We sat down for an exclusive interview with Josh Maughan and Freddie Acaster, artistic directors of Springbok House, the associate company at The Hope Theatre, currently in their second installation of the month-long new queer writing festival ‘BokFest’.
BokFest runs until the 27th June- Tickets here
This year’s festival has expanded from three weeks to four, with eight productions
instead of six. What does that growth mean for BokFest, and what does it tell you about
the current landscape of queer writing?
Freddie: This growth was a no-brainer for Josh and I when we decided to bring BokFest back.
The demand last year was incredibly overwhelming, from applications to audiences, so we felt it
was the logical next step, but mainly a joyous result of the support we received last year. We are
also so proud to have been awarded Arts Council Funding this year, this support allowing us to
grow with our extension and be able to offer even more support to our creatives. It’s showing us
that the landscape of queer writing is fruitful, and people are paying attention. There’s a hunger
for it, and for fresh faces to be bringing it to our stages. We love playing a part in bringing those
people to the forefront.
BokFest seems to offer more than just a performance slot, supporting writers with collaborators, marketing, press and technical delivery. Why was it important to build that full producing framework around the artists?
Josh: One of the biggest barriers in fringe theatre is that we often ask writers to become producers overnight. You can have an incredible script, but if you don’t know how to find a director, build a team, run a marketing campaign, manage press, or deliver a technically polished production, getting that work in front of an audience becomes incredibly difficult. That’s a gap we saw repeatedly, particularly for early-career and queer artists.
Rather than simply offering a performance slot, we built a producing framework around each artist, connecting them with collaborators and providing support across marketing, press and technical delivery.
The 2026 programme moves across folklore, puppetry, rom-com, family relationships, gender identity, late-1980s Britain and mythic gig theatre. What were you looking for when shaping such a wide-ranging programme?
Josh: Although we asked that the work come from queer-identifying artists, we were never looking for a particular type of queer story. In fact, quite the opposite. What interested us was something simpler: what do queer artists feel the urge to talk about right now? What’s on the tip of their tongue? What’s annoying them? What are they obsessed with? What are they falling in love with?
When you start from those questions, you naturally end up with an incredibly diverse programme. This year we’ve got folklore, puppetry, rom-com, family drama, coming-of-age stories, gig theatre, historical work and pieces exploring identity, but the thing that connects them is that they all feel urgent. They all come from writers who have something they genuinely want to say.
Queer artists are interested in an incredible breadth of matters and we wanted to create a programme that reflects the richness, complexity and variety of queer voices. The result is a line-up that feels wildly different from show to show, but united by a real sense of authenticity and artistic curiosity.
As BokFest returns to The Hope Theatre this summer, what do you hope audiences,
writers and the wider theatre industry take away from this year’s festival?
Freddie: That it is overflowing with talent! We have been so blessed with the creatives this year and
couldn’t be happier with the selection of shows. Each one is original, thought-provoking and
ingenious, and the teams around them have created incredible shows that showcase this. It
continues to be more important than ever that these fringe spaces stay alive and offer support to
emerging queer artists. We hope that the wider theatre industry will see it is possible and
perhaps work towards platforming more events like BokFest.