The Pleasance has announced its spring/summer theatre season to mark its 30th anniversary.
The season will see a mix of new and returning shows at the Holloway venue, including the award-winning House Party by Chakira Alin which explores London’s housing crisis through the loss of house parties as social events.
Showstopper Production’s annual 50-hour improvisation marathon will also be returning.
Emerging artists can pitch new work at the Charlie Hartill Try Outs, a Pleasance flagship fund that supports people to take their ensemble work to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Ellie Simpson, head of theatre at The Pleasance, described the anniversary as a “huge cultural milestone” and a “marker of resilience, imagination and trust in Pleasance”.
“It feels amazing and really special. The fact that we’ve been here since 1995 supporting artists for three decades and we’re still here is great, especially where support and funding is trickling away for fringe theatre,” Simpson told IslingtonNow.
Speaking about the upcoming season, Simpson said: “You can expect artist development to really be threaded into the fabric of the programme. It’s full of some new voices and some people returning to us in that next step of their career.”
Performers include the youth-centred Camden People’s Theatre and the award-winning Showstopper Productions among many others.
Artist development also features significantly in the programme with A Pleasance Scratch, an initiative that allows performers to showcase their early-stage pieces and get feedback from the audience.
“It’s this amazing space where you have members of the public who might just want to see some work and feed into it alongside working creatives who feed into it in a different way, that’s what’s really unique about Pleasance,” said Simpson.
Pleasance has focused on impacting the local community over the years. The theatre has been a “warm space” during winter periods, inviting locals to gather and grab a hot drink.
The charity also offers free show tickets to schools and donates to Streets Kitchen, a local foodbank for homeless people, during the festive period.
“We want to be here for another 30 years and more so I think raising the profile of Pleasance London will be a really important part of next year,” Simpson said.
The theatre is the sister venue to the original Pleasance Edinburgh.
Claudia Efemini is an MA Newspaper Journalism student at City St George's, University of London. She has previously written for BBC Africa and BLK Brit covering Africa and the diaspora across news, culture, and business.