Made in the Midlands: Showcase

As part of our Rebels With A Cause season marking our 50th anniversary, we have seed funded three West Midlands artists and small-scale collectives to develop new work on the theme of activism.

After an overwhelming response, we narrowed down our selections to three incredible projects headed up by Katie Walters (BODYBREAD), Tectum Theatre (Julius Caesar) and Beth Kapila (Ugly Opera). 

Each will share a short work in progress performance of approximately 30 minutes. It is our hope that this seed funding will support the future development of these pieces, including touring options. 

BODYBREAD:

Without the support that they need to get by, disabled people provide for each other instead, depending on intra-community care, and living in a state of radical symbiosis. Join poet and performer Katie Walters as they explore what it means to give someone your body, and imagine a new religion of sickness, love, and yeast.

Katie is an interdisciplinary artist making work about life as a queer cripple who can’t stop thinking about trees. They have a deep interest in the subversive, the transformative, and the weird, tackling uncomfortable conversations head-on, with a tender and intimate approach.

Julius Caesar:

TECTUM is excited to put our unique stamp on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, using iconic musical activists to underscore Rome’s revolt, with a fiery adaptation set for 2026/27.

They are a Midlands-based company dedicated to celebrating, supporting, and showcasing working-class and early-career artists. We champion emerging talent, empowering them to become pioneers in the industry. By providing a platform that fosters boldness, innovation, and creative freedom, we nurture the next generation of visionaries, ensuring they craft legacies that surpass our own.

Ugly Opera:

Buildings in Birmingham are built and knocked down in cycles of renewal. They should be demolished when they no longer fit our ideals of beauty. Or so we’ve been led to believe… But there’s so much more going on.

• Planning departments set policy.
• Planning applications are submitted.
• The public are consulted.
• Planning committees meet.
• Decisions are made.
• Activists contest decisions.
• Planners appeal.

So whose voices are missing? How much do we, as citizens and residents, understand what really goes on behind doors in the planning processes of a city? And is it possible to crack it open a little using Opera?

This will be a space for you to decide what you want for the future of Birmingham’s built environment. Using the live case of ‘Smallbrook Queensway’, which is set to be demolished and replaced imminently, we will crack open the planning processes that decide which buildings should be kept alive and which should be killed.

Beth Kapila, a Birmingham based theatre and opera director, is in the process of discovering how opera can be used to shape and challenge our city making processes. Using techniques such as listening to the city, imagining the birth and death of a building, and taking us to the extremes of an imagined dysfunctional planning department to see how we can make it right again.

Schedule of the Show:

• 7.30-8.00 Beth Kapila - Ugly Opera
• INTERVAL
• Katie Walters - BODYBREAD 8.20-8.50
• INTERVAL
• Tectum - Julius Caesar 9.10-9.40