Frantic Assembly unveils 30th anniversary season as it renews fundraising efforts

The world premiere of Anna Jordan’s latest play and a new staging of Saint Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals performed from memory will form part of Frantic Assembly’s new programme, which celebrates 30 years of the theatre company. 

Alongside the announcement of the programme’s highlights, Frantic Assembly has revealed it will partake in a national fundraising campaign in an effort to restore its slashed talent development programme that is being backed by the likes of Paapa Essiedu and Lenny Henry. 

Directed by Frantic Assembly’s artistic director Scott Graham, Jordan’s newest play Lost Atoms, which explores love and memory, will tour for 17 weeks from September 2025, with specific dates and venues still to be released. 

Commissioned and co-produced by Frantic Assembly with Curve, MAST Mayflower Southampton and the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, the creative team will also include set designer Andzrej Goulding, lighting designer Simisola Majekodunmi, sound designer Carolyn Downing, music supervisor Julie Blake and costume designer Alice McNicholas.

Another highlight of the programme is a new staging of Saint Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, performed from memory by Aurora Orchestra with movement by Frantic Assembly. 

Accompanied by design, lighting and new text by Kate Wakening, it will premiere at London’s Southbank Centre on May 3, 2025, before touring to Snape Maltings in Suffolk on May 11 and the Apex in Bury St Edmunds, on May 23.

Following its run at Chichester Festival Theatre in May, Headlong’s production of Laura Lomas’ the House Party will also return for further touring dates as part of the 30th anniversary scene, visiting Leeds Playhouse, Rose Theatre Kingston and Bristol Old Vic between February and May 2025. 

Directed by Holly Race Roughen with movement direction by Scott Graham, The House Party is co-produced with Chichester Festival Theatre in association with Frantic Assembly. 

Meanwhile, Frantic Assembly has also announced it will release a "new viral challenge" in 2025, aiming to give people around the world the opportunity to explore their creativity with a simple, step-by-step task. 

It aims to mimic Chair Duets, a task-based devising blueprint aiming to democratise choreographing physical theatre, which was streamed online by the theatre company, receiving hundreds of thousands of views, including in classrooms.  

The company will also release a third edition of its book about devising theatre, which will be updated with new content from Graham, and published by Routledge in late 2025. 

Finally, following Frantic Assembly’s decision to slash its talent development programme Ignition for the first time in the scheme’s 15 year history amid a funding drought, it has announced it will be partaking in this year’s Big Give Christmas Challenge to ramp up its fundraising efforts. 

Since Ignition was cut in May of this year, Frantic Assembly has raised more than half of the £75k running cost of the project needed to bring it back next year. 

Now every pound raised towards the effort will be matched by the Big Give fundraiser, which is supported by the Julia Rausing Trust. Artists including Lenny Henry, Guy Garvey and Ignition alumnus Paapa Essiedu have lent their support to the renewed Christmas campaign. 

The announcement comes after Graham warned The Stage that philanthropists’ preference for venues and other bricks-and-mortar organisations can leave more "ephemeral" companies, like his own, underfunded. 

Heralding Frantic Assembly’s  anniversary season, Graham said: "I am not sure how to feel about Frantic Assembly turning 30. That seems like quite a large number to capture what essentially feels like a blur! But when I stop to think about it there is much to be proud of. I like to think there has been a positive impact upon how theatre is made, who gets to make it, and how our young people are invited to engage with it.

"Our productions, outreach and accessible training have spawned a methodology that invites and supports creativity from those who might have found theatre distant or elitist. I am proud of that.

"But I am not going to spend too long celebrating the 30th birthday. I am more interested in ‘what’ s next?’ It can be fun to look back but it is much more exciting to look forward."