We wanted to take a moment, a year since we closed our theatre, to share some reflections, and to celebrate the amazing artists and partners we’ve been lucky enough to work with since.
2020 made clear that we can’t go back to doing things the way they were before. Looking back, it was (and still is) a time of enormous challenge, but also one that is opening up new possibilities, new conversations, and a new determination to create a fairer, greener, kinder set of working practices at the Gate. We’ve written a timeline of the last year – to try and make sense of what has happened by telling the story of it, and to celebrate the artists and partners who have been with us on the way.
Since January, we’ve completed our 40th Anniversary Archive Project, and our Young Associates are currently presenting Gate Generations – their creative responses to our 40 year history. We made a podcast with the amazing Queer House + Jen Dixon and Pete MacHale to celebrate LGBTQ+ history month, and created a Gate Late Podcast Page so you can listen back to any of the podcasts we’ve made over the last couple of years. Check out the latest – a recording of Rachael Young’s Blacklash that we hosted in December.
Looking forward, we are starting by widening the lens, expanding the conversations we’re having, and the artists, and partners we’re working with. We’re delighted to share the first of those here – new partnerships and projects with Global Origins, Age UK Kensington and Chelsea, and Migrants Organise (details coming soon).
Home page banner photography credit: Helen Murray
2020 IN REVIEW
Part of trying to make sense of the last year is retelling its story.
This timeline gives a sense of some of the critical turning points for us over the last year whilst celebrating the artists and freelancers who we are so proud to have worked with and who are central to our organisation.
Photo credit: Helen Murray
PRAYER WORKSHOP
Following the success of Prayer, Gate Associate Artist Rosie Elnile wanted to create a space of mutual support and non-outcome-based creation for early-career designers. Prayer Workshop is the result. The work is varied and personal. It’s about exploration. It’s about discussion. The offers are fragmented and fragile. The process is the point.
GATE GENERATIONS
A digital series by our Young Associates inspired by the Gate’s 40th anniversary. Five plays from our archive have been unearthed. Five pieces follow. Some re-imagined, some newly written, all presented for a new audience, in a new decade.
GATE LATE: GATE GENERATIONS
Join our Young Associates as they discuss Gate Generations, a new digital series inspired by 40 years of the Gate, with Artistic Director Ellen McDougall.
REROUTED, WITH GLOBAL ORIGINS
A digital discussion group for international plays and performances. Each session will feature a different playtext, film or performance, introduced and discussed by brilliant guest practitioners
BLACKLASH- RECORDING
#1 What the hell just happened?
2020 was madness however you look at it. For this first episode of Blacklash, artist Rachael Young was joined by Honey Williams, Jamal Gerald, Mika Onyx Johnson and Nima Séne.

THE LETTERS PROJECT x AGE UK x YOUNG ASSOCIATES
We’re so excited to have partnered with Age UK Kensington and Chelsea to connect older people, some of whom may be caring for a relative, with our Young Associates in an extension of The Letters Project. We’re excited about connecting people across generations who haven’t met before to write letters each other.
GATE LATES + PODCASTS
We’ve compiled all our excellent podcasts and live recorded Gate Lates into one handy section. With audio covering topics from queer forms and identities, what it means to declare a climate emergency and how we rebuild better after COVID-19, there’s something for everyone.