2026 artist cohort
Action Hero
Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse work together under the moniker Action Hero. Using this name, they collaborate to create performances, installations, social practice, audio work and more. Independence is at the heart of the company’s ethos, alongside collaboration, a commitment to artist-led spaces and methodologies, and a belief in the power of art and creativity to give shape to the human experience.
Bert and Nasi
Bertrand and Nasi are two performance artists who have been working together since 2015. They are like the estranged love twins of David Lynch, Andy Kaufman, Bert and Ernie, and Buster Keaton. Something of their duo manages to be modern and new whilst evoking a dynamic that harks back to the early beginnings of the great clowns.
Common/Wealth
Common/Wealth is a political theatre company based in Bradford and Cardiff, UK. We aim to promote social inclusion and enact cultural democracy through the performing arts, focusing on working-class people, as collaborators, performers, participants and audiences.
FlawBored
FlawBored is a multi award-winning disability-led theatre company, co-founded by Samuel Brewer, Aarian Mehrabani and Chloe Palmer. They create meta-theatrical work with dark irreverence which aims to address complex and uncomfortable issues surrounding identity which no one has the answers to.
IN BED WITH MY BROTHER
Working together for over a decade, they create unruly, excessive, high-energy performance at the collision point of theatre, noise and nightlife. Their collaborative practice draws on clown, performance art, music and physical endurance, and is grounded in improvisation, experimentation and interplay - giving their shows the charge that anything could happen, and tonight, it just might.
Krishna Istha
Krishna Istha is a performance artist, theatre-maker, comedian and screenwriter working across theatre, TV & film. They create socially conscious form-pushing works about taboo or underrepresented experiences of gender, race and sexual politics. Previously, they wrote on Netflix’s SEX EDUCATION, and was one of the comedians on the Netflix Comedy Special Hannah Gadsby’s Gender Agenda.
Louise Orwin
Louise Orwin is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist working across performance, music, text and film. Her research-driven, often participatory work explores what it means to identify as a queer femme in a fast-moving, media-saturated world which prizes patriarchal, heterocapitalist narratives.
Mark Maughan
Mark Maughan is a theatre maker, director, writer and translator from the North East of England. His work platforms experiences of the world that he believes need to be witnessed by others. As a Queer, Disabled, lower socioeconomic person, Mark is most drawn to voices that are marginalised in some way and he makes work which places its focus on liveness, heart, humour and social justice.
Max Percy and James Newton
Max Percy and James Newton are a collaborative storytelling partnership. Drawing from their individual practices in contemporary theatre, their work explores the interactions between social forces and the individuals that live through them, aiming to reveal the invisible dynamics that underpin historic power structures.
Nigel Barrett and Louise Mari
Nigel Barrett and Louise Mari have been at the forefront of cutting-edge British theatre and performance for more than 25 years. They make totally original work that pushes at the boundaries of theatre, live art and popular entertainment.
Ray Young
Ray is an award-winning transdisciplinary performance artist, writer, educator and coach. Creating unique, genre-defying work through collaboration and resistance to traditional form, Ray's practice exists at the boundaries of live art, activism and immersive experience.
Rhiannon Faith Company
Rhiannon Faith Company make radically tender dance theatre, working nationally on big stages and locally with communities on the margins, always with social change and care at its heart.
Sung Im Her
Born in South Korea, Sung Im Her obtained a master’s degree in contemporary dance at Hansung University in 2003, at which point she had already been working with Ji-Gu Dance Theater for six years. In 2004, she moved to Brussels, Belgium, to study at PARTS, the acclaimed contemporary dance school led by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. She worked with Les ballets C de la B, Needcompany, Abattoir Fermé, Opéra de Lille, before beginning to create her own work. She moved to the UK over 7 years ago and brings a unique triality of culture to the UK dance sector that is rare and unrivalled with such success.
ThisEgg and Linzy Na Nakorn
ThisEgg is Josie Dale-Jones, who makes, performs and produces shows with a variety of artistic collaborators. Linzy Na Nakorn is a dance/theatre maker, movement director, community organiser and facilitator.
Tink Flaherty
Tink is a loving parent, trained advocate and performance artist. They make bold and provocative work exploring their disability, class, queerness, neurodiversity and Irish traveller heritage. Centring connectivity and radical inclusivity, they are deeply committed to creating work that is accessible and engaging for traditional and non-traditional audiences.
Victoria Melody
Recognised for her unique, immersive approach to theatre-making, Victoria Melody brings real communities to the stage with humour and heart. Her critically acclaimed shows blend documentary, comedy and social commentary, making complex issues accessible, funny and defiantly hopeful.