Four Days. Two Cities. Five Directors. One Tube Strike.

Inside the Origins Residency

This year's Origins Residency packed a year's worth of professional development into four intensive days for Headlong's 2026 cohort of mid-career theatre directors.

Origins is about championing and celebrating emerging theatre directors from across the UK.

We caught up with Origins Lead Producer Carla-Marie Metcalfe to find out what the residency week looked like, and why programmes like this matter for mid-scale touring theatre.

“You'll find plenty of programmes for emerging directors,” says Carla-Marie, “but we're looking at a more specific gap. Our directors are a few years into a freelance career, not fresh out of university, not emerging, but not established either. They've done the hard graft of building a career and are now trying to make the leap to mid and large-scale work. That's where the development opportunities dry up, so that's where Headlong can put its energy.”

It's a career stage that’s easy to overlook and, Carla-Marie says, is increasingly falling through the cracks.

At a time of financial pressure across theatre and the arts, professional development for directors at this level, especially those based outside London, is often one of the first things to get cut when budgets tighten.

The challenges directors are telling us about

We asked Carla-Marie what she hears most from Directors about the barriers they face.

The list is a familiar one for anyone working outside London: the cost of travel and accommodation; the difficulty of building and maintaining relationships with London-based venues and producers; a shortage of funding opportunities; and too few chances to get industry decision-makers to actually come and see work outside the capital.

‘We build Origins around what the cohort tells us they need and want to explore for their own development. We also make sure we're programming in the areas of expertise Headlong looks for when we're recruiting Directors ourselves, areas like The Theatre Green Book and Creative Access.

Mostly though, we're trying to create a safe space: somewhere they can explore how they work without pressure or judgement. In the real world, with no time and no budget, that's not a chance you get often’.

The format of Origins itself is in direct response to one of those pressures.

Directors have their own jobs, freelance schedules and lives scattered across the UK. Getting five people in a room for single masterclasses had become close to impossible. So, in 2025, we compressed a year's worth of access into four intensive, inspiring days.

It worked, so this year, we did it again.

We asked Carla-Marie to talk us through how the week went.

Day one: Shakespeare, design, and a tube strike

We began gently; coffee, introductions, and a chance to meet the Headlong team before diving into a masterclass on Directing Shakespearewith Emily Burns.  This was an area the cohort had asked for themselves. They spent the session pulling a passage of text apart line by line, turning textual analysis into direction that an actor can use.

That afternoon, designer Max Johns (A Midsummer Night's Dream) led a session on the Relationship between Directors and Designers. This is a fundamental partnership that's often missing from formal training, which tends to focus on directors and actors alone. Having seen Max's design work fresh in mind made for a rich, specific conversation.

Our final session of the day, on the Relationship between Director and Dramaturg with Frank Peschier (Headlong's Literary Manager) and Guy Jones, nearly didn't happen when the tube strike turned a short hop to the Lyric Hammersmith into a ninety-minute taxi crawl!

Day two: Oxford, a stage and some actors; and some bookshop bonding

Onto the 9:23am from Paddington to Oxford, and our second home, Oxford Playhouse, for a morning Q&A with Artistic Director Mike Tweddle.

In the afternoon, joined by students from Oxford School of Drama, each Director staged an excerpt of Macbeth on the Playhouse's main stage.

This was an opportunity to direct real actors, on a real mid-scale stage, in front of an audience of peers.

It sounds obvious until you notice how rarely it actually happens; Directors are routinely expected to understand mid-scale space intuitively, without ever having tested it out.

With time to spare before dinner, the cohort set themselves a challenge in a local bookshop: buy a book for someone else in the group. Over dinner, they took turns presenting their choices. It was a playful, connective, and unexpectedly meaningful bonding for the group.

Day three: auditions, in reverse

Out to the Oxfordshire countryside and Oxford School of Drama for the day's centrepiece: a Casting Masterclass with Casting Director Becky Paris.

Each Director had come prepared with a play, characters and student actors to audition. They ran live mock auditions, coached in real time by Becky.

Then we flipped it.

The actors got to interview the Directors, Becky and the Headlong team about what auditions are really like from the other side of the table. It was a small shift with a big impact.  It created a safe space to explore territory that usually only opens up once the stakes are already high, and a rare chance for the feedback to flow in both directions.

Day four: back to London, processing the learning

Back at Somerset House, we opened with an online Q&A with Justin Audibert, Artistic Director of Chichester Festival Theatre, on his path from freelance director to running a venue.

That afternoon, we were back to the Lyric for a sharing of Gilgamesh, one of Headlong's current works in development.  It was a joy to welcome the cohort not as guests, but as part of the Headlong family.

The week closed with a Sound Design Masterclass with Nicola Chang; the same format it opened with - a working creative talking through their process on a live Headlong production.

“Our brains were full,” says Carla-Marie. “The Directors had absorbed so much and were ready to go away and reflect. But the gratitude was palpable in the room. To have a range of experiences they wouldn't otherwise get access to, and a cohort to share it with, was something unique. It just isn't accessible to Directors at this stage otherwise.”

Opportunities like this are what is feeding the future of mid-scale touring theatre. And that’s central to what we do here at Headlong.

We'll keep sharing these stories from our Origins cohort and the ambition we have for our part in future theatre making. Look out for what’s next!

Headlong Origins is generously supported by Backstage Trust.