AROUND THE WORLD

Episode 1: Birmingham – Paris 

WHEN – 19:00 BST 1st June, 2026

WHERE – Live on Twitch

A series of domestic tragedies have caused Reggie to abandon his home in Birmingham and take to the skies. While suspended between heaven and earth, flying a beautiful silver Cessna, he reflects on the life behind him and earth below him. His playfully erudite stream of consciousness roams across the landscape and through time as he plots how to put his life back together.

This live solo performance mixes scripted material with improvisation, music and the Microsoft Flight Simulator computer game. Depending on flying conditions, it is expected to last 140 minutes.

TICKETS – Since we’re performing on Twitch, this show is non-ticketed and completely free! In the physical world, ticket sales would be helping to cover our expenses, so if you fancy helping us make more work, a donation link can be found on our Twitch page.

Our aim is to perform a new episode of this adventure each week. You will find your own favourite way of watching it and, by making your own account, we hope you can join us in the chat!

We are excited to invite candidates to apply for a Collaborative Doctoral Award we are co-hosting with the University Of Birmingham’s College of Arts and Law. This is a four year, full time PhD studentship, funded by UKRI through CreaTech Frountiers.

Full details of the opportunity, including how to apply, are given here. In precis, we are looking for a practical academic to accompany us as we explore how to create and share more of our work in the digital realm. Your project may take the shape of a traditional written PhD or a practice-based PhD, depending on the candidate’s expertise and interests.

This is will be the third PhD studentship we have hosted. Previously:

Dr. Anthony Ruck earned his PhD from University of Warwick. Working with the Department of Sociology and Department of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Studies he used a study of our Creative Learning practice as the basis for his thesis: ‘A New Cultural Capital’? Social & Political Potentials for Arts and Cultural Education in England.

It was great having Anthony with us, his insights on our work and the reflections he elicited from schools proved useful to us. He is now Chief Strategy Officer at Cultural Central.

Dr. James Macilwrath earned his PhD from Royal Birmingham Conservertoire (Birmingham City University). Working with the Department of Composition he created a body of work within his role as our Composer In Residence. He pulled this together within a thesis Composition As Workplace Intervention: adding value to Stan’s Cafe.

We valued having James around a great deal. His musical interventions and support added signficiant value to the company. James now continues his career as a professional musician.

Closing Date 12:00 BST 3rd June

This project is engaging with 240 Year 5 pupils from four partner schools in Walsall – New Invention Learning Academy, Croft Academy, Woods Bank Academy, and Birchills CofE Community Academy. Craig and Rebecca have been working closely with the children, who are learning all about the life and legacy of Victorian nurse Sister Dora.

As part of the project, we took the students to explore key heritage sites, including Walsall Archive, the Sister Dora statue, St Paul’s Church and Walsall Leather Museum. The children have really enjoyed walking in the footsteps of Sister Dora and learning about their local history.

The project will culminate in the students writing an illustrated biography and song about Sister Dora.

Thank you to all involved.

Photos by Ming de Nasty.

Made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund, with thanks to National Lottery players.

Time Critical plots Stan’s Cafe’s history as it intersects with global news, at the scale of two minutes per year. Each revival extends the show and already 2026 has thrown up two candidates for inclusion.

The day Iran was attacked and started retaliating was one of existential fear and physical peril for millions at the epicentre of the action. For Stan’s Cafe it was the day it became clear that our plan to fly to Adelaide, via Dubai Airport, to perform Of All The People In All The World was not going to fly. It prompted a hastily improvised emergency version of the show led by the one member of our team already in Australia.

I stayed up through a succession of nights supporting Carys via WhatsApp and her team of local performers as they performed the show at WOMADilade. One of the statistics measured out in rice was the population of Tehran. At one point in the performance a woman sat cross-legged taking individual grains off the big pile and using them to create a smaller pile, when quizzed about this she explained that these grains were all her family and friends currently living in the city under attack. Other audience members started gathering around as she told stories of her homeland, it all got very emotional.

Fast forward just a few days and here we are in Canterbury, performing the same show at the Gulbenkian Arts Centre on the campus of Kent University, where, just last week, TV crews were filming students queuing to be inoculated after an outbreak of meningitis in the city. Audience numbers aren’t what they otherwise might be.

If things carry on like this we may just start developing a Jonah Complex.

This is how it should be. You rock up to your local arts venue – in this case MAC. You see a thoughtful show with strong performances, some geat movement and glints of humour – in this case Alterd Skin’s When We See Each Other. Afterwards you go to the venue’s bar, which is still open and order some drinks – in this case lovely cool crisp larger. Then, with some mates, whilst drinking your drink, you critique the show. During the critique some more mates and aquaintances wander in and the critique widens out to a discussion of politics and – in this case, jokes about noise cancelling headphones effectively cancelling your friend’s droning on. Then, even later, after second drinks have been mostly drunk, one of the artists turns up and says ‘hello’ and you discuss the show and state of theatre with them. Finally, you cycle home, in the sweet night air, reflecting on what a ‘good night out’ that was, and how nights like that were once regular, and if circumstances contrived again to allow it, you’d love them to become regular again.

Photo Credit: Graeme Braidwood

The contract will be broken into phases:

Phase 1: Rehearsal between 9th – 15th April 2026 with a performance on 16th April

Phase 2: Rehearsal 19th Oct – 1st Nov 2026 with a performance on 2nd November 

Phase 3: Vertical recording of the Sketches for social media TBC

We are looking for people who are:

• a strong actor
• good with comedy
• precise with text
• confident with devising
• Playing age 12 – 18 

This is a paid opportunity – three weeks of work at £709.00 a week.

Please send a CV making clear your experience and a short paragraph explaining why you would like to audition to casting@stanscafe.co.uk.

Deadline for applications: 12pm, Sunday 15th March.

Auditions w/c 16th March.

Non-gender specific. Open to all who fit the playing age. Everyone is welcome. 

Any questions, please email Rebecca Rochelle via creativelearning@stanscafe.co.uk.

Last year one of my favourite podcasts, 99% Invisible, convened a book club encouraging listeners to read The Powerbroker, Robert Caro’s riveting 1,200 page long biography of urban planner Robert Moses. Through extraordinary manoeuvring he amassed huge power in New York and used this build an insane number of roads, bridges, dams, parks and playgrounds plus the Lincoln Center, the United Nations HQ etc and on. He was a total nightmare in many ways and one of the very few people who got the better of him was Joseph Papp.

Now, Joe Papp crossed swords with Moses in the sixties as he fought to establish free Shakespeare festival in Central Park, but we know about him because he established The Public Theatre on Lafyette St. where we performed The Cardinals back in 2015 (its music venue is called Joe’s Pub).

So now I’m reading Pap’s biography and it’s seriously inspiring. He was from a poor Jewish immigrant family. He fell in love with theatre and was determined to make things happen. He pioneered integrated casting and hustled the Free Shakespeare Festival into existence (it’s still going 60 years later). He raised the money to save New York’s first public library from demolition and convert it into a theatre. The Public Theatre as been a home for radical off-broadway shows ever since (as well as hosting Stan’s Cafe within the legendary Under The Radar Festival it was notably also home to the premiere of Hamilton).

The Public’s acute social conscience is evident in their responses in moments of great public such as the Covid Pandemic, Black Lives Matter and local flooding. Now I notice that on Saturday they are hosting A protest for humanity: The People’s Filibuster.

And so we come back to Robert Caro. Inspired by The Powerbroker I’m now half of a two person book club with my Sister-In-Law, ‘American’ Karen. We are three volumes into Caro’s other book, a ludicrously brilliant and absurdly long biography of Lyndon Johnson. We’ve just been learning about how, for decades, southern senators used the filibuster to prevent civil rights reform. Reading an account of Strom Thurmond’s 24 hour solo filibuster in 1957, I had started to wonder about a context in which this performance form might be used to interesting ends – The Public Theatre are already there.

I hope this is a big success for them. If I was in the big apple I’d be right there with them all power to The Public.

Update – it happened