News Story
Make connections, start conversations.
Our next Pitch Up is coming to London, with a focus on supporting theatre artists in the early stages of their careers.
Hosted by Stanley Arts, London, Pitch Up: Beginning will help demystify the theatre industry for early career theatre artists new to connecting with venues; helping artists to understand how venues work, learn about their artist support offer, and what effective collaboration can look like.
We will be joined by representatives from the following London and the South East venues: Shoreditch Town Hall, Theatre 503, Brixton House, Camden People's Theatre, Omnibus Theatre, Cambridge Junction, The Garage, Norwich, Colchester Arts Centre, Norwich Theatre, artsdepot, Stanley Arts, Chichester Festival Theatre, Farnham Maltings and Queen's Theatre Hornchurch.
The event attracted a huge number of applications from talented artists in the early stages of their theatre-making careers. We are now pleased to announce the 20 artists and companies who will be joining us to talk about their practice and share the day with us.
Little Wild Theatre
Little Wild Theatre are a company driven to support children's wellbeing through theatrical experiences of the natural world.
They create stories inspired by nature that are full of original music, puppets made entirely from natural and found objects, 1-1 sensory moments, Sign Supported English, interactivity and most importantly? Magical mindful moments - mindfulness techniques that are fun, engaging, rooted in science and, can genuinely be used beyond the life of the performance to support young people to regulate their emotions when things get too much.
Founded by Co-Artistic Directors, Chloe Bradbury and Georgie Pratten in February 2024, Little Wild Theatre was created alongside musician Finn Kebbe in a small living room, and the company have now performed our shows over 125 times to more than 4000 audience members across the UK, receiving feedback including:
"Better than most children's theatre in the West End" - Audience Member, Questors Theatre
Olamide Ajisafe
Olamide is a British-Nigerian writer, performer and director from East London. Their work explores the absurdity of being alive, often centring society's misfits and finding humour, humanity and beauty in unexpected places.
Working across theatre and film, Olamide loves Afro-surrealism, comedy and stories that balance the fantastical with deeply human experiences.
Their writing has been developed, commissioned and presented by organisations including the Royal Court, Almeida, Bush Theatre, Talawa and Theatre Peckham. She has also recently received Arts Council England funding to develop her play, 'Mothership'.
Olamide's debut short film, 'New Starter', was selected for the BIFA qualifying London Breeze Film Festival 2026 and now has over 12,000 views on Million Youth Media's YouTube channel.
Olamide Ajisafe on Instagram
Macy Seelochan + Millie (Miz) Barber
Macy is a musician, actor & DJ. Macy graduated from The Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, and has since worked with BBC One, Netflix, Apple TV, Glastonbury Festival & Shakespeare’s Globe. In 2025, Macy made history as the first transgender woman with a series regular role on BBC One, in Sally Wainwright’s ‘Riot Women’. Most recently, Macy released her first original dance track ‘Lonely Outside’, which BBC Introducing heralded as ‘extraordinary’. She has played DJ sets at Field Maneuvres and Boomtown Festivals this Summer.
Miz works across drag, theatre, cabaret and live performance: contributing in various ways to countless silly gay projects happening in basements. They are co-founder of iconic East London drag competition Top of the Slops which has been running since 2021. In 2024, they collaborated with WET MESS on TESTO, which toured until 2026. This year, they directed Fanny Bleach’s acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe show The Nearly Naked Show.
Somebody Jones
Somebody Jones is a Los Angeles native playwright & dramaturg living, working, and dreaming in London. She studied Theatre with an emphasis in Playwriting at the University of Southern California and Dramaturgy & Writing for Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London. Their work celebrates and champions Black culture in all its charms and complexities, across horror, magical realism, and verbatim.
Somebody Jones' debut play, HOW I LEARNED TO SWIM, premiered in 2024 at Roundabout at the Edinburgh Fringe and toured to Brixton House and Bristol Old Vic. It was a finalist for the Women’s Prize for Playwriting and shortlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award. In 2022, they won the Tony Craze Award for ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD. And in February 2026, Somebody was the dramaturg on Chadwick Boseman’s Deep Azure at Shakespeare's Globe.
The name Somebody Jones means the more you run from your past, the more you'll run into it.
Katherine Kotz
Katherine is a writer performer, producer, and designer of creative workshops. She is passionate about championing female and global majority artists, and this commitment runs through all her work. Alongside performing around the UK as an actor and singer, Katherine co-ordinates multi-agency responses to issues that adversely affect women, bringing different sectors together to co-design solutions.
During lockdown Katherine created the nationally acclaimed The Motherhood Project at Battersea Arts Centre, a short film festival about motherhood that raised money for Refuge UK and featured the work of artists such as Anya Reiss. Morgan Lloyd-Malcolm and Lemn Sissay.
BUMP is Katherine's first full-length show and has been developed from Natal Attraction, which won the 2026 Applause Bursary and enjoyed a sold-out run at Brighton Fringe this year. It is directed by Matt Peover (Show Pony, The Guardian’s top comedy show of 2025). BUMP will tour from Spring to Autumn 2027.
Everybody Panic
Everybody Panic make funny, ambitious work about people and places that don’t always get to be at the centre of the story. If it’s queer and working class, count them in.
Following the UK tour of their show All of Them, Dead, the company are continuing to develop new work for stage and screen. Their work has been supported by Arts Council England and developed and presented with partners including Pegasus Theatre, Oxford Playhouse, Cheltenham Everyman, Prime Theatre and The Mill.
Sixth House Theatre
Sixth House Theatre is an interdisciplinary theatre company formed through Lowry Theatre’s Hothouse Programme. Made up of six multidisciplinary artists, we bring together our cross-cultural experiences, five languages and specialist practices across acting, puppetry, movement, music and writing to create bold, accessible and ambitious theatre.
Based in Greater Manchester, our collaborative, devised practice explores urgent contemporary questions through playful and visually dynamic storytelling. We create work that challenges theatrical conventions, experiments with form and pushes the boundaries of how stories can be told and experienced.
Our organisational development has been shaped by our time as Lowry’s Resident Company for 2025–2026 and our commitment to building a sustainable, ambitious and regionally rooted theatre company. In 2026, we were selected as a winning company for Barbican OpenLab allowing us to reach new audiences and artists in the capital's theatre eco system.
OnTheNose Productions!
OnTheNose Productions! are a female-led, feminist theatre company that blends comedy, irony and music to create original comedy musicals that challenge the brutal reality of the world we live in.
As well as being unapologetically feminist, the company consist of both queer and neurodivergent artists, and their shows also explore LGBTQ+ themes. OnTheNose Productions! enjoy provoking and challenging audiences by making and breaking their expectations throughout their shows. At their core, they are simply a group of four women making fun of the not-so-fun experiences they and other women have had.
SkinnedTeeth Theatre
Bethany Irving is a working class actor, writer, director, fighter and humanitarian clown.
This year she launched her new theatre company 'SkinnedTeeth' alongside Mike Swain with their debut show 'Punching Judy' which they have been developing over the past couple of years.
As SkinnedTeeth they play with structure and bend genres in order to challenge established conventions and ideas.
Centre for Exploration & Performance of Greek Drama
Centre for Exploration & Performance of Greek Drama are a London-based theatre company dedicated exclusively to performing Greek drama.
In an ever-evolving world, we sometimes need to reflect on our past to understand our present and shape our future. Greek drama is the foundation of theatre as it has been passed down to us, deeply woven into human nature.
The company offer a fresh take on these ancient stories, highlighting the timeless nature of human passions, fears, and hopes. Rooted in the ancient notion of the polis (city-state), theatre is fundamentally a political space - and that is exactly what they strive for: opening a discourse about current affairs and raising awareness through ancient tragedy.
Catherine Sleeman
Catherine Sleeman is an early career dance artist and writer based in West Sussex. She graduated from Trinity Laban in 2021 and, having worked as a dancer on several projects, began her journey into dance-making in 2024 thanks to a traineeship from Vincent Dance Theatre.
Over the last two years Catherine has been working to develop her own work and practice, combining movement, music and text. She has a particular interest in making work that responds to people, communities, and place and in finding ways to share her creative output that reach beyond traditional theatre spaces and audiences.
Silly Billy
Silly Billy are in the serious business of silliness. Coming from backgrounds in opera and classical text, the company are here to bring new life to styles of theatre deemed boring and stuffy. To do this they balance movement, text and spectacle. Silly Billy believe that classical text is a physical pursuit and should not just be studied.
They bring fresh life to old texts through play, concept and silliness. The world may have changed, but we’re still grappling with love, war and politics. Silly Billy shows are social events, where everyone, from seasoned theatre-goers to those who’ve never thought that classical text was for them, can be entertained and challenged.
Bacchanalia
Bacchanalia are an East Anglian theatre company led by writer/directors Phoebe Segal and Merlyn Haycraft. They make bold, audience-centred work with the mission of unmasking inherited myths – from ancient archetypes to cultural norms. Ranging from intimate studio theatre to outdoor performance, our productions combine playful, eloquent storytelling, sharp humour, and a distinct feminist perspective.
Recent projects include The River Witch, commissioned as INK Festival’s 2026 family play, and NUDE. Following development at Norwich Theatre, NUDE completed a highly successful run at the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, earning multiple five-star reviews.
Tutte Theatre
Anna Georgia-Smith is a Cambridge-based theatre producer and actor, passionate about making ambitious, imaginative work accessible to new audiences. Anna is the founder of Tutte Theatre, an award-winning company that reimagines classic works, through innovative concepts that challenge perceptions of traditional art forms. The company's production of Trial by Jury received the Broadway Baby's Bobby Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2022. They champion emerging talent, strive to make theatre socially and financially accessible, and believe in creating opportunities for early-career performers to develop.
Natalia Knowlton Vásquez
Natalia Knowlton Vásquez is a Chilean-Canadian playwright and theatre maker based in South East London. Natalia makes theatre that pushes the boundaries of form and structure, exploring nostalgia, migrant grief and coming-of-age from a Latin American, migrant and female perspective.
In 2020 Natalia was a writer-on-attachment at Oxford Playhouse and in 2021 she participated in HighTide Theatre’s School of HighTide. Natalia holds an MFA in Writing for Stage & Broadcast Media from the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama and a BA (Hons) in Drama from the University of Alberta. Before becoming a British citizen, Natalia was the recipient of a Global Talent Visa, endorsed by Arts Council England. Their work has been presented at Oxford Playhouse, Theatre 503, Omnibus Theatre, Camden People’s Theatre, The Glitch, The Space, Drayton Arms Theatre, Zoo Venues (Edinburgh Fringe) and The Warren (Brighton Fringe).
www.nataliaknowlton.com
GAIT Productions
GAIT has been responsible for three productions previous - Lovely Spread – Etcetera Theatre 2021, The Recollection of Tony Ward – Theatre Peckham 2022 & Secret Book of Normal - The Pen Theatre 2024. The creative team is focused on producing new writing for a contemporary audience that represents modern day society through a surreal lens. GAIT’s priority is to push artists into their stride and help them actualise their ideas with a core principle of paying each creative involved fairly and give them an opportunity to display their skill and tact on the professional stage.
Butterdish Arts
Butterdish Arts are an emerging UK-based collective with two theatre makers, Nobuo Otsuka and Yuya Satoh. Working together as Artistic Director and Creative Producer, the company combine their artistic practices and producing experience to strengthen one another’s projects and develop new collaborations.
Butterdish Arts' work draws on Nobuo’s practice in clowning, devised theatre, acting and applied theatre, and their experience as co-founder of SUPER City Clowns, a People of Colour clown collective. Butterdish Arts also bring Yuya’s experience as an actor, playwright and producer, and the founder of UNBOXING Theatre, a UK-based Japanese collective exploring overlooked stories and social issues through multidisciplinary performance.
The company make work shaped by the languages, cultures and experiences of Global Majority immigrants who use English as an additional language. By sharing skills, ideas and relationships, they aim to help each project grow while creating space for different artistic voices.
Jellyfish Theatre CIC
Jellyfish Theatre CIC is a touring company making joyfully accessible indoor and outdoor theatre for young audiences and their families. Best known for "The Dragon Wagon" an outdoor family show set on an adapted vintage caravan which toured across England to urban and rural settings between 2024 and 2026. High energy, interactive, visually stunning performances featuring puppetry and original live music.
The company tour to traditional and non traditional spaces, often collaborating with Local Authority Partners to create community cohesion events. Jellyfish Theatre CIC are keen to develop partnerships with venues to bring both indoor and outdoor work to family audiences across the South East.
Kickdrum Productions
Kickdrum is made up of Kai Porter, Noah Manzoor and Alfie Wickham. They are an emerging UK-based theatre company from Bristol, Sheffield and London respectively. Kickdrum Productions' unique style of dance-infused raw, high-energy work landed at the Ed Fringe 2026, gaining the company a huge wave of critical acclaim and a sell-out run at the Pleasance.
“A first-time production from three young mates blazes with more energy and dazzles with more insight than many far bigger shows by more established companies” Arts Desk
“Vibrant, vigorous and expressive” The Stage
“Strong contender for best Ed Fringe Debut” David Byrne (Royal Court)
Heather Collier
“One of our best writers line by line” – Kenny Emson, The Mercury Theatre
Heather Collier is a British-American writer, actor and director from Hertfordshire, drawn to bold, ambitious comedy with a jaw-dropping twist.
She is a Mercury Theatre Development Playwright (2024), Cambridge Junction Menagerie Young Writer (2023), and recently trained on NYT Epic Stages 2026 alongside Globe/Almeida Associate Director Roberta Zuric.
Heather's debut play, Re-Rovered (2022), channelled student outrage at the height of a campus-wide spiking epidemic through an Inbetweeners-esque scandal. Her vintage-inspired thriller, Second Life (Camden People’s Theatre, Camden Roar Fest 2025), explored how second-hand clothes could become criminal evidence. Heather's newest play, The Role of a Lifetime, explores competition in a feminist Squid Game universe.
Heather's favourite writers include Caryl Churchill, Rory Mullarkey and Alistair McDowell. Her interests span feminist narratives, love, sex and relationships, the supernatural, history, mental health, technology, social media and AI.
