Cruel Optimism

Trouble is a sign that a system has a weak spot, and you might be it. In the key of anarchy, CRUEL OPTIMISM explores labour, the body’s strange time, all those elongated minutes and seconds, and what gets produced in that weak spot.

This Work in Progress showcase combines experimental/verbatim theatre with poetry and anarchy, CRUEL OPTIMISM might be cruel, it might be honest, it might be beautiful, it might be ordinary, it might be nothing.

With Laurie Ward, Maria Leonard and more TBA.

Laurie Ward is a transfeminine theatre-maker, based in London, producing work as one half of piss / CARNATION. Her credits include 52 Monologues for Young Transsexuals (Soho Theatre); Ugly Sisters (New Diorama Theatre, Untapped).

Maria Leonard has been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and the Rebecca Swift Women Poets’ Prize, and her writing has appeared in Modern Queer Poets by Pilot Press, at ACUD Theater Berlin and Omnibus Theatre. She’s an independent curator and was given the Goethe-Institut New York Curatorial Research Fellowship in 2023-2024.