The Play House

Do you work in a primary school in Birmingham? 👋

The Play House's 2024-2025 Touring School Pogramme is open for booking! 🗓

With over 30 years of experience in Theatre in Education, The Play House are so excited to bring back some old favorites as well as 2 shiny new programmes to tour around schools this year 📚

We focus on bringing creativity into learning, delivering participatory performance and workshops exploring aspects of the curriculum including STEM, History, PSHE and much, much more! 👩‍🏫

Get in touch with [email protected] ✨️ TODAY ✨️

How are we already in mid September? We had the best time working with Allens Croft Primary School and Montgomery Primary school last academic year for our ‘Does Birmingham Belong to Me’ project funded by 🤍 here is a snap of our practitioners Rebecca and Kali along with researcher Giada during our performance day in the summer. We are so excited to kick off this term with St Francis Primary School and Colmore Junior School. Watch this space for updates!

Malcolm has been busy prepping props and set ready for Romans and Jack and the Beanstalk. Have you booked in your performances yet? Check out our brochure for the academic year if you haven’t already by visiting our website!

Immy strutting her funky stuff preparing for storytelling in the woods at the CoCoMad festival on Saturday!

Our storytelling sessions are available to book for schools and other organisations. Check out our programme here for more information https://www.theplayhouse.org.uk/schoolbrochure2425

Looking for something to do with the family this weekend? Pop over to West Bromwich Library this Saturday to catch a free performance of an exciting new play written and performed by Grace Bennett! Thank you to our wonderful funders Near Neighbours for helping make this possible! More information about the event can be found here

The Journey of a Windrush Heroine A free story-telling performance by Grace Bennett, supported by The Play House Birmingham

Captures from our co-creation day with Lea Forest Primary Academy last week! Year 4 students and their parents worked with Grace (poet & storyteller) to help us develop our Windrush performance, coming soon to schools in Birmingham. Thank you to our funders at Near Neighbours for allowing us to offer this experience to schools and libraries in our local area!

Here are some quotes from Lea Forest Students and parents:

“I hadn’t heard of Windrush before and now I know what it means.”

“I didn’t know about Windrush and I learned that Jamaican people came to the UK because after WW2 the UK wanted help rebuilding.”

“I learned that when Jamaican people came to England they were sometimes treated badly because of their race.”

“Engaging”

“Interactive”

“Great content”

We are so excited to announce that “The Journey of a Windrush Heroine” is coming to West Bromwich Central Library on Saturday 22nd June! There will be two family friendly performances, so plenty of time to catch a showing!

Our friends at The Belgrade theatre are looking to employ an actor/facilitator and a facilitator for their primary school tour of "Big School"

Big School is an original Theatre-in-Education programme for children in Year 6 that combines live theatre with participatory activities and exploration. The show is designed to support young people to explore their feelings about the move to secondary school and to equip them with useful strategies for dealing with issues of transition.

The Theatre-in-Education programme is approx. 90 minutes.

We are casting for two roles: one actor facilitator to play the character of Mo and one facilitator to lead the participatory activity within the programme.

For more information regarding these roles please visit our website: Belgrade Theatre.

How to apply:

Please send the following to [email protected]

Expression of interest letter – tell us about your experience working with children and young people to date and your interest in the role. The expression of interest should be no more than 350 words, or a two-minute voice memo/video.
Up-to-date CV and headshot (or Spotlight / Mandy link).


Closing date: Friday 10 May at 12pm.

Auditions/workshops will be held on Friday 17 May at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry.

The Belgrade Theatre is an Equal Opportunities Employer. We are on a journey to diversify our staff and we seek to encourage applications from those who are currently under-represented in the Theatre Industry.

We are so excited to launch our new project in partnership with storyteller practitioner Grace Bennett! ‘The Journey of a Windrush Heroine’ will be a story of resilience and courage, visiting schools and libraries in Birmingham, starting with a co-creation day at Lea Forest Primary Academy next week. A massive thank you to our funders Near Neighbours for helping make this project a possibility!

Our project manager and facilitator Rebecca has been working with students from Allens Croft Primary school and Montgomery Primary Academy, with dance practitioner Kali, to explore experiences of living in Birmingham. This is for our Paul Hamlyn funded project ‘Does Birmingham belong to me?’

Our 2024-2025 programme is now live! You can find it through our website by clicking the link below ⭐️

If you see a programme you like, please get in touch with us at [email protected]

https://www.theplayhouse.org.uk/schoolbrochure2425

We would like to share the sad news that our friend, colleague and former Artistic Director Iain Smith has passed away.
Company founder Steve Ball said " Iain was a dedicated and talented Teacher/Actor that touched the lives of thousands of children and hundreds of Teachers that he worked with. His professionalism, sense of humour and commitment helped lay the foundations for the company"
Iain worked with The Play House for 17 years, joining in 1989 to lead on the health and social education strands of the companies work. He earned the post ahead of the woman he would later marry. Our thoughts are with the Patel -Smith family.
An intelligent, sensitive, caring and thoughtful gentleman whose generosity of spirit, kindness, skill and wit will be sorely missed.

playhouse picnic.

1 week to go the weather is booked.

There will be be logs to sit on by the fire but you may like to bring a blanket for padding, ground sitting or even a folding chair.

Please bring your favourite picnic food I will toast marshmallows (vegan and halal options available) and popcorn (burnt and hard kernels also available) and make hot chocolate. (you might like to bring a mug for the hot choccy).

I will have some games supplies for the energetic/enthusiastic/foolhardy (delete as applicable)

Looking forward to catching up its been faaaaar toooooo looooooong.

We had the best time earlier this week at the Primary Artslink event, hosted by Bhavik Parmar at Birmingham Rep. Thank you Birmingham Arts School for organising this, we’re looking forward to the next one!



Birmingham Rep
Birmingham Arts School

We’re so pleased to share that The Play House has received funding from The Postcode Local Trust! What a fantastic award to support the wonderful work we do, thank you People's Postcode Lottery 🤩

*JOB KLAXON*

We currently have 2 permanent job opportunities at The Play House. We are looking for an Executive Director to drive the company forward.

Also a Finance Officer to keep our finances on track.

Find out more at theplayhouse.org.uk/blog

The Play House is seeking to appoint a dynamic and visionary Executive Director!

Do you think you could be the right person to drive The Play House forward?

APPLY Now: https://www.theplayhouse.org.uk/blog

Yesterday was Juliet’s last day with us. We are so sad to see her leave after an impressive 30+ years with The Play House. Juliet Fry is the most amazing, wonderful, inspirational, caring person and we have been exceptionally blessed❤️Farewell, Juliet x

As part of our commitment to today we have published our action plan: https://www.theplayhouse.org.uk/more-than-a-moment

Outside The Box - The Story of Squash https://bit.ly/OTB2022Tickets

Check out The Play House Touring Programme for 2022 - 2023! We are now taking bookings for next academic year 🥳

Visit the Website: theplayhouse.org.uk
Email: [email protected]
Contact Emily Lewis: 07305042918

Eid Mubarak to everyone celebrating.