PROVOCATIONS: Cardiff’s Theatre Drought Breaks with a Double‑Night Surge of New Work
This September, FIO returns to the stage with PROVOCATIONS — two nights of raw, risk‑embracing, idea‑driven performance at Chapter Arts Centre’s Seligman Space (Thursday 17 & Thursday 24 September). It’s not a festival, not a showcase, and certainly not a polite evening of finished plays. It’s a pressure‑cooker: six R&D projects developed intensively over a week, each culminating in a 30‑minute work‑in‑progress performance.
Across both nights, audiences will encounter theatre that is urgent, immigrant‑led, politically sharp, and gloriously unpolished. And in true FIO fashion, the company is ripping up the rulebook: between each piece, audiences will trade their feedback for a samosa and a drink before diving straight into the next provocation. It’s theatre as relay — ideas passed hand‑to‑hand, artist‑to‑audience, without the safety net of completion.
A Company Reborn: FIO’s Return to Theatre‑Making
After years of navigating Wales’ “theatre drought”, FIO is stepping back into the arena with intent. Artistic Director Mathilde López frames PROVOCATIONS as both a comeback and a manifesto:
“We are coming out of a theatre drought in Wales and the consequent depletion of different voices. At FIO we are refocussing the company on theatre-making and fully embracing being outsiders and foreign theatre makers unapologetically present in Cardiff and Wales. PROVOCATIONS is our way of testing the ground with ideas and artists — a platform for new theatre work and ultimately how the company will programme from now on.”
This is theatre built from foreignitude — FIO’s defining ethos. Not a plea for inclusion, not a demonstration of diversity, but a creative stance: the outsider’s gaze as artistic engine. Their work is shaped by lived experience, everyday Cardiff, global cultural references, and the messy, contradictory realities of immigrant life.
Six New Works. Six New Worlds. One City Ready for Provocation.
Across the two nights, audiences will encounter six fiercely different pieces — each one a challenge, a question, or a confrontation with the world as it is now.
After Cordelia
Samatar Elmi reimagines King Lear as a family therapy session led by Cordelia. Patriarchy, misogyny, and inherited wounds are laid bare in a spoken‑word‑driven excavation of Shakespeare’s most fractured family.
M(other)hood
Samia Soleman tackles infertility within Somali communities — a taboo subject rarely explored on stage. This is the story of a young infertile woman, divorced as consequence, navigating solitude, resilience, and the fight to foster.
MDSF: Magama Does Sci‑Fi
Zimbabwean storyteller Bevin Magama leaps from traditional oral storytelling into Bradbury‑inspired science fiction. Expect Mars, myth, and the collision of folklore with imminent colonisation.
Gaslight
Renowned fight director Kevin McCurdy interrogates Patrick Hamilton’s classic play — the origin of the term “gaslighting”. Chemical coercion, male violence, and the normalisation of submission are stripped back to their brutal core.
Medusa
Actor‑writer Nia Gandhi fuses Greek tragedy with punk apocalypse. Medusa’s severed head in a Tesco bag, a petrol station on the A4042, and a feminist chorus tearing through myth and motorway culture.
Saint Khadija
Rahim El Habachi writes about growing up with a divorced mother in Morocco who goes clubbing — a lot. Moroccan music, domestic chaos, and arguments over breakfast collide in a warm, sharp, deeply human portrait.
A New Model for Cardiff Theatre
PROVOCATIONS is not about polished premieres. It’s about testing, risk, and ideas in motion. FIO is backing artists to fail gloriously, succeed unexpectedly, and push beyond the “quick fix” culture that has shaped Welsh theatre in recent years.
This is theatre that refuses passivity. Audiences are not spectators — they are participants, co‑makers, provocateurs. Their feedback will directly shape the future of these works and, crucially, FIO’s future programming.
As one of the creatives involved put it:
“We’re not presenting answers. We’re presenting attempts — and asking Cardiff to meet us halfway.”
Event Details
PROVOCATIONSChapter Arts Centre, Seligman SpaceThursday 17 September & Thursday 24 SeptemberDydd Iau 17 Medi & Dydd Iau 24 Medi
Tickets & info via Chapter Box Office.
For press, interviews, and images: Helen Comerford, General Manager & Senior Producerhelen@wearefio.org.uk
About FIO
FIO is a Cardiff‑based theatre company making work from the stance of foreignitude — physical, cultural, linguistic, economic. They believe:
Culture is ordinary
Theatre is communal
Art is an end, not a means
Ideas come from everyday life — from bell hooks to Deliveroo drivers, Lidl to opera houses
Their work is built with theatre makers and community participants alike, creating theatre that refuses to suffocate under dominant culture.