Factory International's blockbuster 20th birthday season
Manchester’s international arts powerhouse Factory International will mark its 20th year in 2027 with the likes of Sir Ian McKellen and nine UK and world premieres, leading up to next summer’s 11th Manchester International Festival.
Sir Ian will star in the European premiere of the world’s first “mixed reality” play, An Ark (March 27-April 10, 2027), a one-of-a-kind mixed theatrical encounter seen through mixed reality glasses and featuring performers Golda Rosheuve, Arinze Kene and Rosie Sheehy.
The spectacle will place real-life action within augmented or drawn environments in a moving exploration of life, love and loss, and is the inspiration of mixed-reality pioneer Todd Eckert, with a script by Tony award–winning, Stockport-born writer Simon Stephens, directed by former Royal Exchange Theatre artistic chief Sarah Frankcom.
Another drama in the new programme will be Austrian director Florentina Holzinger’s A Year Without Summer (October 14-16, 2027), which combines poetry, humour, music and “excess” in a radical exploration of women’s bodies.
The season builds on two decades of ambitious new work, seen by more than 1.8 million people around the world.
It includes a groundbreaking dance opera from award-winning choreographer Gregory Maqoma, Genesis: the Beginning and End of Time (October 22-24, 2027); a new theatrical work from Javaad Alipoor and Chris Thorpe, Cinema Tehran (October 5-10) in which cult film, the Iranian revolution and social apocalypse collide; a powerful and intense visual performance by Bashar Murkus, Deadlift (June 5-6), which tests the limits of the human body; a dance production of Russell T Davies’ It’s A Sin (February 16-27) from leading contem-
porary dance company Rambert, and a genre-bending festive show, Party in the Sky (dates to be confirmed) from Darren Pritchard blending circus, dance, drag, theatre, aerial performance and music.
One of the major productions will be a collaboration between director Phelim McDermott and composer Philip Glass, English National Opera and others: an epic new production of Glass’s Einstein on the Beach (May 29-June 12, 2027).
This will invite audiences to enter a 360-degree world in which Einstein’s ideas and Glass’s music are felt all around. Vast in scale, the performances will encompass a huge cast of vocalists, instrumentalists, actors and movement artists, including local performers from across Greater Manchester.
The season will also feature Hetain Patel’s collaboration with over 250 people from across Greater Manchester in Come As You Really Are (February 13-20). The exhibition, which has appeared across the UK, reaches its conclusion with one of its largest presentations yet, showing the pastimes and hobbies that grip people from all walks of life.
In addition, the latest iteration of the Manchester International Festival will return to take over the city for its 2027 edition in July - the programme for which will be announced in March.
With its own year-round venue Aviva Studios, Factory International enters its third decade having commissioned more than 200 new works, shared with almost two million people worldwide.
John McGrath, its artistic director and chief executive, said: “Twenty years ago Manchester International Festival put the city at the centre of the international cultural conversation. Over the past two decades we have invited some of the world’s biggest artists to Manchester to create work that has shifted the artistic goalposts
“Equally importantly, the voices of our communities have rung out through our work. As we mark our 20th anniversary, we continue to build on this remarkable legacy, and making work that changes how people see the world and how the world sees our city.”
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