Footprints Festival Returns to Jermyn Street Theatre Next Month

This July, Footprints Festival returns as a mini season of short runs, celebrating Jermyn Street Theatre's Creative Associates - nine emerging theatre-makers resident at the theatre for the next year. The mini-season of short runs features The Anarchist, Duck, Shake the City, and The Poison Belt, a curated selection of cutting-edge work created by the best of upcoming talent in British theatre.

The festival opens with the inaugural winner of the Woven Voices Prize for mirgrant playwrights, Karina Wiedman's The Anarchist. Jermyn Street Theatre's Deputy Director, Ebenezer Bamgboye directs this world premiere in co-production with Woven Voices which runs 6 July - 30 July, with designs from Caitlin Mawhinney, lighting by Catja Hamilton, and sound design by Tony Gayle. Wiedmans' debut play centres on Dasha, a Belarusian woman who amidst the anti-government protests surrounding the 2020 elections, is reminded of her youth as an anarchist during the Belarusian revolution. After being ordered to quell the anti-government protests in her factory by firing sixty workers, Dasha's only chance to escape is a one-way ticket to JFK. But as she prepares to flee she cannot escape memories of her rebellious youth resisting the Soviets. As Belarus heads to the polls, Dasha must decide.

Running in repertory with The Anarchist are three short runs, the first of which is Duck by maatin, with sound design by Kayode Gomez which runs 12 July - 18 July. Imy Wyatt Corner directs the world premiere of this searing examination of the inner workings of an elite schoolboy cricket team. Ismail's turning fifteen and life is good. He's about to become the youngest-ever member of his school's cricket team, and be immortalised in Wisden. But as the season starts, a new coach threatens to derail his plans. Ismail soon learns that fortunes are fleeting in life and in sport, and that cricket may not be the gentlemanly game he once thought.

Alongside Duck on 12 July - 18 July, audiences can also catch Shake the City, written by Millie Gaston and directed by Amie Burns Walker. Developed by Leeds Playhouse, Shake the City brings the forgotten clothworkers strikes of 1970 into stark relief against the backdrop of stomping Northern Soul. With designs from Caitlin Mawhinney, the production will star Kitty Watson, Stephanie Hutchinson, Emma Leah Golding, and Rachael Halliwell as Lori, Wendy, Margaret and Heather, four clothworkers who have set up their own makeshift Women's Liberation Movement meetings in the fight for equal pay. The women of the John Collier's clothworking factory are standing on the cusp of a shining new decade but what lengths must they go to in order to unpick the rotten seams of a stiff-necked factory?

Footprints Festival concludes with the first UK adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's sci-fi novel The Poison Belt, directed by Becca Chadder with lighting design by Simeon Miller. Sussex, 1913. When Professor Challenger predicts that Earth is heading unstoppably towards a deadly gas cloud, Ned Malone must journey to Rotherfield to investigate the end of the world. Trapped in a single room with his old companions, Malone watches the terrifying events unfold - with only enough oxygen to last until morning. This bold new adaptation of Conan Doyle's hair raising tale shines a spotlight on the darker themes in British classical texts, interrogating the desire to sanitise our literary canon.

A series of one-off literary events pepper the festival, including a semi-staged performances of T.S Eliot's The Waste Land (24 July) and readings of the four Woven Voices Prize finalists; runner-up, Unburied by Jimin Suh (10 July), The Waiting Room by Akshay Sharan, (26 July), Coconut Republic by Butshilo Nleya (28 July), and The Dead Box by DHW Mildon (29 June). For Footprints Festival full listings please visit https://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk.

Artistic Director Tom Littler said: "I am delighted that this summer our theatre will platform some of the best of up-and-coming talent in British theatre. This hand-curated selection has something for everyone; from cricket to Belarusian politics, these plays span many miles, and many years, all united by an urgency in their message for today's world. Jermyn Street Theatre is a crucible for multigenerational talent where you can see household names alongside emerging creatives and recent graduates - Footprints Festival is a key part of that. You may not know the names of these artists now, but you certainly will in years to come, so make sure to see them here first!"

Jermyn Street Theatre is the West End's smallest producing theatre. The Stage's Fringe Theatre of the Year 2021, it is led by Artistic and Executive Directors Tom Littler and Penny Horner. The theatre won a 2022 Critics' Circle Award for its lockdown theatre, and Littler won the 2022 OffWestEnd Award for Best Artistic Director. The programme includes outstanding new plays, rare revivals, new versions of European classics, and high-quality musicals, alongside one-off musical and literary events. It collaborates with theatres across the world, and its productions have transferred to the West End and Broadway. During closure, the theatre responded with its Brave New World season of digital work, including the complete cycle of Shakespeare's sonnets performed by a mixture of graduating drama students and household names including Helena Bonham Carter and Olivia Colman and the acclaimed 15 Heroines with DigitalTheatre+ featuring adaptations of Ovid from writers including Juliet Gilkes Romero and Timberlake Wertenbaker.

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