What makes a Headlong show? Part 2 - Expanding the Canon
We make work with main stage energy. We’re the UK’s leading touring company, so a Headlong show, whether it’s new writing, a refreshed classic or a radical adaptation, needs to reflect the lives of people up and down the country, in all their glorious diversity.
We’re committed to stories that speak to today and tomorrow, and we’re always looking for work that mirrors the big political questions that affect our everyday lives. Theatre that challenges how we think of ourselves and of each other. Theatre that can change things.
We think of this as expanding the canon.
Image: Helen Murray
What’s the canon?
The canon is the select group of plays that have made it into our cultural consciousness.
These plays are seen as timeless. They’re revived frequently and studied a lot. They shape our understanding of culture.
We want to open this up by:
Highlighting overlooked classics. We ask, who are the writers who deserve more recognition? What stories demand to be told? Who has been excluded? And why?
Developing the classics of tomorrow. We commission new plays that we hope to see restaged and celebrated in years to come.
Revitalising the canon. We pull existing classics apart with adaptations that speak to audiences now.
Overlooked Classics - August Wilson & Lorraine Hansberry
Image: Tyler Fayose
Take August Wilson.
An undeniable writer of immense talent; a master of language and character. Regularly compared to Shakespeare for the lyricism and depth of his writing. His Century - or Pittsburgh - Cycle is a monumental achievement: a series of ten plays set between 1904 and 1995 documenting the Black American experience.
Or Lorraine Hansberry, who paved the way for Wilson and other black playwrights. She smashed boundaries for Black female writers; bringing authentic stories of Black Americans onto big stages. She put the political realities of segregated America in the sights of a society who preferred to look away.
You’ll regularly see work by other 20th Century American writers in theatres across the country. Think Arthur Miller. Or Tennessee Williams. Yet, despite both Hansberry and Wilson’s unquestionable cultural legacy, it’s rare to see either's work performed in the UK.
We believe that their work should be seen widely. On our biggest, most exciting stages, with all the production values and prestige so often awarded to the likes of Miller, Williams or O’Neil.
Image: Ikin Yum
With their themes of injustice and generational trauma, plays like Fences and Raisin in the Sun connect us in empathy and experience. They’re enduringly relevant, influential and urgent.
These are plays by writers at the very top of their game that demand to be seen.
And our audiences agree. In 2021 we co-produced August Wilson’s Jitney, the first play he wrote in the cycle. In 2023 we brought audiences Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Both were met with the same enthusiasm and passionate critical response across the country, as we’re seeing with our current production of Fences.
It can’t be denied. These plays are canonical.
“Moved me to laughter and tears and has continued to enrich my life. Theatre and storytelling at its best! ”
Future Classics - New writing
Over the years we've been an incubator for many of the UK’s most established and celebrated writers. We’re proud to be seen as a hot kitchen when it comes to cooking up new ideas and plays.
When we’re commissioning and developing work, we ask ourselves;
Who has been denied the chance to write a future classic, and how can we change that?
Who is writing and envisioning big bold main stage ideas?
Who is exploring the world from a perspective we need to see more of?
Sometimes this work responds to the canon, rather than reimagines it. Particularly the Western narratives and perspectives it spotlights. Take Kimber Lee’s prize winning work Untitled F**k M*ss S**gon Play - a searing satirical romp through a century of negative stereotypes and narratives about Asian people in Western media. It flipped the perspective.
At the heart of it, we’re looking for a piece of work that we believe has the potential to stake a claim in the future canon.
Revitalising and Revisioning: Radical adaptation
What if expanding the canon also meant pulling it apart? Unpacking it, deconstructing and exploring it to keep it alive, resonant and relevant? As well as broadening the stories that become classics of the future, we expand the way theatre gets made too.
When we do adaptations - we do them radically.
We see the genius of plays written in different times that still have a lot to say, but need to speak to how we live now.
Image: Ikin Yum
So, how does Headlong do Miss Julie? Well, we commission Laura Lomas to write The House Party (2024/5). We re-set it in an 18 year old’s birthday party, bubbling over with teenage sexual tension and messiness. We collaborate with Frantic Assembly and ten physical theatre performers to make a fizzing, charged piece of contemporary drama. Strindberg’s original isn’t that, but it gives us a cracking foundation to play with.
For us, expanding the canon isn't just about staging plays that have been overlooked. It's also about expanding what a classic can be. A future classic isn't just a great script. It's the whole production. The form, the team, the way it's made and who gets to see it.
Years from now, we want people to recognise a Headlong show by all of it together. That's the legacy.