“The Day The World Came To Huddersfield”, a show about the UK’s first national pride in 1981, has won two awards and been nominated for a third.

To celebrate LGBT History Month 2021 Inkbrew Productions, our heritage performance partner, are releasing links in this blog to free online viewing of the films of two of their acclaimed productions “The Burnley Buggers’ Ball” by Stephen M Hornby and “Burnley’s Lesbian Liberator” by Abi Hynes. One of the plays’ glowing reviews said, “…bursting with dynamic storytelling, sharp wit and rich characters” (Burnley Express).

LGBT History Month is thrilled to annouce Inkbrew Productions “The Adhesion of Love” by Stephen M Hornby as the 2019 national heritage premiere for LGBT History Month. The play will be touring venues in Greater Manchester & Lancashire from 9 February to 31 May.

A Queer Ceili at the Marty Forsythe is an exciting new production from Kabosh that explores the events of the first National Union of Students Lesbian and Gay Conference, Queens University Belfast 1983. This is the first heritage premiere produced in the new partnership between Kabosh and LGBT History Month.

LGBT History Month is delighted to announce that Kabosh will be joining Inkbrew Productions as an official production partner, creating heritage performance premieres. Kabosh is an independent theatre company focused on giving voice to site, space and people through creating new theatre in interesting places using the history, stories and buildings of Northern Ireland as its inspiration.

Stephen M Hornby and Abi Hynes, two of our Festival Theatre playwrights, gave a talk at the People’s History Museum in Manchester as part of their OUTing the Past Festival for 2018. They talked about four plays and how they’d researched archives and worked with historical adviser to create compelling and popular drama that was also historically literate drama. Here’s an edited transcript of what they said.

Dan Jarvis directed the very first episode of the first piece of Festival Theatre, “A Very Victorian Scandal: The Raid.” It was a complex immersive period recreation of a drag ball, with live music hall singing, a chorus of can-can boys, a nun on the door and a live police raid. Here Dan considers the many and varied potentials for all not being all right on the night.

Stephen M Hornby, our National Playwright in Residence, looks back at writing “The Burnley Buggers’ Ball”, one of two pieces commissioned to make the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act.

Helen Parry has directed four pieces of Festival Theatre and explores the joys and challenges of the work in the context of her wider career.

Abi Hynes looks back on the process on writing “Burnley’s Lesbian Liberator”, one of two pieces of Festival Theatre for 2017 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act 2017.

Abi Hynes looks back on writing her festival theatre play for 2016 “Mister Stokes: The Man-Woman of Manchester”

Tom Marshman looks back on the process of researching and writing his 2016 LGBT History Month Festival Theatre piece, “Devils in Human Shape”.

Stephen M Hornby looks back on writing “A Very Victorian Scandal: The Press”, the second in a trilogy of plays dramatising the Police raid on an all-male drag ball in Manchester in 1880.

Ric Brady looks back on writing “The Trial”, part of a trilogy of plays that formed the first programme of Festival Theatre in 2015.

We’re delighted to see this post from Arts Council England on 06 March 2017 about the national range of their support for LGBT History Month projects in 2017. Here’s an extract with a link to the full blog:

This post by Stephen M Hornby, our National Theatre Coordinator, continues our catalogue of Festival Theatre.

2017 marked the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act 2017, which partially decriminalised male homosexuality in England and Wales.  In 2007, the 40th anniversary saw two dramatisations to mark the ocassion, one about the Wolfenden Committee, and one about the Monatgu case.

This post by National Theatre Coordinator Stephen M Hornby continues our catalogue of Festival Theatre.

Stephen M Hornby, our National Theatre Coordinator, continues his cataloguing of Festival Theatre with a look at Tom Marshman‘s 2016 piece “Devils in Human Shape”.

Stephen M Hornby, our National Festival Theatre Coordinator, continues his cataloguing of Festival Theatre with a look at the first example, “A Very Victorian Scandal”.

This post by, National Theatre Coordinator Stephen M Hornby, looks at the genesis of what we now term “Festival Theatre.”