Join us for a night of work-in-progress plays by queer writers. Discover new work and get to feed into their development while connecting with queer artists from across the city and beyond.
Queer Scratch Night offers the opportunity to support queer writers and reflect on the diversity of the queer community.
Queer Scratch Night features:
The Open Book Project
By James Robertson
Directed by Rebeka Dio
Performed by Alex Decapo, Kristof Gellen, Sarah Deller and Rebeka Dio
Benedeck wants to be the greatest knight in the land. Gabriella would rather live in a cave than marry a prince. Even in a perfect fairytale you are expected to conform.
Based on the censored Hungarian children's book A Fairytale for Everyone, this fable can't escape the constraints of reality. A totalitarian regime shreds the pages, binds the book in plastic, but they cannot destroy the queer identity of its characters.
Devised with Transit Productions, The Open Book Project is directed by Rebeka Dio (Places I Never Think About) and written by James Robertson (Deadcrush).
Content advisories
This performance contains references to homophobia, transphobia and violence.
A Man Proposes To A Balloon, Or Possibly Something Worse
By Mark Daniels
Mikey's decided two things: he's ready to propose to his partner and he's going to practise his proposal speech on a balloon first. Coming to the same park bench every day, a strange relationship develops and soon, the balloon starts talking back to him.
Written by stand-up comedian, Mark Daniels, this ridiculous dark comedy is a story of a gay man's relationship with love, loneliness and his city. Oh, and it's also about a passive aggressive b*tch of a talking balloon.
Content advisories
This performance contains swearing and references to homophobia and death.
Little Lord Fondleroy: Amo, Amas, Amat & All That!
Written and performed by Jordana Belaiche
Directed by Ros Watt
Little Lord Fondleroy is a saccharine nightmare in velvet and lace, whose cherubic curls and perfect manners provide foolproof cover for his constant yearnings - primarily for poetry, pleasure, head boys and complete theatrical chaos. In this riotous piece, whirl through a formative annus eroticus at Flippitt's Dastardly Boarding School for Badly Behaved Boys, where forbidden desires flourish amidst a sadistic culture of cruelty cultivated by prefects and masters alike. Here, Fondleroy discovers that masculinity and Empire are stitched together by caning, cunning and carefully repressed desire.
Can he retain his innocent charm and boyish over-generosity while the forces around him attempt to stamp all that soppy, frilly, froppy feeling out of him?
Enter a world of boarding-school heartbreak, homoerotic hijinks, and imperial intrigue.
Content advisories
This performance contains the use of slurs, with mentions of sexual, emotional and physical abuse.
Yaz and Rosy
By Carla Rudgyard
Directed by Marley-Rose Liburd
Performed by Takunda Muzondiwa and Laurie Ogden
In this poignant exploration of friendship, dating and women’s safety, Yaz, a novelist, grapples with the disappearance of her best friend and flatmate, Rosy.
Intertwining the realities of Yaz’s fiction novel with Rosy’s mysterious vanishment, Yaz and Rosy examines to what extent women are safe in the UK.
