Springbok Production House, an award-winning production house, will programme six new queer shows at The Hope Theatre in Islington this June. Following their appointment as an Associate Company of The Hope Theatre in March, Springbok Production House is set to take over the venue with BokFest — a celebration of queer voices in theatre.
The festival will showcase six brand-new plays from some of the most exciting queer playwrights working today, continuing Springbok’s mission to champion urgent, underrepresented stories on the London stage.
Springbok Production House has established itself as one of the most exciting voices on the Off-West End scene, following seven acclaimed seasons of bold new work and imaginative retellings of classic texts. Recent highlights include a five-star queer reinvention of Hedda Gabler at the Golden Goose Theatre, and the award-winning Eucharist by Saskia Mollard and Tobias Abbott, recipient of the Standing Ovation Best New Writing Award. Artistic Director Josh Maughan’s one-man show Nice Jewish Boy also garnered critical acclaim, winning the Guild of Media Arts Award at the York stop of its 2023 national tour.
At the heart of Springbok is a vibrant community of artists who bring joy to every project. With BokFest, the company hopes to grow the ‘Springbok family’ even further — championing emerging voices in the very venue that helped launch their own journey, in a full-circle moment of creative return.
BokFest offers six wildly different windows into contemporary queer life. In Acne Romeo by Sam Smith (9–11 June), a spiky T4T romance unravels into a brutal meditation on desire, delusion, and gendered harm. Sophie Max’s BANNED (12–14 June) charts the fallout when reproductive rights are stripped away and loyalty is pushed to breaking point. Swans in the Wall by Mary Condon O’Connor (16–18 June) follows a queer Irish woman haunted by love and mythology as past and present blur in strange, spectral ways. In Roguelike by David Levesley (19–21 June), a lone swordsman in a glitching fantasy world finds himself caught in a recursive love story with a world-weary barkeep. And in Joe Harrington’s Lap Dog (23–25 June), a sugar baby wages war with a vindictive chihuahua in a reality-bending satire of intimacy, identity, and control. The festival ends with 05:59 by Max Raphael (26–28 June), a snapshot of one night in New York’s La Bohème that collides fear, tenderness, and the long shadow of HIV.
Artistic Directors Josh Maughan and Freddie Acaster said, “We’ve dreamed of doing something like this for years. The Hope Theatre has always felt like our creative home — it’s where we found our footing as a company, and where our stories were first taken seriously. To be returning now with a full season of new queer work, and to offer that same platform to others, is incredibly special. In a cultural climate where queer programming is often performative or tokenistic, BokFest is about creating space that is actually accessible — financially, artistically, emotionally. We’re committed to showcasing the complexity and joy of queer voices.”
Springbok Production House is proudly producing all six BokFest shows in full, closing the gap between idea and performance that so often holds emerging voices back. Each writer works alongside Springbok to assemble a creative team tailored to their piece. Springbok has also developed a mentorship and script guidance programme where each play is nurtured with input from leading industry professionals ahead of rehearsals, ensuring that bold new voices are not only heard — but heard at their very best.
BokFest is at The Hope Theatre from 9–28 June. Listings and ticket information can be found here.
