CPT brings together artists and everyone else to connect, imagine, be heard and be entertained. It makes space for the theatre – and the theatre-makers – of tomorrow, it celebrates community and it strives to create a more equitable and caring world through extraordinary performance made by and for a wide range of people.
Over 30 years, CPT has fulfilled a national leadership role in the field of innovative contemporary performance. We deliver a wide-ranging programme that champions the next generation of theatre-makers, working with and launching the careers of ground-breaking artists including: Fevered Sleep, Chris Thorpe, Emily Lim (who now runs the National Theatre’s Public Acts programme), Scottee, Common Wealth and Nouveau Riche (Queens of Sheba; Typical) – among many, many others. We have an excellent reputation for supporting early-career artists in this field, and for attracting a consistently young and diverse audience.
Our programming is centred around themed festivals that tackle socio-political issues affecting our wider community. E.g. Common People, exploring working-class identity and experience (2018) and Come As You Are, celebrating trans and gender-queer work (2017). Since 1997, CPT has programmed the annual Sprint festival, London’s best-established festival of new and unusual theatre, and since 2013 Calm Down, Dear, the UK’s first and only festival of innovative feminist theatre. For the last decade, we have also run the unique artist support/peer network programme Starting Blocks. To find out more about how we support artists, click here.
CPT is also a proud member of its Camden community. Since 2016, it has co-run Camden Youth Theatre in collaboration with New Diorama Theatre. A major building upgrade in 2021 allowed us to significantly increase our local community offer: we now work year-round with Camden residents on a tailored programme of arts and cultural projects and activities.
