CumbriaFest Festival Pass – Friday

The Friday Festival Pass includes:

• Inciting Incidents: Workshop with Ola Animashawun – 2-5pm – Rehearsal Room
• Workshop – 5:30-6:30pm – Mezzanine Gallery
• Patience & U EXIT NOW (rehearsed reading of selected scenes) – 7-8:30pm – The Studio
• Panel: The Making of a Play – 8:30-9:30pm – The Studio
• Live music – 9:30-11pm – Spotlight Bar

Inciting Incidents: Workshop with Ola Animashawun
Led by acclaimed dramaturg and playwrighting facilitator Ola Animashawun, this practical and exploratory workshop is open to writers at any stage of their journey. Whether you’re picking up a pen for the first time or returning to your craft with new questions, this session will help you focus on the all-important inciting incident—the moment that sets everything in motion. You don’t need a polished idea to take part—just curiosity, creativity, and a desire to stretch your storytelling muscles. And who knows—this might just be the inciting incident that sets your next play in motion.

Workshop
More details coming soon.

Patience & U EXIT NOW (rehearsed reading of selected scenes)

Patience by Nina Berry

In 1842 a bill is passed by Parliament, prohibiting all female labour underground. In 1984 thousands of miners are locked in a bitter dispute with Thatcher’s government. In 2022 a site is set to become the country’s first new deep coal mine in over 30 years. Patience is a portrait of life across a stretch of Cumbrian coastline, mapping the ebbs and flows and the loves and losses of a mining community’s motherline, spanning three centuries as past, present and future worlds collide in a heart-wrenching tale of untold stories about the power of community and a symphony of echoes through time.

U EXIT NOW by Daneka Etchells

A car breaks down. Wires unravel. Libra is waiting for the AA. Jae is preparing to blow up the Caldbeck transmitter. Past and present flicker: the looming influx of second homes, fracturing communities, rotting roots; as Jae’s uncle Milo prepares for war and Jae falls in love with the enemy.
Performed in English and Cumbrian dialect, U EXIT NOW explores skint Cumbria and asks who does our own landscape belong to?

Panel: The Making of a Play: Process, Practice & Possibility
How does a play evolve from idea to performance? In this post-show discussion, the writers of P & UEN, developed through Tour the Writer, and How does a play evolve from idea to performance? In this post-show discussion, the writers of P & UEN, developed through Tour the Writer, and Something snazzy about Julia share insights into their creative journeys—from early drafts to final staging.
Guest panelist Ola Animashawun brings decades of experience nurturing new voices, from the Royal Court to the National Theatre. Together, we’ll unpack the joys and challenges of shaping new work, and reflect on what it means to support emerging playwrights with care, rigour, and vision.

After the performances in the Studio, join us in the Spotlight Bar for a relaxed evening of live music from talented local musicians. It’s a chance to unwind, share a drink, and connect with fellow artists and audiences.