The Lowry Reveals New Year 2025 Contemporary Season

From dance to comedy, drama, music, and juggling… Lowry has announced its contemporary season for early 2025. Featuring shows from national and international companies the season includes array of new theatre to kick off the New Year.

Matthew Eames, Head of Theatres, Lowry (Contemporary and Commissioning) says: In challenging times for touring theatre companies we are delighted to see the return of Ad Infinitum, ThickSkin, Pagrav Dance, imitating the dog, Phizzical, Elysium, Wes Peden and Gandini Juggling as well as welcome Wound Up Theatre, Dibby and Emilyn Claid for the first time. What an array of talent and shows! Now it's over to you, we urge you to come along and support them and their brilliant work.

Choreographer Botis Seva's latest Hip Hop theatre production, Until We Sleep, is a journey underlined with a resistance to change.  Amidst the oppression of leadership, a lone warrior yearns for faith as they lead a wandering community through shifting passages of time. With a celestial blend of percussion and guttural sounds, music bleeds effortlessly into an undulating style of movement performed by Far From The Norm. Feathered costumes give glimpses of kindred spirits transcending above their former identities, whilst piercing light interrupts the stage as a pitiless testing ground, reminding us of a higher power that carves our reality.  Until We Sleep displays the heaviness of hope against the burden of responsibility, yet within the conflict, there exists a softness that breathes life into existence. Age Guidance: 12+ Sat 18 Jan 2025

Theatre Ad Infinitum - Last Rites Internationally acclaimed theatre makers Ramesh Meyyappan and George Mann collaborate for the first time in multi-award-winning Ad Infinitum's moving new performance celebrating the transformative power of grief and parenthood. Last Rites combines exciting physical, non-verbal storytelling with dynamic projection and an immersive soundtrack. Told through a Deaf man's unique perspective, this show tells the poignant story of a complex relationship cut short. In life, his father wouldn't learn sign language, but in death Arjun needs to find a way to say goodbye. Creating his own intimate, final ceremony, Arjun brings to life a rich tapestry of shared memories. Tue 18 – Wed 19 Feb 2025

emilyn claid, UNTITLED. In this performance emilyn welcomes the fears of endings, teasing with what it means to bow out, the irony of living in an old body and what's real and what's imagined. Combining movement and theatre, staged choreography, and playful, improvised interactions, emilyn faces queering and ageing with dark humour, undercut with moments of pathos. As she transforms between hunter and creature, therapist and diva, cruising and crumbling, a collage of personal stories and self-directed choreography emerges, interwoven with devised material created collaboratively with Heidi Rustgaard, Florence Peake and Joseph Mercier.   

emilyn claid has a fifty-year career as a performer, stretching back to the 1960s when she was a ballet dancer with the National Ballet of Canada and the 1970s when she was co-founder of experimental collective X6 Dance Space in London, a pioneering organisation for New Dance. In the 1980s she was artistic director of Extemporary Dance Theatre and in the 1990s choreographed for companies such as Phoenix and CandoCo. Fri 21 Feb 2025

All Blood Runs Red The extraordinary true life of Eugene Bullard. This is one of history's overlooked true stories. This is a name that should be known, a story that must be told. This is a story of hope. Runaway, circus entertainer, boxer, night club owner, World War One fighter pilot, jazz drummer, spy, civil rights activist – Eugene Bullard's extraordinary life story traces many of the twentieth century's most important moments.   imitating the dog bring their unique story-telling techniques to bear on this forgotten story, told through the lens of the modern-day experiences of a young black actor.  With inspirational stagecraft, digital wizardry and original songs, All Blood Runs Red is an intimate show that breathes the history of the 20th century into life, into now.  Tue 4 Mar 2025

Tones: A Hip Hop Opera combines the gritty underground sounds of hip-hop, grime and drill with the melodrama of opera to tell the story of a treacherous path to self-discovery. From writer and performer Gerel Falconer, winner of Best Book and Lyrics at the Black British Theatre Awards 2024 and nominee for The Stage Debut Awards, Tones is a riveting exploration of the black experience and the mixed experience.  Wed 5 - Sat 8 March

ThickSkin and Pentabus presents Driftwood by Tim Foley, Directed by Neil Bettles (ThickSkin) & Elle While (Pentabus). An inspiring story about hope, love and belonging. Two brothers on a beach need to figure out what to do with their dad - but the sea has other ideas. Mark and Tiny walk the shore of Seaton Carew in the North East. Their dad is dying, and their town is crumbling. Family rifts and political divides try to pull them apart, while a figure made of driftwood stalks the shore at night. ThickSkin and Pentabus are two of the UK's most prominent theatre companies. Joining forces to present Driftwood, by former Bruntwood Prize Winner, Tim Foley (Electric Rosary). Age guidance 14+. All performances have integrated creative captions. Thu 20 - Fri 21 Mar 2025

The Alice Project Who are you?  asks the Caterpillar.  Alice is not sure...  Acclaimed performance company Platform 4 take you on a sonic journey through the Wonderland of Alice, weaving together original music performed by a four-piece band of multi-instrumentalist performers, interviews with inhabitants of the New Forest, Lewis Carroll's text and voices from 40 contemporary Alices!  Expect twisting melodies, smiling cats, percussive teacups and surreal storytelling...  Aimed at adults and young people, it's not the normal Alice family show!  Wed 9 Apr 2025

Toxic is the hotly anticipated explosive new show from award-winning theatremaker Nathaniel J Hall (First Time, It's A Sin), celebrating the survival and resilience of the queer spirit.  Manchester 2017. A chance meeting on a hook-up app sets two damaged thirty-something hearts on a spectacular collision course. He is HIV+ and drowning in shame. They are one microaggression away from a full-on meltdown. Born into Thatcher's Britain of race riots and rampant homophobia and growing up in the shadow of Aids and Section 28, the pair form a trauma bond so tight, they might just survive it all. But sometimes survival means knowing when to leave. Age Guidance: 18+ Wed 16 - Sat 19 Apr 2025

Trygve Wakenshaw - Silly Little Things Trygve Wakenshaw brings his hilarious mime-clown-comedy show. Light and silly, absurd and Dada, and a sort of autobiographical, introspective look at all the silly little things that can make or break a friendship. Silly Little Things is at once subversive and sublime - a masterclass of mime from the man who paved the way for so many contemporary clowns. 

In this new show Trygve builds an experimental playground and lets his imagination run riot. Spinning ridiculous scenes out of the smallest funny ideas, and conjuring up slapstick magic, Silly Little Things is a space of wonder and joy. It's about friendship and magic and what more could we want really? Thu 8 May 2025

Heka. Everything is not as it seems. Drawing inspiration from the intricate connection between juggling and magic, Gandini Juggling's new show Heka transports audiences into a mesmerising realm where reality blurs with illusion. Heka transcends boundaries, inviting spectators on a journey where objects materialise and vanish, levitate, and transform before their eyes. Yet, beneath the surface lies a tantalising question: what is real and what is merely a trick of perception? Infused with a captivating blend of humour and philosophy, Heka marks a departure for Gandini's renowned repertoire. Director Sean Gandini, whose artistic journey began in Havana half a century ago, revisits his magical roots in this hybrid performance. Sun 11 May 2025

For more information and to book tickets visit thelowry.com

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