The State We're In

In 2015, Camden People’s Theatre staged a festival, the first incarnation of The State We’re In, in the year of a highly significant general election. In 2024, The State We’re In returns: three weeks of theatre and performance lifting the lid on Britain’s democracy, politics and public life. 

Who gets to run the UK, and who doesn’t? Who does our society support, and who does it leave behind? What will this significant change in leadership and political direction mean for our country? And where does the climate crisis fit in – as a source of despair, or of hope?

Headlined by Zakiyyah Deen’s extraordinary debut play Why A Black Woman Will Never Be Prime Minister. picked up by CPT after a sharing at Tara Arts in 2023, and shepherded by CPT towards full (co-)production as a Home Run commission.

Performed and written by Zakiyyah Deen, it explores black female participation in the political process, and black maternal health. Zakiyyah Is interested in wraparound engagement with young black women to explore their political engagement.

Set over nine months, this piece delves into intersectionality, British politics, and Black women's maternal health. Blending satire, spoken word, and narrative, Zakiyyah Deen’s debut play directly addresses the real reasons: Why A Black Woman Never Be Prime Minister.

The State We’re In will also feature penetrating new performances by Worklight Theatre, Andy Smith, Shybairn (originally commissioned by CPT in 2022) and Hacks.

The festival aims to take the temperature of the UK as the new government prioritises the social/political issues that most need addressing. It also aims to reconnect to CPT's history of radicalism and political engagement and concern for social justice in its 30th anniversary year.

Other Festival performances

The plays programmed for the festival have one common desire - to explore the current state of the UK - where are we after 14 years of Conservative rule, and what is the condition of our public realm, and the social bonds that should unite us as a country? What state are they in - and what does the new government need to do to repair them?

Across the span of the festival, there are shows about the economy (It’s the Economy, Stupid), the benefit system (The Mute Messiah), the care system (The Daisy Chain), political participation/representation (Andy Smith's Citizens’ Assembly), food banks (Carmen Collective’s The Food Bank Show), the climate crisis (Shybairn) and more. Offering audiences a new angle or way to engage with where the UK is now, where it’s been and what it’s becoming.

Click here to browse the full State We're In festival.

Full Autumn Season

The State We’re In is part of CPT’s autumn 2024 season that features three months of shows that fit CPT’s mission of taking risks, asking questions, doing things differently, and giving audiences great nights out. 

This will be the last season programmed by outgoing Artistic Director, Brian Logan, and will feature over 40 works, including: Consumed, a new show from some of the talents behind CPT’s 2023 hit Choose Your Fighter; as well as The Spectacular, LightMovingCompany’s impish take on British colonialism and Irish Republicanism, and I Dream in Colour, a run of Jasmin Thien’s CPT seed commission on the intersection between disability and immigrant culture

The season marks Black History Month and 30 years since the Rwandan genocide with I Am Leah, a play by BAFTA-nominated filmmaker Jo Ingabire Moys. 

CPT will also join forces with a host of theatres for Voila! Festival as it expands the reach of panlingual and cross-border theatre with a new multi-venue model. 

The season closes with a double-bill of Sh!t Theatre’s immortal festive shows: Sh!t Actually (can you guess what film it’s based on?) - first commissioned for CPT’s 25th birthday celebrations, and Sing-along-a-Muppet Christmas Carol (that one’s even easier).