bLINDsPoT nIGHTS

“…It gave me the confidence to keep going and ‘Fighting Irish’ became the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me or my family.

It wouldn’t have happened without Blindspot’s scratch night.”

- Jamie McGough

Jamie brought his very first play, ‘Fighting Irish’, to one of the first Blindspot Nights when we used to run them in 2019.
From there, it went on to receive a sold-out run at Belgrade Theatre in 2022, directed by Corey Campbell & Hamish Glen. Jamie was also awarded a Paines Plough Roundabout residency to develop his second play.

A piece of the white background looks like its been torn away to reveal a group of actors sitting on a small stage in The Tin Music & Arts. A small, dark venue with a bright stage light on the actors. They sit in chairs and read from scripts.

Blindspot Nights was originally founded in 2019 to bring new theatre and artists in the Midlands out of your blind spot.

We create opportunities to test, explore, and support brand new theatre & performance from Coventry and the wider Midlands region. We offer radical support for artists and approachable events for audiences, because we want to make sure we explicitly help artists move forward in their careers and help as many people as possible feel that making and seeing theatre is for them.

Paid scratch nights

Sharing works in progress is still work, and we reckon you should be paid for that. That’s why all our slots are paid at the ITC/Equity minimum for everyone in your performance. No fee-splitting.

Every artist or group that performs with us also gets 4hrs of professional development time to use as you wish. That might be split up into loads of short accountability sessions over the year, or you might want to spend a whole afternoon tackling your first funding bid. You get to tell us what’s most useful for you.

Proper professional development

We aren’t just a scratch night, we’re striving to create a whole host of regular opportunities for theatremakers in and around Coventry to connect, share work, and grow together.

Play reading groups? Scene Clubs? Writing salons? We’ve had a lot of suggestions already and we want to hear yours too. What does a thriving theatremaking community in Coventry look like to you? Come along to our nights when they kick off in June 2024 to see what exciting new works are coming from Cov and tell us what else you want to see from us. We’re listening.