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About Twisted Roots Festival

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of

New Earth Theatre, we have set up a

9-month incubator with six partner

venues.

We are looking for six British East and Southeast Asian artists/ companies,

who are interested in using a heritage art form in their modern theatre

practice. We expect the work to be narrative-led but the 20-30min extract

that is chosen to be presented may be only an element of the work.

What is an incubator?
By incubator we mean a development period which is supported by a

commission, residency, and mentoring. In this case, you would use March-

September 2025 to work towards a 20-30min performance extract to be

share publicly as part of a festival.

After this, September - December, we will evaluate with you and the partners

what the next steps for your projects might be.

What is an heritage artform?

We are calling any traditional art form from the ESEA countries a heritage

artform. (Examples: Indonesian wajang shadow puppetry, Vietnamese Cheo

opera, Filipino Balitaw)

We don’t necessarily expect people to use this art form in a traditional way,

we are incredibly interested in how you can incorporate this in a modern

narrative performance practice, in the context of British theatre making.

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The objectives of the incubator:
• Create space for contemporary approaches to ESEA Heritage Artforms in
the modern British theatre landscape.

• Provide BESEA artists with useful industry networks, tools and knowledge
to develop their own work.

• Develop BESEA artists and their craft to thrive independently and feedback
into NET future projects where appropriate.

An overview of the project:

• Jan 2025: Recruitment of artists
• Feb 2025: shortlisting of artists with venue partners
• March - Sept 2025:
• The artists are engaged under the programme and will receive £2000
• Venues will support with a bespoke care package and in kind rehearsal
space support

• September 2025: 1-2 day showcase at The Bush Studio and 1-2 days at a
Leeds Playhouse. The artist will perform at one of these venues.

• Sept - Dec 2025: debrief with artists and identify the next steps.

New Earth Theatre will :

• Provide £2,000 to each of the selected artist/company

• Mentor the artists to move their project forward in development,

provide bid-writing support where needed.

• Provide a technically supported presentation / showcasing opportunity

for the artist (The Bush Theatre for those London based and Leeds

Playhouse for those in North) as part of our 30th Anniversary Festival in

September 2025.

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How to Apply :

• Read the venue information below, and fill in the application form at THIS

LINK by 23:59 on Wednesday 5th Feb 2025. In your application be sure to

mention why your chosen venue is a good match for your work.

Key Application Information :

• You can apply for more than one venue. However, we are keen that

artists create a network useful to the location where they live and work.
• You will work towards presenting a piece or extract between 15-30min.
• Exact performance dates are to be confirmed - but take place w/c 1

Sept 2025 at Bush Theatre and w/c 22 Sept 2025 at Leeds Playhouse.
• The £2000 is a seed fund amount that we encourage you to find match

funding for with the support of New Earth Theatre and partners.

We look forward to receiving your applications!

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Venues Partners - London

The Pleasance
Starting at the Edinburgh Festival

Fringe in 1985, Pleasance has gone on

to become one of the leading voices in

national and international fringe

theatre and contemporary comedy.

Providing a launch pad for some of the most memorable productions and

recognisable artists over the past four decades, our mission is to provide a
platform for exciting new and established talent.

Now with three sites in Edinburgh (Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance Dome

and Pleasance at EICC) with 30 venues and a year-round home in London, we

welcome hundreds of thousands of audiences each year.

Our diverse programme of theatre, comedy, dance, circus and children’s

shows creates a compelling platform to discover, nurture and support fresh

artistic talent from across the globe.

Our year-round home in London provides a platform for leading and

emerging talent to develop their work, hone their craft and grow new

audiences.

The artistic programme at Pleasance London runs in parallel with Pleasance

Edinburgh, with a curated comedy, theatre and family programme. Pleasance

London has two performance spaces: the unique Cabaret Main House (199)

with drinks/table service available, and The Studio (54), an intimate space,

perfect for comedy work in progress.

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Interested in supporting:
We programme a broad range of work in London & Edinburgh that sits

across theatre, comedy, cabaret & children’s work.

For London we are particularly interested in theatre, cabaret and drag as

well as work which blends forms.

As of late we have had success with shows which speak to a specific

cultural moment and sits at the point where theatre intersects with nightlife

forms or has more experiential elements due to the cabaret layout of our

space.

What we offer:

• 1-2 weeks of rehearsal time between May-Sept (TBC) in the Pleasance

Studio [Link]

• During their time with us they will have access to a portable PA for
playback, but not the lighting, sound or video in the rig itself. Please note:

the space not brilliant for dancing due to the low beam in the middle of

the room.

• Attendance to WIP sharings and feedback.

• Looking over funding bids and writing letters of support.
• Mentoring
• Access to the wider Pleasance team to provide more bespoke support
on specific areas.

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New Diorama
New Diorama Theatre is a pioneering

studio venue in the heart of London.

Based on the corner of Regent’s Park,

over the last 10 years New Diorama has

been at the heart of a new movement

in British theatre, dedicated to

providing a home for the country’s

best independent theatre companies

and ensembles.

Since opening in 2010, New Diorama has received four prestigious Peter
Brook Awards and ten OffWestEnd Awards for our programme, been twice

named Fringe Theatre of The Year at The Stage Awards (2017 & 2022),

OffWestEnd Artistic Director of the Year and won The Stage’s Innovation

Prize for our radical programming model. In 2023 we won the inaugural

Critics' Circle Empty Space Venue Award.

Work commissioned and produced at New Diorama frequently tours

nationally and internationally, including regular transfers Off-Broadway. The

Stage 100, which charts power and influence across British Theatre,

currently list New Diorama as the most influential studio theatre in the UK.

New Diorama is the first ever companies theatre, exclusively dedicated to

the development of collaborative and devised performance. Since 2010,

New Diorama has developed an international reputation for our innovation

and new thinking around the development of artists.

Our pioneering Artist Development programmes support both the artistic

and entrepreneurial challenges all theatre companies face.

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 Interested in supporting:

We are best positioned to support artists making work through

collaborative, devised, non-traditional, and/or interdisciplinary making

practices. Where relevant, our venue is particularly interested in artists

working or aspiring to work in ensemble and company formats, dedicated

to creating work with a core group of collaborators over time. We are

interested in artists with the ambition to make formally-expansive,

politically-engaged, boldly theatrical performance.

What we offer:
• We are able to provide 2 consecutive weeks of R&D space in our
Theatre. Theatre – a flexible 80-seat black box auditorium, with a

stage space of approximately 8m x 4m. Access to the PA system. No

dance floor. Access to general lighting rig may be available subject to

technician availability and costs. Working time Monday-Friday from

10am-6pm.
• Space available w/c 18th August 2025 & w/c 25th August 2025
• Creative and professional mentorship sessions with NDT staff.
• Bid-writing support
• Dramaturgical feedback on work-in-progress
• Space for WIP sharing in theatre

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Camden People’s Theatre
CPT brings together artists and

everyone else to connect, imagine,

be heard and be entertained. It

makes space for the theatre – and

the theatre-makers – of tomorrow, it

celebrates community and it strives

to create a more equitable and

caring world through extraordinary

performance made by and for a wide

range of people.

Over 30 years, CPT has fulfilled a national leadership role in the field of

innovative contemporary performance. We deliver a wide-ranging

programme that champions the next generation of theatre-makers,

working with and launching the careers of ground-breaking artists including:

Fevered Sleep, Chris Thorpe, Emily Lim (who now runs the National

Theatre’s Public Acts programme), Scottee, Common Wealth and Nouveau

Riche (Queens of Sheba; Typical) – among many, many others. We have an

excellent reputation for supporting early-career artists in this field, and for

attracting a consistently young and diverse audience.

Our programming is centred around themed festivals that tackle socio-

political issues affecting our wider community. E.g. Common People,

exploring working-class identity and experience (2018) and Come As You

Are, celebrating trans and gender-queer work (2017). Since 1997, CPT has

programmed the annual Sprint festival, London’s best-established festival of

new and unusual theatre, and since 2013 Calm Down, Dear, the UK’s first and

only festival of innovative feminist theatre. For the last decade, we have also
run the unique artist support/peer network programme Starting Block.

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Interested in supporting:

We are particularly interested in applications from artists with intersectional

approaches, for example those with lived experience of being disabled,

queer, or working class alongside their ESEA roots.

What we offer:

• We have a rehearsal space with durable flooring, air conditioning,

ventilation system, seating and tables. Layout and size available via this

link : [Link]

This space does not have a sprung floor so would not be appropriate for

all dance and acrobatics.

We are able to provide speakers and microphones in this space.

More info available here: [Link]

• We will be able to offer 2 weeks of rehearsal space over June, July or

August. Weeks available currently TBC

• Open or private Work in Progress support
• Mentoring from Artistic Director, Marketing Manager and Artist Support

Producer
• Dramaturgical support

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Venues Partners - North

Sheffield Theatres
Sheffield Theatres is home to four

theatres: the Crucible, the Sheffield

landmark with a world-famous

reputation;

the Tanya Moiseiwitsch Playhouse, an intimate, versatile space for getting

closer to the action; the gleaming Lyceum, the beautiful proscenium that

hosts the best of the UK’s touring shows, and the Montgomery, a theatre and

arts centre with a longstanding history of championing children’s creativity.

Sheffield Theatres is the ticket to big names and local heroes, timeless

treasures and new voices, and each year welcomes over 400k audience

members.

Interested in supporting:

"We are interested in supporting artists in and from our region to create work

that speaks to the diverse audiences in our region. With that in mind, we

encourage applicants to be bold and clear in their practice. Sheffield

Theatres creates, programmes, and supports everything from boundary-

pushing new work to bold retellings of iconic stories. Applicants should be

informed about the kind of work that has been staged at Sheffield Theatres,

and excited to discuss and discover that which has not yet been."

- Tommi Bryson, Talent Development Coordinator

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What we offer:
• Depending on the time of year and their specific needs, our artist will

either use one of our large rehearsal rooms in the Crucible or Lyceum

buildings, or the Bank, our dedicated artist development hub.

• Rehearsal spaces are available year-round.
• Bid writing support
• Structured mentoring
• Dramaturgical support
• Rehearsal room WIP sharing
• A bookable hot desk with the Artistic team
• Opportunities to observe Sheffield Theatres’ rehearsal and technical
rehearsal processes
• Invitation to Sheffield Theatres productions
• A profile as part of our Supported Artist Directory
• invitations to workshops
• Discount on food and drink in our Crucible Kitchen Café.

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Theatre In The Mill

Theatre in the Mill lies at the top of one hill

and at the bottom of another. Theatre in

the Mill is an in-between space, situated

between world class research at the

University of Bradford and the reality of

inner-city deprivations.

We explore this through arts-based research methods, navigating our chaotic

world and embodying possible futures. The community we have is of the global

majority and its intersections; we are ever-evolving brave critics with diverse

perspectives. Together we create space for affective and challenging

performance because we believe radical work creates conversation and

dialogue. Theatre in the Mill is an ongoing happening, a verb creating an

ongoing buzz.

Interested in supporting:
We are looking to support Global Majority stories and new work. We are very

interested in artist development.

What we offer
• April-June: placement on the Untitled cohort including:

◦ £1000 funding

◦ 3 days in the studio

◦ 6 hours of mentorship

◦ 3 practice expanding workshops

◦ A public facing sharing

Please note that the above is on top of what this NET programme offers.
• The Studio – lighting rig, PA system, has had dance, acrobatics is

situationally dependent on H&S. Rigging plan on request.

• Rehearsal space available w/c August 18 & w/c August 25 2025
• We can read a funding bid for feedback.

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Contact
Our creative activities are diverse,

inspiring and in tune with today.

Escape the ordinary with a one-of-

a-kind spoken word show. Find your

community at Queer Contact

festival. Or learn how to crack into

creative industries at our skill-

building workshops.

From creating productions to appointing staff and collaborators, we

encourage 13 to 30-year-olds to turn the seed of an idea into something

spectacular. Positivity and performing arts can change lives. With real

investment and the right infrastructure in place, we make this happen every

day. Contact is proud to be proof of what can be achieved by putting the

future first.

Our reputation stretches across Europe and beyond. Most of all, we’re proud

to be a multi-arts hub for Manchester – and a home for everyone. Whether

you’re seeking the spotlight or a cosy nook in the cafe, Contact is where

everyone comes to be themselves.

Interested in supporting
We are interested in supporting work that speaks to young people,

intersectional communities, saying something about the world, experimental

end of the spectrum .

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What we offer:
• 1-2 weeks of rehearsal space

• Space 3 available 12-15, 19-22, 26-29 August

◦ It's good for dance and movement, not great for music

• Space 4 available 19-22, 26-29 August

◦ Good for movement, good for acoustic music

◦ [Link]
• We can do a WIP sharing
• Meetings with Programme Producer
• Other meetings based on artist need

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