ALBION
an exploration of modern Englishness, in all its complexity.
Welcome to Albion. A world with a legendary past, fallen present and hope-filled future.
Albion began in 2022 with The Great Middlemarch Mystery and will finish in 2026 with Our Public House.
Join us as we journey across landscape and language, digging deep into folk and written histories, oral traditions, music, storytelling, theatre and performance. Working closely with participants, audiences and artists throughout the country, we have embarked on a process of interrogation into how England presents itself today, its colonial legacy and what remains unheard.
PREVIOUS AND upcoming PRODUCTIONS
Our Public House
We began our research for Our Public House in 2023 with our partners, Birmingham University and University of East Anglia. Our research started with us hosting with a series of workshops for persuasive speaking for diverse communities in England. This led to our Speak Out! events, a mini-festival of conversations, actions and performance in November 2023 and our podcast series.
Our research is leading us to create Our Public House, a state-of-the-nation theatre production, inspired by the speeches and writing of our national participants, from director Josephine Burton and writer Barney Norris.
The Great Middlemarch Mystery
Our 2022 production invited you to step into the reimagined world of one of the greatest English novels ever written, on the streets of Coventry.
Part-immersive theatre experience and part-mystery game, The Great Middlemarch Mystery puts a modern twist on George Eliot's Middlemarch and its story of the hopes, dreams, disappointments and scandals lived out within a Midlands town.
PODCAST
In this special episode Artistic Director, Josephine Burton, catches up with four former speech-making workshop participants across the country on how they are experiencing the election campaign, and analyses our political candidates and the quality of their speechmaking with Alan Finlayson, Professor of Political and Social Theory at the University of East Anglia, and collaborator on our national workshops.
Whilst the country builds up to a general election, we’re in the midst of creating Our Public House, Dash Arts’ state-of-the-nation theatre production. Hear from Artistic Director Josephine Burton and playwright Barney Norris on how our play weaves together the ideas and speeches of over 150 voices from across England and the ever shifting political landscape.
In the still of a spring night, we journey into the woods with musicians Sam Lee and Jack Durtnall to hear the beautiful and increasingly rare song of the nightingale with a concert and conversation around the campfire.
Marie and Josephine chat outside a pub in South London after a week of development and rehearsals at the NTS - intercut with clips from the rehearsal room and questions from the audience
“Take a deep breath in, now think about the future you want” Heidi in Cornwall.
What do you want to change? What do you want politicians to understand?
Join us on the road as we travel the length and breadth of England to hear what people want to change. In communities across Cornwall, Yorkshire, Norfolk, the North West, South East and the Midlands, we’re supporting people to write and deliver speeches on what difference they want to see.
Welcome to Albion. A world with a legendary past, fallen present and hope-filled future. Our Artistic Director Josephine Burton and Podcast Producer Rachael Head discover the myths of Albion and what it means to be English today.
In the third and final episode of Making Middlemarch, the cast and crew reflect on their experience of The Great Middlemarch Mystery.
The second episode of Making Middlemarch brings you conversations straight from the rehearsal room.
Discover how the idea of The Great Middlemarch Mystery was conceived and why the source text’s author, George Eliot, continues to enchant us today.