Starting Blocks is a flagship programme championing solo artists or independent small groups; inviting and giving space for artists to take risks, strive for innovation and utliise a peer-peer network to encourage exciting new collaborations. Over ten weeks, these six artists or companies will meet weekly to share their practice and developing ideas.

As well as mentoring and a cash commission, these artists will share work-in-progress pieces as part of our Spring festival in March 2024. Keep your eyes peeled!

Artist: Eloise Heath

Eloise is a writer-director. Her work, across documentary and scripted, has found a home on Netflix and Paramount+, at the Edinburgh Fringe, and in the Raindance Film Festival. She is passionate about creating surprising, riotous work with humour, as well as truth, at its core. Her interests include pinã coladas, getting caught in the rain, and making song references.

Twitter & Insta: @eloise_heath

Commissioned project: PULSE.

A dictaphone records. This play is a true story: it is also a pack of lies. Built around a series of verbatim interviews, PULSE is a piece of True-Crime theatre. An exploration of violence, radical empathy, and the ways the monstrous may not be quite as it seems, it asks the audience to think the unthinkable.

Artist: Jim Osman

Jim Osman is an artist specialising in science fiction and fantasy in performance. He has been accepted for a PhD at Goldsmiths University in speculative fiction in audio drama and sound art. His directorial work spans opera, puppetry, performance art and audio drama. Jim has extensive storytelling experience, combining classic horror and ghost stories with dark ambient and experimental soundscapes.

Insta: @jimosmans

Twitter: @JimOsmanDirects

Commissioned project: The Encrypted Forest

An evening of folktale for the digital age, inspired post-internet art, weird fiction, cosmic horror and traditional folktale. Combining elements of storytelling, audio drama, sound art, lecture performance and lo-fi hip hop instrumentals, experience a realm where the digital and the mystical merge as we are haunted by our lost future.

Artist: Kathrine Payne

Kathrine Payne (they/them) is a theatre maker and actor from near Manchester. Kathrine makes theatre that is funny, queer and political. They are a part of Sweet Beef Theatre, a Pleasance Associate Artist company, and a member of Soho Writers Lab. Last year Kathrine graduated from LAMDA and has since worked as an actor with the National Theatre, New Diorama Theatre and Nottingham Playhouse.

Insta: @_kathrinepayne

Twitter: @kathrine_payne

Commissioned project: plewds

plewds is a one person clown show that examines the dynamics of a queer relationship. Using drag, lip sync, karaoke and audience interaction, a performer desperately tries to make you like them amidst a pop cultural mash up of chaos, confusion, and a nagging feeling that something isn't right.

Artist: Michelle Hudson

Michelle Hudson is a critically acclaimed digital storyteller & theatre maker/performer, working across extended reality, theatre, and game. Past projects include StoryTrails - the UK’s largest augmented reality storytelling project; Manimals, a one-woman digital theatre show about loneliness, dating, and the struggle to connect in the digital age; and Perfect Show for Rachel (Zoo Co - Barbican).

Insta: @michelle.m.hudson

Twitter: @MM_Hudson

Commissioned project: Last F*ckable Year

An autobiographically inspired piece about a real-life quest to have the (last) ride of Michelle's perimenopausal life. With live/pre-recorded multimedia and audience interaction, the show asks the question ‘can you ever prepare yourself for becoming invisible?’

Artist: piss / CARNATION

piss / CARNATION make sensory and fervent work about transfemininity which combines brutality, tenderness, abjection and glamour. Combining cabaret, experimental and verbatim theatre, they create "genuinely groundbreaking" (To Do List ★★★★★) and "brazen" (Guardian ★★★★) performances for stage. Their name comes from the German "pissnelke": the otherworldly and beautiful flowers that emerge from human pee on the sides of motorways.

Insta & Twitter: @pisscarnation

Commissioned project: Ugly Sisters... (adult human females): A TALE OF TWO SISSIES

The piece lurks glamorously between political satire, queer cabaret and feminist healing. Using testimony, fairytale, lecture, mess and drag, Ugly Sisters... facilitates a conversation between and about women. The show is an Odyssey, a feral quest, a stupid late-night thought, for a feminism that might love us back.

Artist: Seemia Theatre / Sara Amini

Sara is an Iranian artist. She studied BA Theatre Directing (Tehran University) and MA Performance Making (Goldsmiths). She also trained as a classical singer, recently opening for Dammahi, London Jazz Festival 2023. She is Artistic Director of Seemia Theatre, an international ensemble that spotlights social and political issues. Highlights include Barbican OpenLab, winning Summerhall’s LUSTRUM Award and mentoring International Theatre Institut Germany artists.

Insta: @seemiatheatre @saraamini_official

Twitter: @SeemiaTheatre @AminiSara82

Commissioned project: Saria Callas

A new “musical” about wanting to be a singer, and growing up where it is forbidden for women to sing. Did I get used to repression or is music my way of fighting? Saria will have a chance to be a musical singer for one night only, as we live in a world where others still decide about your body and voice.