London Performance Studios is pleased to present Radical Rediscovery II: Homosexual Acts and Beyond, an ambitious new archival exhibition, symposium and series of play readings celebrating fifty years of LGBTQ+ alternative theatre in the UK. 

The programme marks 50 years since Homosexual Acts, the first Gay Theatre Season in Britain that took place at the Almost Free Theatre in 1975. It shares an array of materials from the Unfinished Histories archive alongside other sources, and is curated by its director and co-founder Dr. Susan Croft. 

The exhibition opens with a series of vitrines that chart the growth of the movement in London and elsewhere, from street theatre created by activists in the Gay Liberation Front to touring Gay Sweatshop plays that changed the lives of audiences in isolated communities, and from the radical drag work of Bloolips and the lesbian camp of Hard Corps and Parker and Klein, to the advent of Black lesbian, gay and queer work in the late 80s. 

It continues with a series of posters ranging Noel Greig’s and Drew Griffiths’ As Time Goes By for Gay Sweatshop in 1978, via the Brixton Faeries’ Gents (1980), to Jackie Kay’s Chiaroscuro for Theatre of Black Women in 1986 and the lesbian pantomime Cinderella at the Drill Hall in 1987. Also featured are designer Kate Owen’s original set models for shows including Sue Frumin’s Bohemian Rhapsody at Oval House (1980), Bryony Lavery’s Kitchen Matters (Gay Sweatshop, 1990) and Noel Greig’s Stairway to Heaven (Shared Experience, 1994).

An installation of Bloolips costumes and props forms a focal point of the exhibition. Drawing on materials from the personal archive of Lavinia Co-op, the installation reanimates the radical drag troupe’s groundbreaking work. 

The second exhibition space acts as a live, discursive container for catalysing conversations and happenings that spring forth from the materials in the first. It features two monitors including Unfinished Histories’ extensive archive of oral history interviews, and extracts from recent productions and staged readings rediscovering key plays of the period, from Irish gay writer Colm O’ Clubhain’s 1986 Reasons for Staying (The AIDS Play Project, 2025), to Melissa Murray’s Ophelia (FYFFI 1, 2024), originally staged by Hormone Imbalance in 1979, to Than Hussein Clark’s 2023 reimagining of Gay Sweatshop’s 1978 Iceberg. 

This is accompanied by an ambitious timeline that attempts to capture a history of LGBTQ+ alternative theatre from 1975 to the 1990s and now, as well as a reading table with publications, scripts and texts from the period, alongside documentation of companies and plays by Sheila Burnett including Bloolips, Split Britches and the legendary Drill Hall pantos.

Throughout the exhibition run, informal and pop-up events will activate the space, inviting exhibition visitors into spontaneous encounters with the materials and impromptu readings. Visitors are invited to read, share, edit and update the contents of this room, which acts as a live document in and of itself, grappling with the inevitable incompleteness of the LGBTQ+ theatre and activist histories documented throughout.

The exhibition is accompanied by a public programme of staged readings and a symposium through November and December. Dragging Up and Acting Out: a Symposium takes place over the exhibition opening weekend, and will feature panels with guest speakers and a Long Table alongside new work commissioned by early career artists in response to this earlier history. Discussions will explore the breadth of LGBTQ+ theatre over the past fifty years, taking a deep dive into rich and little-known histories and exploring how they can inspire us today. Friday evening will also feature a rehearsed reading of Son of a Gun, originally developed by Sidewalk Theatre company in 1976.

Two staged readings are programmed during the exhibition run. These are Where To Now?, a play by Martin Patrick exploring the conflict of a young black university lecturer forced into confronting his identity in the context of the Brixton riots of 1981, originally produced at Oval House by the Dyhard Theatre Company, and Rites, a wild, darkly comic but disturbing reworking of a Euripides play originally produced in 1969 by the National Theatre at the Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre. 

A selection of the plays featured in the programme will be collated into a new compendium, Radical Rediscoveries II, published by Montez Press. This will be the second in the Radical Rediscoveries publication series, and the third publication in the Scores imprint, which publishes plays, scripts and performance texts co-commissioned by Montez Press and London Performance Studios.

This programme follows on from year one of Radical Rediscoveries, which celebrated histories of alternative theatre made by women that took place at London Performance Studios last year.

Radical Rediscovery: Homosexual Acts and Beyond is organised by Unfinished Histories as part of the Associate Artists Programme.

Special thanks to Rachel Mars, Rebecca Scroggs, Alexander Gallimore, Alexandra Arden and Jessica Higgs.