Midlands audiences have the chance to see a host of new works from exciting local artists in the week-long Origins Festival at Birmingham Hippodrome this month.

The festival features drama, comedy, dance and performance created by eight writers who have been part of the theatre’s Origins programme for the past 18 months: Zakariye Abdillahi, Grace Barrington, Tina Hofman, Nathan Sebastian Lafayette, Jaz Morrison, Elizabeth O’Connor, Amerah Saleh and Louis Wharton.

Selected from more than 140 applicants, each theatre-maker has received support from the teams at the Hippodrome - and from each other - to create a selection of new pieces which will be showcased during the festival.

Origins has come out of the Hippodrome’s New Work & Artist Development Department, which was founded in 2023 to promote and support West Midlands creatives.

The aim of the programme is to give each member of the group an opportunity to develop, learn and create, explains Hippodrome New Work Manager Anna Himali Howard: “For the Origins cohort, the process of making a new piece of work has been supported by space at the Hippodrome, dramaturgical support, and bespoke resources that these artists might need. Every month we all meet up and the artists share what they’ve been making with each other and get peer support.

“We had a little sharing with close collaborators and supporters in October, and the response to that work was extraordinary. I was just blown away by the quality of it, but also by how much the work of these artists could only be made in Birmingham. Even when it’s not explicitly about Birmingham, something about the work has a quality of this city. That makes it distinctive to Birmingham but also relevant to the wider world and landscape because these artists have been so truthful and clear in looking at themselves and the world.”

And now these productions will be shared with audiences at the Origins Festival.

“There are eight pieces across four nights of double bills,” explains Anna, “and each artist will present a work-in-progress or a rehearsed reading of their work. There’s so much variety in how the work will be presented. There will be script-in-hand readings, devised work, dance, solo work. It’s a real snapshot of the state of theatre-making in Birmingham, and actually across the country at the moment, which is that it’s deeply diverse and rich and playing around with different forms and disciplines.

“And, as well as the shows, there are going to be workshops and panel talks and other exciting things going on, so I would say come to as much as you can - come and be immersed in the festival through the whole week because it’s going to be a wider celebration of new work.”

The Hippodrome has a key role in supporting artists and their development, says Anna: “The Hippodrome wants to invest time and money and resource into the rich ecology of new work because it’s good for the city, it’s good for the artform and it’s good for the Hippodrome as well.

“The festival is for our whole artistic community and the wider community of Birmingham to come and experience the work of these artists, but also to benefit from the ripple effect of what these artists have been doing here for the last 18 months.

“This is our first big presentation as the New Work Department. For us, it’s a celebration of these artists’ work but also of the Birmingham artistic community and of new work in general. It’s an invitation for everyone to join us and celebrate and immerse themselves in the festival.”

Birmingham-based writer Elizabeth O’Connor will be presenting Earth Secrets, her first play. It was written after her first novel, Whale Fall, won a host of prizes, including the Betty Trask Award, and was named one of the Observer’s 10 best debut novels of 2024.

Writing for the stage has been a new endeavour for Elizabeth, and she has been grateful for the support she’s received from the theatre and her fellow creatives: “What I found, and what I learnt over the course of the programme, is how different it is to write a play from a novel. This was in ways that were difficult and challenging but were also wonderful and which totally transformed how I write novels as well as approach plays. So thinking about the layout of a stage, or the layout of a scene; thinking visually about a novel or a piece of work, as well as the functions of different parts. There’s the physicality of the characters on the stage, what they’re saying, what they’re not saying, how time moves around, choreography, staging. It’s been such a wonderful experience to learn what’s involved in a play beyond the writing.”

As a writer who usually works alone, Elizabeth has also hugely benefited from the input from Origins’ other writers: “One of the things I’ve found so wonderful is building a community of other creatives. It’s a really supportive group that never offers judgement because we are making different things and are all trying to help each other make the piece of work we want to make. It’s been a really curious, supportive space to try out new ideas but also to really dig into what you want to do as a writer and who you are.”

Earth Secrets, which forms part of a double bill with Jaz Morrison’s MID on Saturday 16 May, has been influenced by Elizabeth’s Birmingham roots.

“I moved house just before I joined Origins. I moved to Kings Norton, by the canals, where it’s very wild but very industrial, and I was inspired by how people are living in nature and living in landscape. This is something that’s informed all of my work but particularly with this kind of industrial legacy still visible in Birmingham and still a part of the way we live. So my play has a mystery at the centre: why are there birds falling out of the sky in this particular landscape where the characters are living? I wanted to think about folklore and the story of the city, the landscape around us, the canals of Birmingham, and the history and the stories that they hold.

“One of the most valuable things for me in Origins was developing my identity as a Birmingham creative. I think as an artist you get such a unique perspective being from this city.”

Elizabeth is confident that audiences will be impressed by all of the shows in the festival: “The work that’s being produced is of such an incredible standard. I’ve been so bowled over by the other artists. Everyone has this really distinctive voice and vision, so I would recommend people coming the whole week.”

Origins Festival takes place at Birmingham Hippodrome from Monday 11 to Saturday 16 May

By Diane Parkes