Offbeat 2024 ran from September 9th to 15th and was a glorious celebration of Oxford’s finest emerging talent, new voices and compelling new work.
Showcasing drama, dance, comedy, music, poetry, physical theatre, visual art and a whole load more, it featured bold new performances that took risks and pushed boundaries. And, on top of all the fun stuff, it tackled plenty of serious questiosn such as knife crime, coming out, neurodiversity and cancel culture.
We’re so proud of all our 2024 performers achieved. Scroll down for a run down of the 2024 line up and click through to find out more about each show.
What’s on?
Monday, September 9th
The festival opened with a performance by our community artists from KEEN Oxford showcasing their original songs.
Tuesday, September 10th
Starling Session taught us about musical facilitation, we celebrated the weird, wonderful and downright hilarious in Live & Peculiar, enjoyed Electra Untitled, a story of women who provoke change in times of hostility, then followed it up with a late-night listening party in collaboration with Oxford Contemporary Music.
Wednesday, September 11th
Motherhood explored knife crime and social exclusion, I’ll be Back put real life to one side as a Terminator rebuilt with Windows 95 returned to the past to discover what it meant to be human, and j fresh new comedy material debuted at our late night comedy night.
Thursday, September 12th
Thursday brought an exploration of EU migration, the complexities of Catholic families, and the courage of coming out in Have you met Stan?, a captivating and comedic piece of magical realism about the things we lose and how we grieve them in Deluge, and macabre nursery stories told with captivating illustrations in Mildish Urges for Childish Dirges.
Friday, September 13th
On Friday Gloucester Greenhosted a fun-filled day of free arts and crafts activities, while later, we followed a woman's surreal journey in Pigeons in Transit, an interactive theatre game in She Vanishes in the Air and watched as Oxford’s fnest fought it out in our scratch poetry night.
Saturday, September 14th
All our stalls were back again on Saturday, younger audiences loved The Witch Without a Wand, a BSL witchy mystical mayhem of an adventure, and we headed back to St. Giles Fair in 1892 where Alice falls from the carousel in The Untold Story of Alice Breakspear.
The Oxford Playhouse Playmaker Showcase presented six script-in-hand extracts from plays for the very first time, Troika Theatre’s Recollections, a documentary, celebrating the incontrovertible power theatre has to bring people together was screened, and we followed three dance acts with Anthology of Touches, an exploration of touch and being touched, Don't Tell Me What Bharatanatyam Is, an experimental performance that challenged perceptions of Indian classical dance, and Renegade Master, a vibrant celebration of Queerness woven with a critique on privilege and societal politics, and then finished the evening with our electronica night.
Sunday, September 15th
Our final day kicked off with a chance to learn an international folk song with the Starling Session’s Sunday Morning Song, The Trap was a madcap open-air slapstick performance for all the family, while Cancer B*tch explored managing a cancer diagnosis in your twenties.
Explore a unique window into a forgotten city with Rawz opened a window into a forgotten city in Portals and Parallels, multi-award-winning theatre maker Maya Hallpike’s debuted her solo show HEAD, then we finished the festival with a glorious rendition of global folk music with the Starling Sessions before celebrating with us at our festival closing party.