Hot new seed commissions incoming!

Alongside lots else we do, this scheme is about ensuring that our programme, and the roster of artists we support, reflects the neighbourhood and the city beyond our doors. Every year, the scheme generates fantastic new projects that go on to be a big part of our programme – usually with further support from CPT.

This year’s nine artists and projects could hardly be more diverse, or more mouthwatering. That’s not just about who the artists are, it’s about the striking range of subjects they’re addressing, and the forms in which they’re doing so. We’ve got projects about modern colonialism and Angolan history, about coal-mining and wrestling. We’ve got research projects and multimedia solo shows, a father-and-daughter collaboration and a twerking / classical music mash-up. We’ve got projects that span at least five continents. It’s such a thrilling range of projects, and we can’t wait to support the creators as they begin to bring them to life.

Artist: Maghsood Arashloo

Maghsood is a British/Iranian Journalist with BBC World Service and a theatre maker. In past years he works with Seemia theatre company as part time Dramaturge. Previously he collaborated with different performance makers in site specific works. He graduated from MA Advanced Theatre Practice, RCSSD.

Commissioned project: Clandestine in Tehran

A multimedia solo-show about political exile and the complex emotions of the person in exile about the homeland. A journalist in exile decides to go back to his country in disguise but it is not as nostalgic or sweet as it seems!

Artist: Laura Rees

Following 20 years as a professional actor, Laura studied Applied Theatre at Goldsmiths University, and has since been developing her creative practice as a participatory theatre artist. Her work centres on challenging perceptions of non-visible disabilities and illness. 

Commissioned project: The How Are You Project

A community participatory theatre project that interrogates the question of "how are you?" for people with non-visible disabilities. How do we constantly navigate the many versions of response that there are, or what version we want to give, or the versions that people want to hear?

The project currently consists of around 100 participants. With artistic support from Neil Bartlett. Developed with kind DYCP support from The Arts Council of England.

Artist: Sierra Sevilla

Sierra is a proud Chamoru/Filipina theatremaker from Guam, focusing on social justice projects in both Guam and the UK. She co-wrote and performed in ‘How to Make a Home’ a participatory, games-based production at Rich Mix Takeover Festival (2017) and Sheffield’s Migration Matters Festival (2018). She directed Lin-Manuel Miranda's '21 Chump Street' in Guam's first-ever touring musical (2019).

Commissioned project: For the Love of Spam

A comedic stand-up, karaoke, participatory, and multisensory show dedicated to Spam and Indigenous rights. This show connects Spam to the history and modern-day colonisation of Guam, revealing Spam as a tool of the coloniser. We’ll find out if this angry, formerly-catholic woman can help educate the masses and bring about liberation for her island.

Artist: Jasmin Thien

Jasmin Thien is a fully blind, Bruneian born Chinese actor, writer, spoken word artist and stand up comedian. She graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2020 with a first-class honours degree in Education, English, Drama and the Arts. She has worked with Extant as an associate artist, and with Apples and Snakes as an artist in residence.

Commissioned project: I Dream In Colour

She is having her remaining eye permanently removed. The eye containing a dormant tumour. The eye her family fought desperately to keep. Combining elements of storytelling, poetry, stand up comedy and physical theatre, this is an autobiographical, one-woman show exploring loss, memory, and how we forgive those who both love and hurt us most for their choices in our past.

Artist: Mikey Reece

Mikey Reece is a physical storyteller born and based in East London. After completing a Drama degree at the Exeter University, Mikey began training as a professional wrestler in 2015, performing all over the UK. Recently, Mikey has been interested in using the choreographic language of wrestling in more traditional theatre contexts. Gimmicks is Mikey's first project as lead creative.

Commissioned project: GIMMICKS

An exploration of the relationship between POC wrestlers and their wrestling character or gimmick. What happens when a performer’s gimmick is based on outdated or damaging stereotypes? When does a performer choose to portray a gimmick and when are they coerced into doing so? GIMMICKS will seek to fuse the physical language of wrestling with traditional theatrical principals.

Artist: Corinne Walker

Corinne Walker is a performer, theatre-maker, writer and creative producer who also works in film. She is passionate about championing underrepresented voices and telling previously unheard stories, particularly based in her home region of the South West. As a performer she has worked extensively with Beyond Face. She was also the sole actor in Offie-nominated Illusions of Liberty . Other acting credits include Three Kings (Travelling Light). Corinne has been commissioned as a writer by Tamasha Theatre, Rural Black History Project and Hear Me Now Monologue anthology.

Commissioned project: Fight Well

A theatrical exploration using verbatim text, lecture, spoken word/ rap, stylised movement, combat and filmed interludes imagining four very different black women united in a battle for healthcare.

Artist: N’DONGO

N’DONGO are a theatre company who explore untold African histories fusing ancient and modern mediums of movement, music and storytelling. The father, contemporary Afro-Latin dancer and choreographer Garcia Baxe, and his daughter, writer and director Kaleya Baxe, find creativity and inspiration sharing ancestral stories told over African flavours and fufu.

Commissioned project: N'DONGO

A musical exploring the history of this distinctive Kingdom in Angola and it's unbelievable tales, passed down over centuries by those who survived as this father and daughter do now. It is a story of history, of revolution, of consecrated characters from Queen Nzinga and her brave warriors to the typical characters of the street.

Artist: Initiative.dkf

Initiative.dkf is an award-winning arts platform. Challenging what performance can be, look and FEEL LIKE. They produce theatre, dance events, festivals and cultivate culture through instinctual and interdisciplinary work. Led by Creative Producer Wofai and Director DK Fashola.
Credits include: Edinburgh Fringe (Digital), Fragments of a Complicated Mind (Theatre503), Scalped (Brighton Fest GDIF, SIRF)

Commissioned project: Vulgar Women - A Twerk Symphony

Part horror, part reflection, part machine. Liberation vs shame. Can the fullness of womenHood be contained? If so, who has the lock and who holds the keys? Classical Music meets Twerk Culture. Exploring the juicy ingredients of our project with multidisciplinary theatre makers. 

#Research&Development

Artist: AK Golding

AK Golding is a working class Actor, Deviser & Theatre Maker from the East Mids. Their work platforms working class stories through a joyfully queer, satirically unnerving lens. AK has performed at The Globe & The National, devised with Pigfoot Theatre & Freight Theatre, tapped danced down the mines with their Drag King persona Cole Minor and is currently writing their first comedy/thriller short with BFI Midlands. AK trained at BOVTS, EPA & is Associate Artist with New Perspectives.  

Commissioned project: Cole Minor

At the bottom of a derelict coal mine, in the bleak, forgotten region of the Middle Lands, a half lit rollie falls into a bag of coal dust igniting a toxic explosion from which Cole Minor is born. A strange creature, a shape shifter, a lonely lonely boy. Cole Minor is determined to find true belonging through the medium of time travel, musical theatre & a pitt load of shadow work.