After an incredibly successful debut in March 2025, Women’s Voices: A Celebration returns to The Playground Theatre, produced and curated by Naomi Sorkin and co-produced by Myriam Cyr, Nicole Ansari-Cox and Kamini Banga

Timed to coincide with International Women’s Day, this pioneering female-led festival shines a spotlight on extraordinary women across theatre, music, dance, literature, and the visual arts. With performances, exhibitions, talks, and community workshops, WVAC Fest is a vibrant platform for creativity, connection, and powerful storytelling.

In Who’d Love Lucy? the titular “crazy girl” recounts heartbreaks that led her to a sticky situation, seeking advice about skeletons in her closet. Who’d love a girl with a hitlist?

A single painting sold for $122 million. In an era where we measure worth in likes, clicks, and net worth, Munch’s The Scream has become the most expensive “emoji” in history. But what happens when the man behind the canvas returns to ask: “Is anyone actually listening?”

SESSIONS imagines Edvard Munch returning from the afterlife—not for a standing ovation, but for a therapy session.

Caught between a legendary past and a digital present, Munch faces a therapist-in-training to confront grief, ambition, and the quiet injuries that fame never heals. As he struggles to be heard, he holds a mirror up to a world that has forgotten how to look up from its screens.

Neither biopic nor tribute, acclaimed Austrian playwright Peter Turrini’s bold solo play casts Hedy Lamarr as her own witness, accuser, and defense. Haunted by a seven-second nude scene that defined her public memory and moving from Hollywood scandal to scientific erasure, the play explores the fractured inner life of the icon and overlooked inventor: Nicole Ansari Cox is lending her voice to Lamarr as she speaks back to history with rage, wit and dark humour, reclaiming a legacy long reduced to image over intellect.

A Staged Reading

Daughters of Persia celebrates one of the great cultures of the world through the eyes of its women. Award-winning and celebrated performers, Shala Nyx and Flora Spencer-Longhurst, narrate a colourful and moving script by the Oscar-nominated screenwriter William Nicholson (Gladiator, Les Misérables), bringing to life the stories of its extraordinary women from history, literature and mythology. Created by Margaret Fingerhut and Farhad Poupei with Bradley Creswick violin, Guy Johnston cello and Margaret Fingerhut piano

31-year-old aspiring writer Vera gets the opportunity to create a TV show based on her beloved grandmother’s life, but is torn between her own ambitions and her grandmother’s dying wish: that Vera tells the “right” story, or none at all.

*please note: this is a work in progress performance*

Written by RB8 | Directed by PB Whistle

Three women connected by blood, spanning over three generations. One running. One yearning. One with a calling. Each must go on a journey if they are to find peace and resolution within themselves.

To date, a significant number of children in the DRC are used as combatants, transports, spies, chefs or sexual slaves within the armed groups and militias. The LOST Lombi lifts the lid on the recruitment of child soldiers while exploring identity, the generational trauma of war, the necessity of belonging and the importance of forgiveness.

A tribute through stories and songs - the show charts the relationship,  music and drama of two legendary figures of rock and roll – Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. Featuring songs from Fleetwood Mac and Buckingham Nicks.

The trials & tribulations of writing TOM JOAD AND ME - a memoir inspired by Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath"- about being a teenage North of Ireland immigrant in 1970's London… when the Irish weren't as welcome as they are today...

Perrier nominated Comedian, Actor, Poet & Author, Owen O'Neill, hilariously tells key anecdotes from the book with video and music from the time… An uproarious no-holds-barred telling of a life lived by a boy who who changed his name to TOM JOAD in an attempt to escape his enormous, overwhelming Catholic family... but even when he ran to the other side of the Earth, he could never escape his past.

Are you taking work to the Edinburgh Fringe this year?

Or developing a piece that deserves to be seen before it heads north?

The Playground Theatre invites artists to present their work as part of our Pre-Edinburgh Festival Showcase: a curated season designed to support artists in the crucial lead-up to the Fringe.

This is your opportunity to share your show with a live London audience, refine your performance and build momentum before the festival begins.

SHE/ HER is a multimedia performance that excavates the individual and collective female experience.

through music, story and movement, a diverse group of women hold space for the personal and Universal. The show is dedicated to the brave women in Iran, who sparked the Woman, Life, Freedom movement.

The show was critically acclaimed but most importantly, it moved audience members to look at their own relationship to self, their Mothers, daughters and Women in general. The show will morph into new Iterations with new stories and music and new performers wherever it will go in the hope of giving voice to 50% of

humanity that has been ignored, pillaged, raped and silenced.

Five extraordinary women, leaders in business, finance and public life, lend their voices to the Women’s Voices Festival in an intimate and revealing evening of storytelling.

Panel discussion with:

• Allison Kirkby (BT)

• Dame Emma Walmsley (GSK)

• Dame Clara Furse (HSBC)

• The Baroness Minouche Shafik (Cheif Economic Advisor to the PM)

• The Baroness Shriti Vadera (Former Labour Minister, Chair of the RSC)

Chaired by Kamini Banga 

Produced by Myriam Cyr

Debut of Janie Dee's new piece exploring movement, words and songs connected to the moon. Written and performed by Janie Dee, this new work brings together performance and music in an exploratory performance performed for the first time at Women's Voices: A Celebration festival. 

This is the riveting story of Noor Inayat Khan, a descendant of an Indian prince, Tipu Sultan (the Tiger of Mysore), who became a British secret agent for SOE during World War II.

From the novel, Shrabani Basu tells the moving story of Noor's life, from her birth in Moscow - where her father was a Sufi preacher - to her capture by the Germans. Noor was one of only three women SOE agents awarded the George Cross and, under torture, revealed nothing, not even her real name.

Kept in solitary confinement, her hands and feet chained together, Noor was starved and

beaten, but the Germans could not break her spirit. Ten months after she was captured, she was taken to Dachau concentration camp and, on 13 September 1944, she was shot. Her last word was 'Liberté?

Gypsy Caravan...when the Road Bends is an award-winning documentary that explores the vibrant musical traditions of the Roma while revealing the complex realities of Romani life around the world. Through electrifying performances and intimate, behind-the-scenes moments filmed across Europe, the USA and beyond, the film weaves music with deeply personal stories of culture, identity and resilience.

A celebration of life and music that will leave your toes tapping, your heart pumping

and your soul uplifted by the glorious journey of the Gypsy Caravan concert tour.

A rare opportunity to hear one of the great interpreters of Shakespeare in conversation with one of his most complex women.

Part personal reflection, part theatrical masterclass, this talk offers an extraordinary insight into Shakespeare’s most enigmatic heroine, through the eyes of an actor who helped redefine her for the modern stage.

Who’s performing? That’s part of the fun. An Evening of Women Stand-Up Comedians features a surprise lineup of bold, brilliant comics delivering smart, unpredictable stand-up. No spoilers, just great jokes, big energy, and nonstop laughs. This special event closes the Women’s Voices: A Celebration Festival at the Playground Theatre, ending the festival on a high note of laughter and fearless comedy.

MULTIPLE FIVE STAR HIT AT THE 2019 EDINBURGH FRINGE!

They have depended on death for a living, but for undertakers, Welshman Eurig, and Derry-man, Connor even that has let them down. Business is dying, every new burial is a lifeline… As they endlessly await the client of Mr Charles Sterling's unusually heavy coffin, they ruminate on love, death and the meaning of their grave lives.

Peter Tate as Picasso

Co-Adapted by Peter Tate and Guy Masterson from the original work by Terry d'Alfonso

Directed by Guy Masterson

AFTER A ED FRINGE RUN WITH 5 & 4 STARS REVIEWS PICASSO: LE MONSTRE SACRE IS BACK ONCE MORE TO THE PLAYGROUND THEATRE

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ "marvellous, brilliant, enthralling" British Theatre Guide  

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ "an artistic and theatrical masterpiece." Edinburgh Guide 

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ UK Theatre Network  

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ "Peter Tate is mesmerising in this one man tour de force." One4Review 

★ ★ ★ ★ "burns into your soul both seductive and shocking" North West End  

★ ★ ★ ★  "an absorbing, sharply textured piece." Culture Fix 

★ ★ ★ ★ Quintessential Review  

★ ★ ★ ★ ReviewsHub 

★ ★ ★ ★  The UpComing