Where East and West collide in a story about friendship and family, love and jealousy, with a good measure of sailing thrown in! Arthur Ransomes Swallows and Amazons is a classic book about children having adventures on a lake. The Walker family have always been depicted as quintessentially English but what is not widely known is that Ransome modelled his characters on an Anglo-Armenian family from Aleppo, Syria. This joyous actor-musician production delves into the fascinating but often fractured relationship between the British author and the family who inspired him to write his iconic book for children. Although a work of fiction, this production has been extensively researched using letters and diary entries from the Arthur Ransome archive, University of Leeds Special Collections; letters from the collection of Roger Wardale, now in The Arthur Ransome Society (TARS) archives; numerous publications and testimonies by Altounyan and Guzelian family members. There will be a pre-show talk by the writer Karen Babayan at 6.30pm. Karen Babayan writer & producer is Anglo-Armenian, born in Iran. She arrived in Leeds in 1978 at the age of 16 and is now an established, multi-disciplinary artist, writer and curator. www.karenbabayan.com Persia Babayan-Taylor - director and composer is a creative of British-Armenian-Iranian heritage; she was born in Leeds and trained at Guildford School of Acting as an Actor-Musician. Supported by stage@leeds. Original photograph by Asadour Guzelian. Swallows and Armenians is supported by Lottery Funding from Arts Council England.

Bright Sparks presents a rocking and rolling roller-coaster science fiction show about time-travel, friendship, freedom and Elvis Presley. We all love Elvis. But imagine a world where he never existed. An evil time-travelling genius has kidnapped Elvis from history. Now its up to our heroes to save Elvis... so he can come back and save the world. "Simply incredible. The show blew my mind!" Scot - audience member "I laughed. I cried. I got up and danced." Christine - audience member "Pure joy." Steve Ansell - Artistic Director, stage@leeds Made possible with funding from The National Lottery Community Fund and The Liz and Terry Bramall Foundation Bright Sparks is a Leeds based theatre company with a majority Learning Disabled cast.

Postgraduate Researchers at the School of Performance and Cultural Industries invite you to attend our symposium on Monday 23rd June 2025 in the stage@leeds building. Throughout the day, we will present papers on our ongoing research that contends with the presence of liminality in our work and in our lives as postgraduate researchers. Alongside this, we offer a performative response to this topic, exploring alternative methods of disseminating knowledge as well as our own experiences with the liminal. Refreshments and lunch will be provided. Registration will close on Monday 2nd June. Symposium Schedule 9:30am: Arrival in the stage@leeds foyer 10:00am: Morning Keynote Dr Lou Harvey: Community circus and/as trauma-informed practice: The problem of un/sayability 10:50am: Break 11:15am: Conference Papers Group One - People and Practice in Flux: Eve Walton, Hannah Wainright, Naomi Burnley 12:15pm: Conference Papers Group Two - Uncertain Horizons:Yanyan Liu, Nicola Hollinshead, Lingxuan Fang 1:15pm: Lunch in the foyer (and zine making in the dance studio) 2:15pm: Performance intervention (Between Two Thoughts) 2:45pm: Conference Papers Group Three - Environments Of/For Change: Danny Casprini, Georgie Hook, Carolyn Bradley 3:45pm: Break 4:00pm: Afternoon Keynote Dr Michael Schofield: Between times: Liminality as a temporal feature of haunted spaces and media 4:50pm: Concluding Remarks 5:00pm: Finish

Use this link to pay for youth theate sessions 03 May - 19 July. please do not use thiss link if yoou pay annually

Teaching Drama Brilliantly: New approaches to play, text and tech We extend a warm invitation to this enrichment CPD event at Stage@Leeds. This is an opportunity for Drama Teachers in Leeds and West Yorkshire who teach drama at GCSE and A level to come together to explore approaches to practice in the classroom and to gain new perspectives and critical, dynamic thinking about drama, theatre and performance that are core to your teaching practice. We will spend the day sharing practice and learning together in light of the Interim Report of the National Review of Curriculum and Assessment, where it is noted that there is both less take up, and provision of, drama at GCSE within arts subjects overall, impacting on student choices. The Drama teachers conference has been a regular annual offer from the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds to teachers in Leeds and the wider WY region, which was paused during the lock-down. We are re-igniting this offer once more and are delighted to welcome drama teachers on to campus in July for a day of creative activity, networking and discussion. Who is hosting? Led by experienced practitioner/academics teaching and researching theatre and performance in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries and with input from leading industry voices, this CPD event will be offered free of charge for those signing up before1 July 2025. Further information will follow. Lunch and refreshments provided. What will we explore? Drama teachers have told us you want to explore specific practitioners and also new approaches to delivering material, such as: Approaches to devising and creative ways to work with text Work on character Invigorating lesson structure Stage management/ Theatre production lighting & other technical aspects Steps to creative careers Refreshing approaches to foundational practitioners (Brecht/ Stanislavsky/ Artaud) We look forward to welcoming you! If you have any enquiries please email [email protected].

Fresh from the launch of her celebrated debut sitcom, The Pharmacy (Channel 4), Ola Labib is back with a brand new comedy show that proves some things don’t disperse easily. As seen on House of Games & Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled.