South east London's The Bridge House Theatre and The Jack Studio Theatre are joining forces once again to produce a new writing festival, SE Fest.
The two award-winning venues are building on last year's success with SE Fest 2025 taking place over the first half of September, during which participating companies will have the opportunity to stage their productions in either or both spaces.
The producers are looking for productions that are socially conscious and demonstrate how they provide opportunities for or representation of underrepresented groups, including (but not exclusively) working-class artists, artists from the Global Majority, non-binary or gender-fluid artists and LGBTQ+ artists.
Both The Bridge House Theatre and The Jack Studio Theatre have a sound reputation for supporting and presenting new writing. The arrangements for SE Fest include a pre-festival network evening with an invited industry speaker providing a free advice session on how to bring work to the stage.
The Bridge House Theatre in Penge has been running since 2014, and has been under the artistic directorship of JLA Productions’ Luke Adamson since 2021, who runs the theatre with associate director Joseph Lindoe. Productions at the venue, which is a stone’s-throw from its local tube station, have received numerous OffWestEnd nominations and, at last year’s Offies Awards ceremony, JLA took home its own award.
The Jack Studio in Crofton Park is under the artistic directorship of Kate Bannister, who runs the theatre with Karl Swinyard. The venue hosts scratch nights, film screenings, workshops and rehearsals as well as a wide range of theatre productions. Bannister won the OffWestEnd Artistic Director Award 2024, and The Jack was awarded London Pub Theatre of the Year 2023 and Best in Creative Sector, Mayor of Lewisham Awards 2023.
Applications are open until 15 June and can be made through either The Jack or The Bridge House web sites; the festival programme will be announced in July and will comprise 24 performances across matinée and evening slots. All scripts submitted for consideration should not have been publicly performed more than three times prior to this September.
SE Fest will run from 2 to 13 September 2025.