July is here, and that can only mean one thing – Summer in The Ditch is back, where you can always expect the unexpected. Head on down to The Ditch for seven double-bill evenings of cabaret, new work and experimental art. The excitement doesn’t stop there: tomorrow, STAMP Connects returns to our building, hosting an afternoon of networking for artists, and (as usual) our building is busy with artist workshops, rehearsals and opportunities, as well as local community groups using our Local Lounge space. Read on for your #FriendsAtSTH blog- the monthly round-up of the exciting events and people coming to our building.

Live Events

STAMP Connects 2026

2 July: £3

STAMP Connects returns tomorrow to help bridge the gap between artists and organisations through an afternoon of insightful chats and networking. This is an opportunity for creatives to tell venues and organisations like us what they think and what they need – and to gain an understanding of how we can support their work. Interested in coming and want to know what to expect? Read our latest blog post about STAMP here. This year’s marketplace holders include Arts Council England, Theatre Deli, artsdepot and more. To have a 1-2-1 conversation with any of our marketplace holders, book tickets to STAMP here.

Lachlan Werner

Sleeper Hit

part of Summer in The Ditch

9 July: £9, £7 Concessions | Double Bill Offer: £2 off each ticket when booking two shows on the same night

★★★★★ “Funniest new ventriloquist on the block” – The Telegraph
Close your eyes. Let that little voice take control… Welcome to the world’s first ventriloquial hypnotherapy session hosted by an award-winning talent. Brew the Witch has lived inside the shadows of Lachlan’s head for 26 years; now, she’s inviting you to purge your subconscious. Click to book now.

House of Tríus

Kiki with Corí

part of Summer in The Ditch

9 July: £12, £10 Concessions | Double Bill Offer: £2 off each ticket when booking two shows on the same night

Join Corí Creemz and friends for an inaugural night of increasingly naughty and nude cabaret mayhem. Expect smooth vocals, powerful spoken word and full-throttle burlesque featuring an all-black, all-queer, neurodiverse cast including graduates from the Black Burlesque School as well as founding members of House of Tríus, in this messy and unapologetic celebration of community and individuality. Find out more.

Simone French & TomYumSim

Trainwreck

part of Summer in The Ditch

10 July: £12, £10 Concessions | Double Bill Offer: £2 off each ticket when booking two shows on the same night

Attention passengers! Board the Trainwreck Express, an interactive comedy where your choices shape the journey as AI hijacks the route and reality unravels. This delirious and ever-mutating satire takes inspiration from Glasgow’s infamous “immersive” Willy Wonka knockoff and overhyped global fiasco Fyre Festival, and is immersive madness at full steam ahead. Spaces are limited, book now.

Kate Newman

A Womb of Ones Own

part of Summer in The Ditch

10 July: £9, £7 Concessions | Double Bill Offer: £2 off each ticket when booking two shows on the same night

Each month, PMDD hijacks the controls and distorts reality whilst the world dismisses it as “just hormones.” Blending clowning, punk performance and raw autobiography, this is a furious, funny descent into the bleeding edge of medical misogyny, late-stage capitalism and the struggle to live inside a body that keeps staging its own rebellion. Book now.

Image of House of Tríus

JEAN

Wasted

part of Summer in The Ditch

11 July: £9, £7 Concessions | Double Bill Offer: £2 off each ticket when booking two shows on the same night

On a planet far, far away made completely of trash, your old, abandoned pair of jeans wade through a lifetime of waste. Every empty Tesco meal deal, cracked iPhone and lost opportunity. Presented by JEAN, a shapeshifting, gender-bending drag thing, Wasted is a surrealist drag show that explores our collective relationships to things that are discarded, rejected and forgotten. Book now.

Booters X Fabio Lezonli

Booted Rivalry

part of Summer in The Ditch

11 July: £15, £13 Concessions | Double Bill Offer: £2 off each ticket when booking two shows on the same night

Heated Rivalry has taken the world by storm, and many of the queer community have fallen in love, but the dykes have been asking the question, where is our version of this? Booted Rivalry is the butch 4 butch jock romance you’ve all been waiting for! Fabio Lezonli is back, and this time, he’ll be joined by your favourite American diner parody Booters to celebrate your local butches, studs and mascs in their first stage cabaret! Click here to book.

Image of JEAN

Razik Darji & Joseph Baugh

“Who Raised You?”: Enter The Manosphere

part of Summer in The Ditch

15 July: £9, £7 Concessions | Double Bill Offer: £2 off each ticket when booking two shows on the same night

Enter this visceral immersive party as it plunges you into a dark, comedic experience, where self-improvement, performance and power collide. In a world that feels part online rabbit hole, part recruitment drive, and part uneasy celebration of a culture that perhaps should not be celebrated, this show throws audiences into the last sweaty remains of red pill culture, where the internet’s strangest ideas about masculinity are treated like gospel. Book now.

Dilly

On Our Backs

part of Summer in The Ditch

15 July: £9, £7 Concessions | Double Bill Offer: £2 off each ticket when booking two shows on the same night

A cabaret-performance turned dyke fever dream, On Our Backs follows Dilly, a hopelessly devoted femme barely holding herself together with cheap glamour and delusion. Longing for love she turns to agony-aunt porn star/nurse Nina for guidance on what a dyke fairytale might look like. Celebrating the messy and vulnerable realities of queer femme life throughout history, this show also explores the possible futures of queer relationships. Find out more here.

Riss Obolensky

Stinky Little Pilgrim

part of Summer in The Ditch

16 July: £9, £7 Concessions | Double Bill Offer: £2 off each ticket when booking two shows on the same night

For 40 days and 40 nights, Jesus asked: “WHY?” For 60 minutes, this guy asks: “WHERE… is the nearest exit?” For one night only, this pilgrim is going to walk around Shoreditch Town Hall with a tent. Part ritual, part reckoning, part clown show, award-winning Riss Obolensky‘s Stinky Little Pilgrim is an absurd pilgrimage through life and death exploring how we find meaning in a crisis. Book now.

Fanny Bleach

The Nearly Naked Show

part of Summer in The Ditch

16 July: £12, £10 Concessions | Double Bill Offer: £2 off each ticket when booking two shows on the same night

Cult drag-thing, Fanny Bleach introduces the weird and unusual characters that inhabit the creepiest crevices of her mind. In this subversive, silly and surprisingly endearing tour through the disgusting and depraved, experience shock humour, surreal nightmares, bodily mutation, kidney-harvesting call centre workers and rapid-fire character comedy as this Top of the Slops 2023 Winner reclaims the female body in all its gory glory. Book tickets now.

Image of Fanny Bleach

Edie Bailey

Pteridomania

part of Summer in The Ditch

17 July: £9, £7 Concessions | Double Bill Offer: £2 off each ticket when booking two shows on the same night

Take a fern. Uproot it. Remove the fern from the forest and place it within a specially designed glass case. Watch it grow. Watch it die. Through the lens of a forbidden queer love story set in the 19th-century fern hunting craze, Pteridomania reimagines opera as collaborative and radical, creating a terribly seductive and immersive performance. Book now. 

Operotica featuring Séayoncé

Lovers in Every Lifetime

part of Summer in The Ditch

17 July: £12, £10 Concessions | Double Bill Offer: £2 off each ticket when booking two shows on the same night

Classically trained, fetish-approved and, as of yesterday, dead. Join psychic extraordinaire Séayoncé in her parlour for a journey through Operotica‘s many past lives. From star-crossed nuns to 18th-century ladies-in-waiting, what is the true purpose of history’s horniest souls? Will their story of love after death be the greatest (and sexiest) ever told? Book tickets now.

Georgia Tasda

Back in Business

part of Summer in The Ditch

18 July: £12, £10 Concessions | Double Bill Offer: £2 off each ticket when booking two shows on the same night

★★★★ “Obscene, garish and hysterically funny” – Edinburgh Festivals Magazine
It’s a tough gig getting by in today’s cut-throat economy, but help is at hand. Although who knows when Georgia last washed hers. Smashing through the glass ceiling and the fourth wall, Georgia is an entrepreneurial force to be reckoned with, so join her Business Masterclass and dig into the tricks of the trade. Grab your tickets.

Mirabelle & Tallulah Haddon

Open your mouth, it’s snowing

part of Summer in The Ditch

18 July: £9, £7 Concessions | Double Bill Offer: £2 off each ticket when booking two shows on the same night

Collaborators and sisters Mirabelle and Tallulah Haddon explore risk and beauty in a new multisensory collaboration. This Work-in-Progress uses expanded cinema and image making to explore the story of an injured mermaid. Explore more and book now.

Image of Georgia Tasda

For Artists

Artist Workspace

Ongoing: FREE

Our Artist Workspace initiative continues as we offer bookable desk space for a day or week at a time. If you’re looking for a space to do admin work without having to pay huge fees, book our workspace slots to benefit from a safe communal working environment in our hub of creativity – all for FREE! Book your desk space now.

David Finnigan

Wolf Play – Script in hand Reading

21 July:  FREE

Sibling rivalries, ill-fated love affairs and dynastical struggles, this is a real-life saga of sex, power and family. Join David Finnigan in The Ditch for a script-in-hand reading of his latest play. An extraordinary true story about two packs of wolves, Yellowstone National Park and an 18-year war. Find out more and book here.

Image: Aritst Workspace

Supporting the Artistic Community

Marawa’s Majorettes rehearsal

7 July

Marawa’s Majorettes make everyone fall in love with hooping! They’ve become a leading fitness team and international performance troupe, teaching the world to hoop as they go. They are using our building for a monthly rehearsal of upcoming work.

Summer in The Ditch Meet and Greet

8 July

Ahead of Summer in The Ditch 2026, we are hosting a Meet and Greet the day before opening night for the artists and companies taking part in this year’s festival. This event will be both a chance to celebrate the start of the new Summer in The Ditch season, but also give an opportunity for artists and creatives to connect and network with each other and our team ahead of the festival.

Koro Productions

Koro Lab

27 July

Koro are back with their Artist Development Programme. In May they were in our building hosting some workshops as a part of the programme, this time they have returned for an R&D phase before a second R&D phase in August. Keep an eye out on their website for a public sharing of their work in September in our building!

Image: Koro Lab

Local Community Support

Hackney Tour Guides Training Course

1, 8, 15 July

Local Historian Sue Doe returns as course leader for the accredited Hackney Guides course in our building. Training the future of Hackney tour guides in the rich history of our borough through sessions, Sue dives into the many wonderful stories about people and architecture around Hackney which people may or may not know about. We’re excited to provide free space for these training sessions as a part of our Local Lounge initiative. 

I Found Me Counselling

Hackney Thinking Spaces

2, 9, 16 July

A project funded by City and Hackney Public Health, Hackney Thinking Spaces (HTS) provides safe, reflective spaces for participants to explore the emotional and mental health impacts of racism and discrimination. It was developed in 2023 in response to the harmful impact of systemic racism on Black and Global Majority Children, young people, and families in Hackney, and the need for collective learning and action. They are using our space to deliver a session in partnership with Hackney Council and I Found Me Therapeutic Counselling.

PANDAS Foundation

Carers and Parents support group

7, 21 July

A peer support meeting group for parents and caregivers who are struggling with their mental health. Each week they host different activities including arts and crafts for parents and children, guest speakers and sharing circles.

Queertopia Consortium Meeting

13 July

Town Hall favourites Queertopia Consortium returns to our building for a meeting with their team. A past Local Lounge regular, Queertopia Consortium, is a grassroots community groups providing a safe space for individuals from the LGBTQIA community to gather and connect. In the past, they have used our Local Lounge to facilitate steering groups and community business forums.