How we work with artists

We want to help artists turn their ideas into the next step in their creative and professional practice.  We want to work with you to create performances which transform our spaces, engage our audiences and inspire our thinking.

Creative Dialogue

We accept unsolicited project submissions and endeavour to respond to every one which is addressed specifically to us. We work with early career artists to build creative relationships which grow over time. We can offer you support, ask you questions and introduce you to people who you might want to collaborate with.
Please note, we no longer accept unsolicited scripts which do not have a director or producer attached. This is because we do not have a literary department or the resources to take scripts to production.

Development

We recognize that in order for an idea to develop, you might need to get a group of people together in a room and explore it together. We can give you the space to do this if we think your idea might eventually find a home in one of our theatres.
Sometimes a project that we have given development space to will return as a FiRST BiTE (working-in-development sharing) or full production; sometimes it will grow into a project for another theatre, or will simply form an important episode of the artist’s development. More shows are nurtured at Ovalhouse than can fill our theatres: we invest in process as well as product.

Building an Audience

Our FiRST BiTES give artists the opportunity to share their idea with an audience while the piece is still developing. You can learn about your work from seeing how an audience react to it, and from the feedback they give. You can also start building a following for your future work here at Ovalhouse, whether a development of the same idea or a new show. We will support you through this phase of development by offering rehearsal space, technical support, critical dialogue and publicity.

Producing Guidance

If we are interested in programming your work, we will help you realise it in our theatres. We work with many emerging artists and we want to support you through the process of producing a show. We can advise you on fundraising, introduce you to other people who can help you, give you guidance on becoming a registered company. We can’t produce your show for you but we can be there to talk to.

Full Production

We programme three seasons a year: Autumn, Spring and Summer. Each season involves work in all of our spaces.
We work on some variant of a co-production and box office split model with all artists we have programmed in our spaces. This financial arrangement expresses the way that we see our relationship with artists: we are working together to achieve artistic excellence and we are fully implicated in the success, or otherwise, of every show in our theatres.

We appreciate that many of the early-career artists we work with will not have a dedicated office space; we invite you to base yourself at the Ovalhouse offices during your pre-production period so that you can work closely with our Press & Marketing and Technical departments to realise the potential of your project.