The Barbican today announces its upcoming programme of Theatre and Dance productions from 14 January to 3 May 2025, including the previously announced world premiere of THE SEAGULL starring Cate Blanchett and Tom Burke, directed by Thomas Ostermeier in a new adaptation by Duncan Macmillan and Thomas Ostermeier.
This spring, the Barbican presents some of the world’s boldest and bravest storytellers through a bumper line up of exciting new work in its experimental studio space, The Pit, collaborating with ground-breaking UK-based companies and presenting premieres from Switzerland to Singapore.
Tickets for the Barbican season are now on sale to Barbican Premier Patrons, Principal Patrons, Director’s Circle Patrons, Barbican Patrons and Barbican Members Plus, and will go on sale at 4pm today to Barbican Members. Tickets go on general sale tomorrow, Thursday 17 October, from 10am via barbican.org.uk. Tickets for THE SEAGULL are available now.
The city’s favourite cure for the January blues, MimeLondon returns to the Barbican with four companies from across Europe who create spellbinding worlds to bring contemporary adaptations of classic tales and visions of the future to life through large scale puppetry, masks and micro-cinema.
The season continues in The Pit, the Barbican’s unique space for artists to develop the future of thrilling and meaningful live experiences. This spring is a time for celebration, marking major anniversaries of several UK-based companies at the forefront of creating ground-breaking new work. Reuniting with Olivier Award-nominated Belarus Free Theatre for the UK premiere of their searing new production, KS6: Small Forward is based on the extraordinary life story of Belarusian Olympic basketball player and political activist, Katsiaryna Snytsina, and launches the company’s 20th year. Winners of the 2022 Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award and celebrating their 10th anniversary, HighRise Entertainment (The UK Drill Project) return to The Pit to present a journey into the history of Grime with Lil.Miss.Lady; a multimedia, genre-smashing, interactive-rave-experience starring MC Lady Lykez, exploring what it takes for a trailblazing female MC to navigate her way through a male-dominated industry. And the Barbican collaborates with pioneering producers Fuel for the first time with a two-week takeover in their 20th year, with new works from artists spanning multiple artforms, each piece grappling with the big questions of our time.
Crucial to the Barbican’s mission is supporting audiences to connect with new generations of artists, alongside more established companies. Following several years of successful film screenings in the Barbican Cinema, this year’s collaboration with cross-disciplinary festival Queer East festival includes the UK premiere of When the Cloud Catches Colours in The Pit, by Singaporean theatremaker Chng Yi Kai. While London-based artists Dior Clarke and Stephanie Martin bring a new production of their play, Passion Fruit, to The Pit, following their Black British Theatre Award-winning debut at the New Diorama in 2022. Both shows explore themes of discovering identity, pride and safety in hostile or ignorant society.
Toni Racklin, Head of Theatre & Dance at the Barbican, said: “I’m delighted to announce our programme for early 2025, celebrating our longstanding collaborations and welcoming fresh work to our Barbican stages. This season, we spotlight brilliant new work in The Pit, introducing audiences to innovative storytelling from the UK and beyond. We proudly champion artists who call out injustice and empower communities to stand together.
Artistic relationships are at the heart of our work. We are excited to platform Queer East in The Pit this year alongside our Cinema, while celebrating significant anniversaries with HighRise, Belarus Free Theatre, and Fuel. We are thrilled to continue offering a London home to breathtaking theatremaking that speaks to us through visual languages through our partnership with MimeLondon. And of course, we are delighted to welcome back Cate Blanchett, Thomas Ostermeier, and Duncan Macmillan to the iconic Barbican Theatre for a remarkable adaptation of The Seagull.”
Throughout the Barbican Centre, further programme highlights taking place this year include:
Barbican Art Gallery
This spring, Barbican Art Gallery presents largest international retrospective to date of the work of late American painter Noah Davis (6 Feb – 11 May). Bringing together over 50 works, this touring exhibition is the first of its kind and offers a comprehensive look at Davis’ extraordinarily broad artistic practice, as well as his work in curating and community-building as co-founder of The Underground Museum in Los Angeles.
Indonesian artist Citra Sasmita (b.1990) will transform The Curve gallery for Into Eternal Land (30 Jan – 20 Apr), her first solo exhibition in the UK. Working fluidly across the mediums of painting, sculptural installation, embroidery and scent, Sasmita will invite visitors on a symbolic, multi-sensory journey through the 90-metre-long gallery, exploring ideas of ancestral memory, ritual and migration.
Classical Music
Across its recently announced spring and summer classical music season, the Barbican presents a series of events that highlight the untold stories of marginalised figures, as bass baritone Davóne Tines presents an intimate theatrical portrait of singer and campaigner Paul Robeson (15 Feb), Cassie Kinoshi explores the life and work of Caribbean artist Boscoe Holder (27 May), Nadine Benjamin performs Shirley J Thompson’s love letter to the resilient women of the Windrush generation (20 Feb) and Elaine Mitchener and Dam Van Huynh present a new sonic dance exploration of Julius Eastman (3 & 4 Apr).
The season also features musical pioneer Jordi Savall and his own remarkable Hespèrion XXI early music ensemble with guests – for a journey into the unknown with a man considered by many to be the greatest traveller of all time: Ibn Battuta (17 Mar). Finally, composer Luke Styles presents his heart-stopping symphonic song-cycle inspired by No Friend but the Mountains by Kurdish-Iranian writer, journalist and former refugee Behrouz Boochani, here given its UK premiere by Barbican Resident Orchestra the London Symphony Orchestra and baritone Jonathan Lemalu (19 Jun).
To see the full Barbican Classical Music programme, click here.
Contemporary Music
A key event in the Barbican’s contemporary music programme during this period will see Polish pianist and composer, Hania Rani make her Barbican debut, presenting her album Ghosts in a special arrangement for large ensemble.
Rani released her 70-minute-long double album Ghosts (Gondwana Records) in 2023 and will perform the full and complete album alongside a large ensemble including string, woodwind, and brass instruments. She will be joined by long-time collaborators and friends of Rani’s, from cellist Dobrawa Czocher to bassist Ziemowit Klimek, each coming from versatile music backgrounds. More commonly used to performing solo, surrounded by multiple keyboards, Rani will present the complete album at the Barbican as part of a tour with her ensemble in a way that its orchestral and tangled nature wouldn’t permit it to be performed alone. The performance will also be accompanied by new light and set design by Stuart Bailes.
To see the full Barbican Contemporary Music programme, click here.
Creative Collaboration & Cinema
Celebrating its 10th anniversary year, the Chronic Youth Film Festival 2025 returns to the Barbican cinemas on Saturday 26 & Sunday 27 April, 2025, with a bold and exciting programme curated and delivered by this year’s cohort of Barbican Young Film Programmers. The free Young Film Programmers scheme is a six-month talent development programme where young people work collaboratively to turn their love for cinema into a dynamic experience. This culminates in the Young Film Programmers determining the themes, film programme, and connected public events for the festival. Details of the next April’s festival will be announced in the New Year.
Read on for more information about the Theatre & Dance spring 2025 programme
https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2025/series/theatre-and-dance-winterspring-2025
MimeLondon
La Pendue: La Manékine
Tue 14 – Sat 18 Jan 2025
The Pit
Press performance: Tue 14 Jan, 7.45pm
UK premiere
Blending puppetry, storytelling and a live one-man orchestra, La Pendue brings the UK premiere of La Manékine to The Pit, Barbican, this January as part of MimeLondon 2025. Created and directed by master puppeteer-performer Estelle Charlier and musician Martin Kaspar Orkestar, who had been haunted by a medieval tale for many years, their latest production is a dark and timeless fable of true love and female emancipation.
Based on the Grimm Brothers’, The Girl Without Hands, this striking production tells the story of a poor miller who naively makes a deal with the devil, unwittingly promising him his daughter. The Devil, finding that he cannot possess her, demands the miller’s help to claim his prize – and that’s just the start of this thrilling tale of deception, disappearance, love and finally, happiness ever after.
Founded by Estelle Charlier and Romuald Collinet in 2003, La Pendue creates distinctive puppetry performances that tackle complex narratives. Based in Grenoble, the company has toured all over the world with acclaimed productions including Tria Fata (Jackson’s Lane/LIMF 2020) and Poli Degaine (inspired by the anarchic classical hand puppet tradition of Polichinelle (Punch)). Estelle and Romuald hold residencies at several prestigious organisations including the International Festival of Puppet Theaters in Charleville-Mézières and are also behind the striking puppetry created for Leos Carax’s Cannes award-winning feature film, Annette (2021).
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MimeLondon
Brú Theatre: Not a Word
Tue 21- Sat 25 Jan 2025
The Pit
Press performance: Tue 21 Jan, 7.45pm
UK premiere
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ “An artistic and theatrical triumph” The Arts Review
“An evocative heart-rending piece about yearning and forgotten lives that weaves a spell” Irish Times
Galway-based Brú Theatre marks its first appearance in the UK with Not a Word in The Pit, part of MimeLondon 2025. Merging mask, music, and movement, this new piece of physical theatre is dedicated to the forgotten Irish navvies who worked hard, faltered and slowly faded from memory. Devised with performer Raymond Keane and onstage fiddle and viola player Ultan O Brien, the production is directed by James Riordan, with mask design by Orla Clogher.
A day’s labouring done, in a place that has never quite felt like home, a silent man plays a beautiful old tune as memory dances amongst his workman’s boots and few cherished trinkets.
Celebrating those who ‘took the boat’, a forgotten class of Irish emigrants who helped build countries that were not their own, this poignant production offers a moving portrait of one emigrant that echoes many people’s stories today. An ode to a self-exiled labourer, which seeks the beauty in the banal and the poetry between the cracks.
Established by theatre maker James Riordan and producer Jill Murray in 2018, Brú Theatre produces work that explores the intersection between contemporary theatre forms and the languages, literature and landscapes of the West of Ireland. Their bilingual, multidisciplinary work incorporates mask, Virtual Reality, dance, original music and new writing, showcasing the vibrancy of the region through a modern lens. They tour nationally and internationally, including at Galway International Arts Festival, Brightening Air Festival (Dublin), Solas Nua (Washington D.C), Canada Ireland Foundation (Toronto), Green Season (Montreal) and Children’s Festival (Ottawa).
