Lisa Spirling and Hanna Streeter on their plans for Stratford East: ‘We hope people feel brave enough to come and see more than one thing’

The new leadership at Stratford East has hit the ground running as it unveils a brand new season.

Artistic director and co-CEO Lisa Spirling, formerly the artistic director of Theatre503, acknowledged the practical realities of the quick turnaround. “The work I’ve done previously, and the same for Hanna, that takes years – years of relationships, commissioning, and nurturing,” she explained, noting the pressure to programme the first six months quickly. The resulting season, she stated, is guided by “open hearts and inquisitive minds,” using the venue as a platform to present work the leadership believes the east London audience “would love.”

Streeter, executive director and co-CEO, emphasised that this first season is designed to immediately establish a clear strategic balance. “Our first season together celebrates our wonderfully vibrant east London communities, welcomes world-class artists, and reaffirms our commitment to young people,” she said, stressing the importance of balancing the theatre’s legacy with a fresh artistic chapter.

The main house season features three productions. It opens with the UK premiere of Here There Are Blueberries (31 January to 28 February 2026), a 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist from Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich’s Tectonic Theater Project. The play centres on the arrival of a mysterious photo album at a Holocaust memorial museum. For Spirling, the work avoids easy answers, instead examining the “complicity of a society or the people that did it, the perpetrators.”

She noted the play moved her because it forced a reflection on “how society takes a series of steps where civic liberties… is eroded to a point of something as horrific as the Holocaust.” The run will be supported by a series of post-show talks developed in collaboration with FASPE (Fellowships at Auschwitz of the Study of Professional Ethics).

Following this is the London premiere of Choir Boy (26 March to 25 April 2026), Tarell Alvin McCraney’s acclaimed coming-of-age story, directed by Nancy Medina. Spirling cited the pairing of Medina and McCraney as a natural fit for the venue, stating the play “epitomises the warmth with which we want to hold our audiences.”

The programme concludes with Spirling’s directorial debut as artistic director, the world premiere of Bloodsport: After Helen of Troy. The commitment to staging this work by the much-garlanded playwright Ava Pickett is a long-term one for Spirling, who described it as “the play that I’ve been burning to do for a long time.” She first read and championed the work at Theatre503, even before the writer had completed the commissions for plays like 1536, that led to her subsequent awards.

Spirling recalled falling in love with the script while still at 503, but noted that “the scale and size of 503 and this play is big,” necessitating an outside strategy. It was later developed in partnership with Eleanor Lloyd Productions before becoming a key element of Spirling’s pitch for Stratford East, where the production values and stage could meet the work’s ambition. Spirling explained that it was a play she was “very excited to connect… with that stage with that audience,” highlighting its thematic relevance to the east London area: “In terms of how it speaks to this area and Essex and masculinity and feminism and all those things, it just made total sense.”

While the main productions anchor the season, the new leadership is explicit about the strategic importance of the theatre’s supporting programme. Streeter noted the programme is designed to show “the breadth of work” the theatre can offer, which extends beyond the longer runs to include the Christmas panto Mama Goose and a strong schedule of one-nighters, including the comedy evening Bring the Laughter and the performance event Stand with Palestinians: Messages from Gaza.

Spirling underscored that these one-off events are not secondary to the main season. “The one-nighters… are equally as valid and as important and actually are the kind of, I suppose, the DNA, the bloodline that then carries through into everything else,” she said, viewing them as both “proof of audience” for certain genres and a crucial component of talent development.

This commitment is supported by community-focused initiatives such as the launch of Newham Neighbours, which will provide free tickets and workshops to local residents, and the allocation of 3,500 tickets for the season priced at £10.

Streeter summarised the approach by framing the launch as an effort to build trust with the theatre’s existing and potential patrons. “We hope that there’s something for everyone in there and that people feel brave enough to come and see more than one thing,” she concluded, placing the onus on the audience to engage with the new chapter.