Five plays picked from roughly 4,000 unsolicited scripts get a staged reading in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs from 14 September, at £8.50 a ticket.
The Royal Court Theatre has named the five plays in its Autumn Open Submissions Festival, which runs from Monday 14 to Friday 18 September 2026 in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs. Tickets are £8.50 and went on sale at midday today.
The five come from the roughly 4,000 scripts the theatre receives each year through its Open Submissions Portal, which is open all year to anyone writing in English anywhere in the world. Every script is read and answered by a member of the artistic team — the commitment the Royal Court has built its reputation on, and one it is marking in its 70th anniversary season. Backing from the production company Character 7 has made the festival a twice-yearly fixture rather than an annual one.
The line-up, one play a night at 7.45pm:
- Monday 14 September — Aunties in the USSR by Rebecca Banatvala, directed by Mayaan Haputantri. A comedy set in 1985, in which two members of the Zoroastrian Ladies Committee for Socialist Justice travel from Leytonstone to Moscow to scatter a husband’s ashes and fall in with caviar smugglers and the KGB.
- Tuesday 15 September — The Nine of Swords by Eoghan Quinn, directed by Aaliyah McKay. A solar eclipse passes over Dublin while three people in a tattoo studio take stock of the lives they have built.
- Wednesday 16 September — The Honour Table by Selorm Adonu, directed by Aneesha Srinivasan. The Frimpong siblings meet for their annual memorial dinner and are offered an MBE that would secure their late father’s charity and split the family.
- Thursday 17 September — My Son, the Guillotine by Sam Ward, directed by Danielle Kassaraté. Ben turns up at his politician mother’s door after three years away, and by morning it is clear this is not a social call.
- Friday 18 September — Theertham by Nayantara Nayar, directed by Nico Rao Pimparé. A diviner finds water under a widow’s garden during a drought, and what surfaces with it is not only water.
Gillian Greer, the Royal Court’s associate playwright and senior dramaturg, said the festival “continues to prove just how much astonishing new writing for the stage is out there, just waiting to be given a platform”, noting this is the first year it has run twice.
Readings here have a record of turning into productions. Jack Nicholls’s The Shitheads, Olivier-nominated this year, and Rhys Warrington’s Monument, which opens in December, both came out of the first festival in 2025, while Noga Flaishon’s Memoriam opens at Southwark Playhouse Borough later this year.
Stephen Garrett, executive chairman of Character 7, whose credits include The Night Manager, called the selection “a potent and timely reminder about why we all need to fight to ensure that new voices can find a platform”.
Writers’ Card members get 20 per cent off, and booking for more than one night takes £1.50 off each ticket. The festival runs Monday 14 to Friday 18 September 2026 at the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square.
