The world's a stage

Next week sees the arrival of Transform 17, a four-day festival of new theatre – both home-grown and international – being staged at venues across Leeds, including theatres, art spaces, community centres and outdoor locations.

It is the exciting culmination of several years of thought, growth and development and is the kind of project which absolutely proves that when vision, ambition and sheer hard work are applied, great things can happen. The seeds were sown back in 2011 when Amy Letman, then associate producer at West Yorkshire Playhouse, was involved in the establishment of the first Transform Festival.

“The original intention was to diversify the programme at the Playhouse a bit and to bring in different kinds of artists and work that wouldn’t traditionally be staged there,” says Letman who is now the festival’s creative director. “Then in 2012 we started commissioning artists and in 2013 we went out of the building into different spaces around the city.”

Things began to grow from there. Inspired by her involvement in the Leeds European Capital of Culture 2023 bid, Letman applied and was awarded funding by the Arts Council and British Council Artists International Development Fund in 2014 to visit Mannheim International Theatre Festival.

“It takes place in various venues in the city and features artists coming from across Germany and all over the world. I thought maybe we could do something like that in Leeds and take the festival to the next level.”

When she got back, she had a conversation with the Playhouse’s artistic director James Brining who shared her excitement about the potential for a similar festival in Leeds. In the autumn of that year Letman left the Playhouse and by early 2015 had secured Arts Council funding to set up Transform as a spin-out company.

“Last year we did a ‘trailblazer’ which was the first outing of the new company so people could see what it could be,” says Letman. “This year’s programme is the realisation of everything we have been thinking about over the last few years.” And what an exciting programme it is. The depth and breadth of work on offer to Leeds audiences is hugely impressive. The line-up includes three world premieres and two UK premieres and features work from ground-breaking international companies and cutting-edge artists from across the North of England.

Combining pop-culture and performance art, interactive pieces, outdoor activist theatre and large-scale visceral shows, the festival explores diverse issues of both local and global significance such as activism, community collaboration, gender politics, the digital age and the future of Europe; all very urgent and of the moment and chiming perfectly with Transform’s core principles.

“When we first set up the company we spent a lot of time thinking about what it was here to do,” says Letman. “Part of it was re-imagining what theatre can look like, redefining what it can be and that is at the heart of all the work we want to do.”

That is certainly evident in the work being presented next week. The lead production is The Darkest Corners, commissioned and produced by Transform, and created by acclaimed Leeds-based theatre company RashDash. Artists Abbi Greenland and Helen Goalen confront violence against women in a piece which features live music, physicality and an inter-generational community cast.

It will be performed outdoors at a secret location in Holbeck and is inspired by Leeds’ radical activist history and specifically the city’s role as the birthplace of the Reclaim the Night movement forty years ago. Celebrating stories of resistance from around the world, it sounds like a fascinating mix of cabaret and social commentary.

Among other local artists featured are Leeds-based Selina Thompson who will be presenting a work-in-progress sharing of her ambitious new work The Missy Elliott Project which will be three years in the making, Yorkshire-based Grace Surman will be performing with her daughter the powerful choreographic piece Mother Load, a reflection on the relationships between parent and child and Bradford-based writer and theatre-maker Javaad Alipoor’s one-man show The Believers are but Brothers examines the crisis of masculinity in a generation of young men and how this can sometimes lead them into an online world of fantasy, radicalisation and violence.

International artists appearing at the festival include Berlin-based machina Ex, making their UK debut with their interactive show Lessons of Leaking set in Germany in 2021 shortly before the German people vote on leaving a broken European Union and Spanish theatre company El Conde de Torrefiel who will be bringing their internationally acclaimed large-scale show Guerilla, a dark dystopian comedy featuring over fifty local people, which examines the current generation’s thoughts on Europe and anxieties about the future.

On the last night of the festival everyone is invited to Eurotopia. Described as ‘an extravagant art party and audio visual spectacle’ curated by Live Art Bistro, it creates a space for people to come together and ‘dance away the uncertainty of the future’. It is exactly the sort of imaginative, life and humanity-affirming creative response that the festival is so boldly championing.

“I think there is a real sense at the moment of people really caring about what’s going on in the world,” says Letman. “We need to make space in our communities where we can come together and reflect on that. The best theatre doesn’t feel removed, it connects.”

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The plan going forward is for the festival to run every two years, allowing the team the time to fulfil their commitment to commissioning and producing new work and to getting international artists booked. “But we will definitely always 
also do something in the off year,” promises Letman. “Transform is a little engine room of ideas.”

Transform 17 runs April 19-22. For the full programme visit www.transformfestival.org

Tickets for all events are available through the West Yorkshire Playhouse box office on 0113 213 7700 or www.wyp.org.uk