Joint Artistic Directors of Paines Plough, Charlotte Bennett and Katie Posner, have announced the company’s plans for Autumn 2020. The plans include a two week new theatre festival entitled ‘The Place I Call Home’, which will run between 19-31 October. This digital festival will be delivered via Instagram, Zoom, email, Whatsapp and the good old fashioned post and will feature brand new international plays co-written from across Europe.

Alongside this festival will be free online workshops for new actors, writers, directors and producers, including open access Q&As with celebrated playwrights. Three bilingual international collaborations will headline the festival, commissioned during lockdown to connect writers and theatres across Europe during a time of isolation.

A Brief History Of Struggle is a collaboration between Dipo Baruwa-Etti and Calle Fuhr (UK and Germany respectively), in a story spanning many years and containing six short stories of hope and endurance, both in English and in German. The show will be performed in snippets sent to the audience via WhatsApp.

In Tandem by Travis Alabanza (UK) and Magdalena Zarebska-Wegrzyn (Poland) invites audiences to experience couples in lockdown in both locations, in both English and Polish. Audiences will be invited to sign up via email to receive personal invites to gain an insight into the couples’ lives over the course of a week. This production stars Sharon D Clarke.

Posta Aerea, by Giudiita Mingucci and Rosie MacPherson will be the final play. For this, audiences will receive their own bespoke package through the post, created by the two teenagers that the story follows, Aisha and Tania. The stories will be told in English and Italian.

Charlotte Bennett and Katie Posner said: “At the start of lockdown none of us anticipated the enormity of the impact that these times would have on each and every one of us. This unimagined world we now live in has highlighted that there is no same experience for anyone. This playful new digital festival celebrates difference; sharing how this time has been for different experiment with how we can create different theatrical digital experiences to continue to tell stories. It allows us to shine a light on the incredible artists we have worked with during these turbulent times as well as to continue to reach out to meet new artists to work with in the future. We are so proud to share these international collaborations that have enabled us to use storytelling to cross borders and barriers and we are excited to throw open our digital doors to meet new theatre artists through our workshop programme.”

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