The Guest

BE OUR GUEST

Cockahoop Theatre is developing its new play The Guest. To be performed for a three-week run at Omnibus Theatre – Clapham, London in April 2025.

The Guest is only partly funded by Arts Council England. So, we are still fundraising, need your help and would like to invite you into the conversation. 

The arts have been badly hit in the past few years and we need your help towards paying freelancers, ensuring that individual creatives are paid fairly in this tough time for the arts. We also need your support towards the production's engagement with diverse communities and people with lived experience of migration. 

The challenges we are facing are unprecedented, and without the generosity of donors like you, our ability to create and share meaningful theatre experiences may be jeopardized. 

Thank you for considering our appeal and for being a champion for the arts during these challenging times.

YOUR CONTRIBUTION

Your donation, no matter the size, will make a significant impact on our ability to bring our vision to life, support our talented freelance artists, engage with diverse communities and maintain the high standards of our production. As a token of our appreciation, we are offering various rewards to our donors, including the opportunity to meet with The Guest Creative Team and have lunch with Cockahoop directors. 

We recognise our lives are contradictory, tough, joyful, funny, always individual. We tell stories using poetic language and striking visual imagery to reimagine the society we live in now. We want audiences and ourselves to explore whether we can live better. 

With your help we can continue rehearsing better ways of living.  

THE PLAY

The Guest will build awareness of the experience of migration, and allow diverse audiences to see themselves, their stories, anguishes, hopes and dreams represented. 

The Guest is a new play responding to the movement of people due to war, climate change and inequity. It is written by Stephanie Jacob and directed by Lucy Richardson who together form Cockahoop.

Set in the near future in a town near ‘here’, a couple are visited by a stranger from ‘there’. Do they invite them in or build their wall higher? The stranger keeps returning with offers and demands. How can she tell her story and be welcomed? Meanwhile the world becomes more dangerous, and the days get hotter. Through the lens of the strange the play explores how and why, as humans, we open or close ourselves to the ‘other’, discover empathy or resist it.

Set in the near future, this serious comedy asks what happens if you welcome the uninvited Guest? Will the cracks between the couple widen? And what does their mysterious Guest really want?

EVERYONE’S INVITED

In 2023/2024 through creative workshops and conversations, professional actors and migrant communities helped develop the play’s concept and create the back stories for the characters. Since then, Cockahoop Theatre have been hard at work developing the final script. 

In March 2025 a group of diverse creatives (including those with lived experience of migration) will embark on an exciting journey to bring the work to life. The play will then be performed at Omnibus Theatre for 3 weeks (8 to 26 Apr 2025).

Surrounding the production, we are planning a series of engagement events built in partnership with groups and individuals with lived experience of migration. We plan to collaborate with organisations representing migrant communities from across London to encourage artistic responses to the work and debate. We are planning drama workshops, curtain raisers, panel discussions and an exhibition by people with lived experience, ensuring the production will be a platform for much needed nuanced debate with migrants’ voices at its core.

Cockahoop searches for solutions to complicated problems and makes an artistic space for unusual stories told in new ways. This production is responding to urgent/complex issues. Globally governments are grappling with the migration ‘crisis’. The UK government has made divisive decisions in recent years. The narrative around refugees is predominantly negative, heightened since the Brexit campaign. Migration has been made an election issue over and again, but migrant voices are rarely heard in the debate. We need more nuanced, creative discussions. The Guest aims to make a platform for these conversations to take place. And you are invited. Be part of the conversation and donate to The Guest. 

ABOUT COCKAHOOP THEATRE

Cockahoop Theatre creates new plays for our times.

Cockahoop is actor/writer Stephanie Jacob (Small Island and Nye at the National Theatre, Writers’ Guild Award Winner) and director/dramaturg Lucy Richardson (Offie-nominated Mid Life at the Barbican).

A female-led organization, our work focuses on the voices of people who are underrepresented, in the arts and more widely and we create fresh and unexpected roles for women. 

**** “Thrilling theatre” WestEnd Wilma

**** “Tough and touching…fitting wit into the anguish” Time Out

**** “Moving, funny, infinitely relatable, … with an ingenious theatrical twist” LondonTheatre

**** “Witty and poignant” StageTalk Magazine  

THE REWARDS - OUR THANKS TO YOU

£15: The feel good feeling. Unlimited

Get that great feeling of knowing that you have contributed to something amazing. And our eternal gratitude.

£25: A thank you shout out on our website. Unlimited  

We want to let everyone know about your important contribution and will name you on our website. If you wish to of course.

If you would like to be named on our website, please let us know your full name and email address. 

£35: Name on show programme. 20 available   

You will be named on our show programme. Please let us know your full name and email address by 10th February 2025.  

£50: A Print of show image by artist Henri T. 50 available 

To be picked up at Omnibus’ box office.  

£100: Name on show programme + Ticket for the opening night. 15 available  

1 ticket for our opening night (10th April 2025) will be left at Omnibus box office for you.  You will also be named on our show programme. Please let us know your full name and email address by 10th February 2025.   

£150 A special Season Reward (only available until 23rd December 2024). Unlimited 

Please note that this reward is no longer available. But you can still pledging £150 by clicking on the 'Donate' button and entering the amount manually.

We will send a specially designed season greetings digital card to up to 15 people you name.

You will need to send us the names and email addresses of the people you would like us to send the digital cards to.

Please note that this reward will only run till 23rd December 2024. 

£200: A signed book by Stephanie Jacob (Three-Eyed Wolf). 25 available 

You will get a signed copy of the book Three-Eyed Wolf - a series of poems about Boudica by Cockahoop’s playwright and poet Stephanie Jacob.  

We will need your postal address to send your reward. 

£500: Come to watch rehearsal and meet the team + lunch with Cockahoop directors. Only 3 available 

You will have the opportunity of watching The Guest creatives in action during rehearsal and have lunch with Cockahoop directors lucy Richardson and Stephanie Jacob. 

Rehearsals will take place in March 2025. Exact date for the delivery of this reward to be mutually agreed.