DEPARTURE LOUNGE FESTIVAL 2026 LINE UP
- ingoodcompanymids
- May 11
- 8 min read
Updated: 11 hours ago
Departure Lounge Festival – Derby’s Fringe Theatre Festival at Derby Theatre – returns for 2026, from Thursday 2 to Saturday 4 July, and it’s more accessible than ever before.
Join us this July for three packed days of the Midlands’ most exciting new theatre, bringing together bold ideas, fresh voices and artists shaping what’s next.
This year’s line-up is bigger, bolder and more inclusive than ever, featuring hands-on workshops with Common/Wealth and Punchdrunk Enrichment, exclusive Fringe previews, including Charity Shop Sue’s Selina Mosinski and our ever-popular, not-to-be-missed industry panel discussion, where leading voices and Midlands artists unpack the theatre landscape right now.
If you’re passionate about exciting, boundary-pushing theatre, this is where it’s happening.
Departure Lounge 2026 is a festival without barriers, including:
BSL-interpreted and integrated performances and events
Audio-described shows
Fully wheelchair-accessible festival spaces throughout
Below is our full programme line up! If you want to know more about each event click the link and head to Derby Theatre's website.
Make sure you grab your Festival Pass, one ticket that gets you into every show in the festival!* Only coming for one day? No problem, grab a Day Pass and relax as your seat is secured for the day.
*Workshops not included
THURSDAY 2ND JULY
FROM SCRATCH!
19:30 - 22:00
BSL Interpreted
Kick off the festival with our final scratch night FROM SCRATCH! We’re pulling together bold new works from across the Midlands into one night of back to back performances. This evening is a chance for you the audience to come see the beginning of something new, and to get to directly feed into their process to help shape and grow the performances.
FRIDAY 3RD JULY
PANEL DISCUSION
10:00 - 12:00
BSL Interpreted
Join us for our highly anticipated Panel Discussion - a staple of the Departure Lounge Festival. This free event brings together freelancers, artists, organisations and companies to explore the biggest issues shaping the theatre industry today. This year’s theme is Unity & Community; celebrating community focused practices, and exploring better support for artists who actively create meaningful experiences for communities.
Tickets are free, but spaces fill fast so book yours early to avoid missing out.
Stick around afterwards for a free networking lunch in the Upper Foyer, immediately following the discussion.
Panellists will be announced soon.
MESS
A Work In Progress by Laura Goulden
13:45 - 14:45
BSL Integrated
Work-in-progress premier of a new play by Laura Goulden supported by In Good Company Take Off Writers Award 2024.
Family ties make the messiest knots; watch family dynamics unfold in British Sign Language.
Years on from their parents' divorce, adult siblings are still picking up the pieces of their divided family. Can they thrive in their lives, careers and relationships when their example of family is dysfunctional and toxic? Feeling held back by broken roots, can a Deaf brother and hearing sister navigate shared trauma, misremembered childhood and half remembered arguments? Whilst she reflects, he parties!
See Intimate sibling conversations performed in BSL with live English translation delivered to headphones (for those that need it.)
Written by Laura Goulden, a writer, actor and BSL interpreter. Former Artistic Director of Handprint Theatre where she co-created award winning bilingual theatre. As an actor Laura has been a regular at Derby Theatre performing in shows including Tortoise and The Hare, Chicken Licken, and Robin Hood and the Major Oak. Directed by Lilac Yosiphon, a writer-director. Previous credits; Kiss Me Quick Step at Derby Theatre, and working at major venues including; Old Vic, Sheffield Theatres and the National Theatre.
DOING IT YOURSELF WORKSHOP
Common/Wealth
15:00 - 17:30
Not included in the Festival Pass
This workshop will offer a brief introduction to a range of practical exercises to enable you to work with others to create political theatre and make social change. The exercises will give you an insight into Common/Wealth, how we make original theatre about the here and now, and with people who may not have been part of any theatre-making process before. We’ll share our DIY origins, why the company exists, and how we highlight social injustices through making high quality award-winning theatre.
Suitable for people new to theatre, experienced theatremakers, activists and community organisers.
PUSS IN BOOTS: A WORKING CLASS FAIRYTALE
Selina Mosinski
18:45 - 19:45
BSL Interpreted
Before she was viral cult icon Charity Shop Sue, Selina Mosinski was
Randy Cain: an 18-year-old stripper from Derby with a big mouth, bigger
dreams, and no intention of staying small town.
Hitchhiking to London, she slips off-course into a Midlands “titty bar”
adorned with a baroque human-sized birdcage stage, buzzing strip
lights that judge you, stag parties dressed as Papa Smurf – and Garry, a
sleazy casting man who swears he can make her a star.
Part confessional memoir, part riotous character comedy, this is a surreal plunge into Britain’s strip-club boom, 00s ladette culture, and the strange comfort of Sylvia Young - Randy’s guardian angel, who keeps dragging her back towards the light.
A darkly funny, glitter-stained confession about how far we’ll go in the
name of fame and fortune.
PHILOSPHY OF THE WORLD
In Bed With My Brother
20:15 - 22:00
BSL Interpreted
This is our PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD – inspired by the best worst band of all time, The Shaggs. It’s named after their album. PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD (1969). The best worst album of all time.
Part tribute act, part feminist reclamation, part fever dream, PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD is about power, patriarchy, band t-shirts, daddy issues and three sisters, who didn’t want to be a band but it was their destiny.
It’s also about who gets to decide if you’re good or shit.
But it’s mainly about dads.
Featuring questionable mime, high-intensity dance sequences, cheap wigs, jump scares and a well trained actor.
We’ll play the band. You play the audience. It’ll be perfect.
Load up on guns, bring your friends. But please, no smoking in the auditorium.
Oh, and lastly, whatever you do, please don’t tell Tom Cruise about the show. He currently holds the rights to the Shaggs’ story. And we haven’t paid him.
(Free soda on admission.)
SATURDAY 4TH JULY
PUNCHDRUNK ENRICHMENT WORKSHOP
10:30 - 12:00
Not included in the Festival Pass
Join Steve McCourt, Artistic Director of Punchdrunk Enrichment, as he shares key insights into the company’s signature approach to creating immersive theatre. In this participatory session, you’ll learn how Punchdrunk Enrichment creates narratives that place the audience as the protagonists of the story, use design as a storytelling driver and champion child voice as a creative tool. Through a variety of exercises, you’ll leave armed with a palette of ideas for creating your next immersive piece.
Punchdrunk Enrichment was founded in 2008 to take the innovative practice of Punchdrunk into schools, community and family settings. Originally part of Punchdrunk, the company became an independent charity in 2021 and is now based in Brent, London. Today, it is a National Portfolio Organisation dedicated to creating transformational, immersive experiences for as wide an audience as possible.
HOT POT
Akura Productions
11:30 - 12:00
Captioned and with an Audio Described introduction that will explain the staging. The rest of the performance will be stationary and unchanging when actors speak a different language, it will not be translated for the whole audience.
Four university friends reunite years later, at a hot pot restaurant, after the Covid pandemic. Over bubbling broth and shared plates, their laughter peels back memories of simpler days, first love and naive ideals. Conversation soon turns to the quiet divergences that time has carved: careers chosen and abandoned, families expected and resisted, compromises made for security and compromises refused in the name of being true.
Hot Pot is a tender examination of friendship and the small betrayals of adulthood. It traces the heartache of lost love, the friction between dreams and pragmatism, and the work it takes to remain authentic when the world insists otherwise. Warm, inquisitive and rooted in East Asian perspectives, Hot Pot serves up a single night of conversation that explores gay identity with honesty and nuance, questioning what it means to belong to a place, society, partner, and one's true self amidst a queer-unfriendly environment.
LOVE**WORK
Arnold and Komarov
13:15 - 14:45
Captioned, Creative Audio Description
LOVE**WORK is a multi-year performative project that gathers fragments of memory into a shared “Biography Of Many,” tracing the fragile relationship between love and labour. Built from stories collected in Switzerland, England, Pakistan and the Netherlands, the piece weaves anonymous testimonies into a polyphonic landscape where the intimate becomes collective, and the everyday reveals its political weight.
On stage, an ever-shifting architecture of cardboard boxes – remnants of our consumer society – frames a performance in constant transformation. As Arnold & Komarov Travelling Theatre perform, CickinDunt draw live portraits of the audience, turning the theatre into a temporary gallery.
Tender, humorous and at times unsettling, LOVE**WORK holds contradictions side by side: purpose and exhaustion, care and survival, desire and duty. It invites audiences into a communal space where personal histories resonate across borders, and where the question of how—and why—we work and love is shared and reimagined together.
THE LIGHTBULB MOMENT
Proto-type Theatre and Adam York Gregory
16:00 - 19:00
Large text available
It’s just a normal morning, in a normal building, on what looks to be a pretty normal day.
Nash is about to wake up. Get closer. He’s going to turn on the light. Watch…
The Lightbulb Moment is an animation and audio experience from that invites you to a digital world in miniature. Acclaimed artists Proto-type tell a story about systems in motion, chains of cause and effect, and about who has the power to make change.
Put on your headphones and join Nash and his friends as they navigate the chaos of a normal world and all stories, possibilities and quiet revolutions.
The lightbulb flickers, what do you see?
A FOOT IS NOT AN APPROPRIATE PRIZE FOR THE TOMBOLA
Daniel McVey - Edinburgh Fringe Preview
19:15 - 20:30
Captioned and audio described introduction: A pre-show pre-recorded headset intro for visually impaired audience members (alternative to full audio description).
“I’m not in the regular habit of putting dismembered body parts as prizes for my stalls. Unless I’m put in charge of the meat raffle, then that's all dismembered body parts.”
After a severed foot is found in the box of one of the tombola prizes, the Greenwold village fete is thrown into disarray. But Lydia, who runs the tombola stall, is determined not to let it ruin the day. As she pushes on, the revelations get even more bizarre, and as Lydia attempts to work out ‘whodunnit’, it appears there might be a more horrific truth to the village, and the fete than anyone realised.
A camp comedic interactive murder mystery written and performed by ‘vibrant storyteller’ Daniel McVey; inspired by the worlds of cozy crime and cosmic horror, prepare to be intrigued, entertained, and leave questioning the wild world we live in.
Join us on the village green and discover the mysteries of the tombola.
THE CONDITIONAL CITIZEN (DON'T YOU WANT ME, BABY?)
Zoo Indigo
21:00 - 22:00
BSL Interpreted and Creative Audio Description
The Conditional Citizen (Don’t You Want Me Baby?) is a darkly humorous performance about the absurd dance of trying to fit in. She copies. He mimics. They shed. At border control, they strip off her heritage coat with a smile. ‘Don’t you want me, baby?’ But who really gets to cross, to stay, to be accepted, and at what cost?
Suspended in a liminal desert of identity, five conditional citizens navigate the strange rituals of border crossings with satire and sorrow. Framed by the shadows of Brexit and the government’s hostile immigration policies, the performance becomes a timely and provocative response to a world where identity is continually negotiated, stripped back, and reassembled.
Created by Zoo Indigo with an ensemble of performers from migratory contexts, this multidisciplinary piece weaves movement, multilingual spoken word and live music into a politically charged exploration of home and the surreal choreography of borders.
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