Autumn'2026 Season Announcement

Welcome to our first official season announcement. This year marks eleven years of Beyond Face and we’re excited to share what we have planned for the coming months.

This season highlights our continued investment into new writing and opportunities for artists. We are deepening the way we offer support and developing our partnerships to strengthen the ecology and encourage advocacy for work being made across the South West.

As an artist led company it is important that alongside delivering our development and engagement programmes, that we are making our own work. On that note, I am excited to share our 2027 production Aunting. This production has been in development for a couple of years, and this year we were able to share snippets of the show in Falmouth and Exeter, receiving brilliant feedback from our audiences. The show is now moving into its final phase of development and we will be announcing details about venues, dates and some brilliant engagement activity associated with the show soon. Aunting is a show that celebrates a role in families and in the everyday  that can sometimes be overlooked. This show is filled with warmth and joy and is definitely something we feel people need more of right now. 

We kick off our season with launching our new Writers Company, supporting three brilliant writers from across the region: Julie Nørgaard Jensen based in Cornwall, Maya Pillay in Devon, and Jenny Davis in Bristol. We are really excited by what these writers are bringing and will be working with them for a minimum of two years to develop one idea they have for a new play. The Writers Company is a new offer that Beyond Face is providing and after one day together it has already proven to be an enriching experience. We will also continue to run We are Here to Write, our online writers group that celebrated its five year anniversary this year. This space continues to offer the writers masterclasses, paid development opportunities and mentoring. Several of the writers have work being shown at Exeter Northcott and The Bush this autumn, we look forward to celebrating their brilliant writing and seeing their latest piece . 

This September we launched our Creative Facilitator's Network in Exeter and Bristol to bring together artists who have a passion for facilitation. Over the last couple of years we have been working on different offerings to support the development of global majority facilitators including a partnership project with Strike A Light in association with Travelling Light. We have developed this network to connect artists across the region and will be providing training and development opportunities over the next year in different areas of facilitation and freelance practice. We hope this network will support and strengthen future opportunities for freelancers in the region. 

Our next We are Here to Share scratch night takes place at Exeter Phoenix on November 10th, showcasing four early stage pieces of work from local global majority artists, including members of our Regional Voices Story-tell programme. Having run scratch nights for over 5 years, we continue to value what these events have to offer for both the artists and audiences. We actively encourage a culture of quality that isn’t defined by age, show length, amount of experience or otherwise, which is why it's of great importance for us to support early stage work as much as fully formed shows! 

Our Regional Voices strand will see the relaunch of our Unpack programme, an offer for local people to gather as a community, watch shows across the region and learn more about theatre. Our sessions include: “Unpack: Scratch Nights” exploring what is a scratch night and why are those nights important for artists and “Unpack: children’s theatre”.  There will also be new Story-tell sessions for global majority adults in Exeter and Plymouth: a monthly space to carve out time to return to creativity, develop different skills and explore new ways to tell their stories. 

Lastly, our Youth Company in Plymouth and Exeter are back in the studio, they are getting to work with a brilliant team of local artists this term and will embark on a new exchange project. We are currently open to new youth members joining in both cities, so if you know a young person who would benefit from a tailored space to develop their creativity, curiosity and performance skills then get in touch. 

My hope for this season of work is that people feel the joy in the art that is being created and the richness of the stories and themes that are being explored. We are excited to meet new audiences, artists and people who want to engage with Beyond Face’s work mission and values. We hope you can join us in advocating for the role that arts play in our day-to-day lives and support us in keeping the sector thriving. 

Alix Harris, CEO & Artistic Director