Headlong announces 2026 season

Headlong has announced details of its 2026 season.

A new production of August Wilson’s Fences, directed by Daniel Bailey, will tour the UK from September in a co-production with Leeds Playhouse, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre and HOME Manchester. The play will open at Leeds Playhouse from 11 to 26 September before visiting Oxford Playhouse from 30 September to 3 October, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre from 6 to 31 October, HOME Manchester from 3 to 7 November and Nottingham Playhouse from 10 to 14 November.

The creative team includes casting director Heather Basten, designer Lily Arnold, composer and sound designer Khalil Madovi, lighting designer Jai Morjaria, movement director Shelley Maxwell, fight director Kev McCurdy and design associate Emily King.

Set in 1950s Pittsburgh, Fences follows former baseball player Troy Maxson as he navigates family life, work and his own unresolved ambitions. The production will also open Leeds Playhouse’s new artistic director Tom Wright’s first season.

Headlong has also announced that Naeem Hayat will become associate artistic director from January 2026. Hayat recently co-directed Headlong’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with artistic director Holly Race Roughan and previously collaborated with her on Henry V.

In summer 2026, Headlong will present Robota: A Creation Story for the End of Time at Oxford University’s Stephen A Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, marking the first full-scale theatre production staged at the new venue.

The production will run from 3 to 18 July and is adapted by Ella Road from Karel Čapek’s 1920 play R.U.R. (which introduced the word “robot” to the English language), with Roy Alexander Weise directing.

The company has also revealed the participants in its 2026 Origins programme, which supports early-career directors based outside London. Now in its sixth year, the programme offers a year of mentorship and engagement with Headlong’s work. The 2026 cohort includes Amelia Michaels from Leicester, Ciaran Stewart from Manchester, Oisín Kearney from Belfast, Robert Furey from Bristol and Amy Hailwood from Wigan.

Following its run at Shakespeare’s Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Headlong’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Holly Race Roughan and Naeem Hayat, will tour the UK in early 2026. The tour will begin at Shakespeare North Playhouse from 3 to 7 February, before visiting Leeds Playhouse from 14 to 28 February, Bristol Old Vic from 4 to 21 March and Oxford Playhouse from 24 to 28 March.

The production is a collaboration between Headlong and Shakespeare’s Globe, with Bristol Old Vic and Leeds Playhouse, and has been created to meet Intermediate Theatre Green Book standards.