2026-7 Play House Season Now Out

After celebrating our 40th birthday in January, The Play House is gearing up for the next decade. We are ready to announce our programme for the next school year, and it has several really exciting elements to it. Alongside keeping available many of the programmes that schools have been keen to book each year, we are presenting some new programmes, and planning a number of developments which will both improve and extend our work, and set the company up for the next few years.

Following some changes in staff, the Board recently brought in experienced Theatre-in-Education director, Peter Wynne-Willson to oversee a period of change. Peter was founder of Big Brum TIE back in 1982, and has worked in Young People's Theatre ever since, writing and directing mostly in Birmingham, including working on several previous occasions with the Play House.. A former Visiting Professor of Children's Theatre at the Korean National University of the Arts, he also ran the Applied Theatre degree at Birmingham Conservatoire until 2022. Peter is bringing this experience to bear in helping the company to re-focus its core activities, while making space for new partnerships and fund-raising to secure the future. In the course of this year we can expect announcements about new staff, and new opportunities.

Meanwhile the next school year will see the return of Split Second and Careless Talk, and the reworked version of a much-admired Play House programme from the past, The Last Train. This programme, which revolves around the story of 'The Kindertransport' - children escaping to the UK from Nazi Germany, is both topical and timeless, and is the company at its very best, challenging and engaging children with big subjects. It will be touring in the Autumn, from around November, and promises to be a particularly strong piece.

In addition, the work of the company in STEM subjects continues with Injury Time - a reworked version of the previous STEAM project, which sees an exciting new partnership with a major sports organisation [details to be announced]

For younger children, Little Red Hen and Jack and the Beanstalk remain popular and will certainly still be available, with our team of performers/facilitators having grown this year. Alongside this we are offering Suitcase Stories, which allows schools to pick from a wide range of stories, which will be told many times in a day to smaller groups. This project is going to run alongside a really exciting plan to grow our pool of stories from across the world, by working closely with a number of school communities, and recruiting community story-tellers and story-catchers. Watch this space for details!

To book a programme, or ask any questions, please email the company at bookings@theplayhouse.org.uk