This year Flute Theatre will be ten years old. To celebrate our tenth birthday, we are holding the first ever Flute Theatre Festival at Riverside Studios London from the 19th- 31st of August 2024. 

 We will perform all four of our Shakespeare productions adapted for autistic individuals and their families; The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Pericles and Twelfth Night during the two-week festival. 

 Up to twelve autistic individuals become the participants for each performance, sitting with six actors in a circle on our stage. Their families or carers can join us in the circle or sit just behind to watch. The actors invite the participants to help them unravel Shakespeare’s story through sensory games which everyone plays together. Each performance is adapted to the specific needs of the participants, however complex they may be.

 We will perform the London premiere of our new mainstage production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream alongside performances of our Hamlet: Collateral Damage.  

 We will be holding a Forum on Saturday 25th of August at 14.00 to celebrate Flute Theatres’ international work with autistic communities in Peru, Spain, US, Romania and with Ukrainian Refugees in Bulgaria.  The forum will be co-hosted by our artistic director Kelly Hunter MBE and Dr Jamie Ward. We will be joined by our Flute families from across the world, by video link. 

 This will be the first international festival of its kind, with audiences who are usually marginalized by autism being invited to take part in collaborative Shakespeare productions performing with our multi-lingual, international artists. We will adapt the language of the performances to the needs of the participants, with more than one language being spoken in any one performance if needs be.