Initially premiering at Theatre Español, Valencia in 2017, Víctor Sánchez Rodríguez’s pertinent production Cuzco receives its UK debut at Theatre503. The young celebrated playwright’s work explores  topics of intimacy within our continually globalised world and the clash between colonial history and commercial tourism. Directed by Kate O’Connor and translated by William Gregory, Cuzco allows for a UK audience to ‘experience the very best of contemporary Spanish playwriting’. Ahead of the show, Kate talks to us about the journey she’s been on with Cuzco, William’s vital role in terms of translating the show and what audiences can expect!

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It is important that these stories are seen onstage. Let me make that very clear from the offset. As a bisexual woman with a long-term girlfriend, I understand the necessity of having LGBT+ stories told through artistic mediums, visible, as cultural markers that we exist and have valid selfhoods. It is therefore important that Theatre503 continues to stage these stories, and that playwrights like Joanne Fitzgerald hone the craft of telling them.

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Playwright Michael McLean started his career at the Liverpool Everyman Young Writers Group and has also been a member of the Royal Court’s young writers programme. His play Years of Sunlight focuses on the disintegration of a 30-year friendship but it also discusses some very relevant issues of how certain communities have been abandoned by the post-industrial political system.

Courtesy of Harvey Brown.

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When a piece can shatter a stereotypical view and offer an unconventional lens to a situation, then you know what you are witnessing is of great importance. Theatre503 Writer in Residence, Brian Mullin delivers a powerhouse of a lead in the thought provoking We Wait in Joyful Hope.

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It’s nearly the end of the year, and we all know what that means theatrically… cue Pantomime season, a chance for all of the best loved fairytales and Christmas inspired stories to be taken off the top shelf, dusted off, and the magical and outright nonsensical to see the light of day! Why only watch the one straightforward Panto, when you can watch a fusion of the most iconic stories ever told? Cue Sleeping Tree‘s quirky fusion of Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk.

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“Something sincere that takes the audience somewhere” seems to be an obvious and foolproof way of approaching your work as a playwright. It also seems rather simple. I could not find, however, a more fitting description of Bea Roberts’s work than the one she uses in this statement about her writing.

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Theatre503 is the most important fringe theatre for new writing in the country. In one year alone they receive 1,500 unsolicited scripts for submission (they have an open submission policy, all year round). They put on the standard London fringe month-long performance runs – but have an interesting program of small “one-off” events. To go and see something with more of a workshop feel, with more of a “this is being created right now” aesthetic is a joy, and one so well curated by Karis Halsall over three nights in January. 503Fusions at Theatre 503 was a 70 minute long piece with four parts to it, all written by different groups of multi-talented people.

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