As part of the Birmingham Hippodrome Origins programme, eight brilliant Birmingham Artists have been in residence with the Hippodrome’s New Work department for 18 months, each developing a new piece.
From 11 – 16 May, join us for a week of all things New Work, showcasing new performances from our first Origins cohort of resident creatives. With workshops, double-bills and more, there’s plenty of exciting events to get involved in.
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Origins Festival is brought to you by our New Work & Artist Development team.
Are you an artist, producer or creative in the West Midlands? Sign up for FREE to our Hippodrome Creatives community where you can benefit from free last minute rehearsal space, space to work and meet in the Artists’ Lounge, regular Creatives socials, support sessions and workshops, as well as ticket offers to shows on our main stage and in the Patrick Studio!
Hippodrome Origins is an 18-month artist development programme for creatives in the West Midlands who make theatre.
We welcomed our first cohort in November 2024, and they will be sharing new work in May 2026. Get to know the artists below.
Amerah Saleh is a spoken word artist born and bred from Birmingham. Her Muslim Yemeni roots give her space to get lost and found on multiple occasions between identity. She is the Co-Founder of Verve Poetry Press.
Elizabeth O’Connor is a Birmingham-based writer. Her short stories have appeared in The White Review and Granta, and she was the 2020 winner of the White Review Short Story Prize.
Grace is a dramaturg and playwright based in Birmingham. She enjoys working on plays that embrace complexity, test form and ask questions that get under our skin.
Jaz is an artist-curator and writer who cares about community repair and culture-building.
Louis is a freelance theatre maker, based in the West Midlands. His creative practice seeks to combine queer storytelling with bold and inventive contemporary theatre processes.
Nathan Sebastian Lafayette is a Birmingham based multidisciplinary artist working within the realms of dance, music production and film.
Tina Hofman: I am a theatre artist, creative producer/collaborator and an academic who emigrated to UK as a young person, and has spent 25 years being “in-between”: living, working, relating to different geographical and made-up spaces.
Zakariye is a poet, performer, playwright and filmmaker from Birmingham.
As part of Origins Festival: Celebrating New Work, watch brand new performances by our hand-picked Hippodrome Origin Artists. Each performance will have a British sign Language interpreter.
Money for Nothing is a thrilling new piece of writing from Grace Barrington. A working men’s club in Yardley struggles to stay afloat during the early years of 2010s austerity. When the situation turns dire, some members get involved in a risky moneymaking scheme with fateful consequences.
From the co-founder of Verve Poetry Press, Amerah Saleh, comes a piece that gives space to the complexities of grief, Untitled. Layla is trying to write a play about her mother’s passing. She has one hour to perfectly express both her grief and her joyful memories of the woman who shaped her. If only her three aunties would let her write in peace…
As Poetic As It Sounds is an exciting new piece of dance theatre from Nathan Sebastian Lafayette, a Birmingham-based multidisciplinary artist. The piece explores what it means to be an artist, from the comic to the infuriating, the administrative to the sublime.
Louis Wharton’s new work, Hurts So Good, plays on themes of queer storytelling with a bold and inventive process. In the late 1980s the police conducted Operation Spanner, prosecuting 16 men for consensual sadomasochism. As Louis gets pulled into a web of research, he’s confronted by queer legacy, ethical dilemmas and some very evasive librarians.
Fresh off the back of his short film debuting on BBC comes Zakariye’s Pretend like it’s Calm. This brand-new one-man stage play is a poetic exploration of grief, family and unlikely friendships.
The body I see is also mine by Tina Hofman is a journey through memory, rave and connection where new writing, movement and images collide in a bass-driven search for what is real.
Earth Secrets is the award-winning Elizabeth O’Connor’s first venture into playwrighting, having had her novel WHALE FALL chosen as one of the Observer’s ten best debut novels of 2024. Two neighbouring families dispute over a bordering fence, a rose bush, and a lost dog. Meanwhile, the birds are falling out of the sky.
Jaz Morrison’s new piece MID spotlights themes of social space, community, culture-building, and storytelling. Birmingham at the end of the world. Dee and Haddy’s local community centre is being demolished. If they can’t stop it, they can at least stop the Poet Laureate from artwashing it.