Figures of Speech 2017

At a time of political turmoil, unprecedented world events and an increasingly divided society, what does inspiring leadership sound like?



Figures of Speech, a major new digital film project for 2017, will interrogate the vitality of speech to remember.



The Almeida brings together the most exciting artists to take risks; to provoke, inspire and surprise our audiences; to interrogate the present, dig up the past and imagine the future.



And so, we are on a quest to rediscover leadership, to put history’s greatest speeches back on the map, to come together and experience the moments when men and women stood in front of people to find that words are electric, hope is immortal and ideas can carve a path through history and into the future.



A concert of voices who demand to be heard, either again or for the first time, will take centre stage, as Figures of Speech uses the power of performance to explore big political and social ideas. This website creates a platform for a wider interrogation of what leadership and the power of the spoken word mean in 2017.