Shipwright is a new atmospheric outdoor theatre space housed within the historic grounds of the Master Shipwright’s house near Deptford on the banks of the river Thames.

This summer audiences will have the opportunity to enjoy a programme full of theatre, music, drag acts and cabaret.  With an intimate setting of 200 seats idyllically next to the river, audiences can eat and drink from Deptford’s much-loved local restauranteurs Klose & Soan. The venue will function inline with Covid-guidelines.

Shipwright’s Artistic Director Joseph Winters has introduced the summer festival and venue by saying; “Here’s the big idea: audiences and performers alike come to the theatre, to gigs, to cabaret, in order to feel at home. It is with enormous excitement that we announce Shipwright’s first summer festival: three weekends of entertainment in the heart of Deptford. We welcome theatrical world premieres, riotous nights of cabaret and some of the most acclaimed live musicians to delight audiences with a truly diverse programme of great nights out, with arts, food and drink all in one unique venue. Our outdoor space is like nowhere else: from their seats audiences can see and hear the Thames lapping against the auditorium’s edge.

Our programme of theatre includes two new plays as well as the UK performance premiere of Maggie Nelson’s award-winning memoir, The Argonauts. This epic cover-tocover reading by a revolving cast of female, trans* and non-binary actors will bring this astonishing story to audiences in a whole new way. Chris New’s elegiac play, DIG, is a tender monologue performed by the author, what begins as a meditation on loss becomes a life-affirming reminder of what is valuable in love and life. Asa Haynes’s I… places the black gay experience at the heart of a romantic-comedy, delighting as this most predictable of genres has to stretch and bend around an entirely new narrative, like the ever-changing city of London it inhabits.”

The entertainment will take place across the three weekends from 22 July – 7 August with tickets costing £10, there will also be an ‘Open Doors’ initiative which will give away hundreds of free tickets to local residents.