in the throat, a story murmured between dark dreams.

*"beau come back from ’nam with empty eyes and hands like stone

but

the war started long before he got on that plane"*

but i cd only whisper wrestles with being vulnerable and black in white America. Fusing the physical and the poetic, a strange song emerges from the warble of police sirens, the percussion of machine guns, and the chants of voices only you can hear.

Fresh from the Edinburgh Fringe, Rémy is stepping foot in the capital city.

Rémy is French, lives in a prison cell, and isn't quite sure how old he is. He's good at gardening and once tried to somersault off the back of a galloping horse. Best of all Rémy tells stories; stories of foolish kings and tiny emperors, bouncing bullets and shapeshifting circus girls. Anything can happen in a war, after all. Don't believe him? You will.

A gripping new drama about sport, nationhood and belonging with a haunting love story at its heart.

The improvised movie live on stage. Oscar has every movie ever made... every film you could ever imagine. Join Oscar for a magical Christmas movie from his festive collection!

The movie is created before your very eyes, complete with awesome action sequences, captivating plot and a thrilling live film score. Oscar pauses and rewinds the best bits and cuts to hilarious DVD extras.

The improvised movie live on stage. Oscar has every movie ever made... every film you could ever imagine. Join Oscar for a magical Christmas movie from his festive collection!

The movie is created before your very eyes, complete with awesome action sequences, captivating plot and a thrilling live film score. Oscar pauses and rewinds the best bits and cuts to hilarious DVD extras.

1952, New York’s number one gossip columnist JJ Hunsecker rules the city with his mighty pen. If you want to know the latest gossip – from the President to the latest It Girl – JJ has it all. If he doesn’t, you can be sure that anyone from J Edgar Hoover and Senator Joe McCarthy through to the press agents eager to push their latest clients, will give it to him.

And there’s one struggling press agent Sindey Falcone, with one client who has given him an ultimatum – no item in JJ’s column, no job.

Kali celebrates 21 years of cutting edge theatre by South Asian women with a festival of rich and diverse contemporary plays by some of the most original voices in theatre writing. The Festival begins with a reading of Song for A Sanctuary, the first play produced by Kali in 1991. Six other readings are the culmination of Kali’s nine month Writer Development Programme.

Come and experience some of the freshest and most original voices in new theatre writing.

If the past is another country, where is home

Two sisters return to the crumbling Calcutta home of their childhood. Family secrets are revealed and the women are forced to re-examine their relationship with their mother and the reality of their own lives in the light of a hidden past.

What makes Dalston so hip?

An atmospheric light, glass and sound installation created by a glass artist, lighting designer and sound designer will be animated by performers from the Arcola 60+ Company, performing funny and moving stories developed by Arcola 60+ and Kali writers drawing on local memories of childhood and the pioneering spirit of the diverse community who now call Dalston home.

The original comedy of a serial killer. Humans replace puppets but the story remains the same – what happens when one man decides the rules of society do not apply. A show to celebrate the 350th anniversary of Punch and Judy and explore the tradition, its absurdities, its comedy and its terror. To see what happens when Punch becomes all too real, 'Who'd be plagued with a wife, That could set himself free, With a rope or a knife, Or a good stick, like me?' Unnerving, funny, gleeful and not suitable for young children – has it ever been?