Marlborough Productions announce scintillating Spring Programme for 2025

We’re kicking off 2025 with a bold, joyful, and unapologetically queer season of performance, celebrating 15 years of Marlborough Productions. From cabaret and dance parties to ground-breaking new work touring across the UK, this year’s programme is packed with thrilling events.

Read on for the full press release, including everything you need to know about what’s coming up:

‘In their 15th anniversary year, the pioneering Marlborough Productions has programmed a spectacular offering of live performance featuring trailblazers from the UK’s queer arts scene including Emma Frankland and Subira Joy. Alongside a dynamic lineup of live work, Marlborough Productions continues to lead the way as makers and producers of queer culture and community with their innovative year-round output which spans heritage, radical gatherings and parties for curious and intersectional audiences.

Launching their 2025 programme during LGBTQIA+ History Month, Marlborough Productions offers a vital platform for Queer artists and audiences, marking themselves as industry leaders and disruptors with a country-wide reach that puts artists, communities and audiences at the forefront of everything they do. 

Co-Creative Directors and Joint CEOs David Sheppeard and Tarik Elmoutawakil, said: “This programme sees Marlborough Productions spring back to life after a long winter. We haven’t exactly been hibernating though! We’ve been working with extraordinary artists and partners across the UK to make this programme happen. From our home in Brighton, to Hastings, Portsmouth and more, the works explore many extraordinary ideas and showcase unique visions, they are bold, bright and totally queer we can’t wait for them to meet an audience.”

In celebration of the company’s 15th anniversary, Marlborough Productions presents 15 Years of Marlborough Productions: A Journey of Queer Creativity and Community, an exciting exhibition charting their journey to success as a pioneering force in LGBTQIA+ arts and culture, at Brighton’s Jubilee Library (until 1 March 2025). From humble beginnings as a pub and theatre to their status as an internationally recognised producer of boundary-pushing queer performance, the exhibition highlights the artists, performances and moments that have defined Marlborough Productions extraordinary legacy. The exhibition is supported by UrbanFlo Creative, Arts Council England, National Lottery Heritage Fund, National Lottery Community Fund, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Garfield Weston Foundation.

The season’s performance programme begins with Diverse Alarums: Queer Histories in Cabaret! (12 Feb, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts), a rip-roaring evening of super-charged queer cabaret from five leading LGBTQ+ artists. Gathering inspiration from both famous and forgotten queer histories, celebrated drag king Prince of Persia, acerbic drag artist Midgitte Bardot, fierce performance artist Lasana Shabazz, genre-smashing clown Dre Spisto, and surreal cabaret artist Charlie Wood will all perform brand new short works based on queer stories of the past. Created with the help of The University of Roehampton and the University of Sussex, and held together by award-winning artists, writers and dramaturgs, Emma Frankland and Subira Joy, Diverse Alarums celebrates LGBTQIA+ History Month and 15 years of boundary pushing, Queer work from Marlborough Productions. 

February also brings fun-for-all-the-family show Prancer the Dancer to two special London venues in time for the early Spring half term. The Place (19 February) sees Prancer present a joyous piece of dance theatre, journeying through time to celebrate individuality and revolutionise the world…all through the power of dance! Elsewhere in the city, Prancer the Dancer’s Dance Dance Disco Party Fun Show struts into the Southbank Centre as part of Imagine Festival (23 February) for an even bigger boogie. Be mesmerized by dazzling performances from some of Prancer’s funkiest friends and get your groove on with fun-filled dance routines the whole family can learn and enjoy together in a two-hour dance party extravaganza. Prancer will also return later in Spring at Cambridge Junction (4 May), with more dates to be announced.

New Queers on the Block, Marlborough’s flagship programme of queer micro-festivals in undersung LGBTQIA+ hubs across England, returns once more with exciting plans announced for Bradford, Hastings and, for the very first time, Portsmouth.

Castles In The Sky Presents: A Day & Night of Dance with Nikhita Devi & Bollyqueer in Bradford across two days in February and March. Showcasing traditional and contemporary dance takes on South Asian dance styles, Nikhita Devi and Bollyqueer are two of the UK’s most exciting LGBTQIA+ dance artists. They bring a spellbinding evening of spectacular solo and group performances (28 February, Mind the Gap Studios), followed by workshops from both artists (1 March, Kala Sangam) in a LGBTQIA+ affirming dance space where attendees are encouraged to dance in a way which makes them feel happiest.

For Portsmouth’s inaugural New Queers on the Block offering, Local Associate Producers Downtown Pompey have curated Knees Up! (21 & 22 March, 21 & 22 June, Portsmouth New Theatre Royal), a glitzy night of all-out camp with hair and heels higher than the London Palladium. Inspired by legends of Saturday Night telly and the very best in UK light entertainment, four unforgettable nights of outrageously sequinned cabaret, hosted by local legends Pompey Dinlo ‘The Fabulous Josh’ and Queen of Portsmouth Cherry Liquor will take the stage.

Finally, Giddy Up! in Hastings boasts a knockout lineup from some of the boldest and best boundary-pushing queer performers from across the UK. Curated by Local Associate Producer Hannah Rose Fox and presented by Home Live Art, the season sees world-class, much-celebrated artists grace the town from April 2025. Full programme to be announced late February.

New Queers on the Block provides vital, joyful and groundbreaking Queer performance in communities across the UK where arts provision and LGBTQIA+ representation is far underserved. Marlborough Productions continue their commitment to nurture artists from within these communities and embed Queer performance across the nation. Since being awarded NPO status in 2023, the company has broadened their reach, and even more NQOTB work will be announced throughout the year, reaching into the heart of underrepresented communities. 

Supporting artists to create new works, Marlborough Productions continues their work with Associate Artist Emma Frankland. Directed by critically acclaimed performance artist Harry Clayton-Wright, Frankland is developing a new show, No Apologies – a radical misremembering of Nirvana’s legendary 1993 MTV Unplugged concert. Backed by a live band, Frankland delves head-first into internet discourse and classical mythology to rally against societal expectations of self-image and the dangers of not living as our truest, most vibrant selves. Audiences can catch the show at Attenborough Centre for the Arts, 16 April.

Also at ACCA (1 March), is Clayton-Wright’s Mr Blackpool – a brand-new theatrical installation from the award-winning theatre maker. A seaside rave at the end of the world, it reimagines the legacy of ‘end of the pier’ entertainment, cabaret, drag, and dance music. Created with Oliver Gregory (Miss Titty Kaka) and featuring dance duo Aish Bell Docherty and Sam Bell Docherty, this high-energy performance will be tested with an audience for the first time, followed by a Q&A.

Frankland also develops TRAP, through a rehearsed reading of the new play at The Old Courtroom Brighton (2 March). A twisted queer love story cross bungled heist, TRAP uncovers the real monsters lurking within.

Marlborough Productions also supports several flagship year-round projects, bringing queer identity,  community and heritage to the fore. Queer Heritage South continues to expand its archive of queer histories and LGBTQ+ communities in Brighton and beyond, whilst Producer Gathering, the organisers of the UK’s first and only database of live art producers – Producer Directory – grows its connections and looks to arrange more collaborative events up and down the country. In partnership with New Writing South, Marlborough Productions presents The Coast is Queer, the UK’s biggest and brightest LGBTQ+ literature festival, which will return once more this Autumn (9-12 October). Championing leading lights of the UK’s Queer literature scene, the festival brings together authors, poets, performers, scriptwriters, activists and audiences for a brilliant celebration of queer lives and writing.’