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Stepping Out Theatre - The UK�s Leading Mental Health Theatre Group

Founded inside a Bristol psychiatric hospital on All Fools' Day 1997, we celebrated our Silver Anniversary in 2022, and are still going strong. Stepping Out Theatre occupy a unique place in the UK's history of theatre and mental health. It has produced a huge range of work on mental health themes and is open to people who have used mental health services and their allies.

In nearly three decades of producing live theatre, we have produced well over 100 live theatre shows, ranging from large scale community theatre productions with dozens of service users involved to small scale touring professional fringe productions, and from full scale musical theatre to shows rehearsed and performed entirely online during Covid lockdowns.

To mark our silver anniversary, we made our third, and most ambitious trip yet to the greatest theatre festival in the world. In August 2022, a dedicated 24 strong team of Stepping Out Artists and Ambassadors took no fewer than SIX productions to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Six months of planning and preparation, with previews in London, Clevedon and Bristol led up to 48 performances of our six shows in just 9 days in Edinburgh over the first two weeks of the Fringe Festival.

Postponed twice because of Covid, in 2023 we took two productions of new work by Ukrainian playwrights to the international 'Water is Memory' Festival in Vichy, where we performed inside an Art Deco World Heritage listed 1920s theatre. Our Ukrainian work continued in 2025 with the world premiere of 'Diary of a Ukrainian Madman' by Liudmyla Tymoshenko.

Here's to the next 30 years!

Mark Rylance, Patron

"The work Stepping Out Theatre is doing should be supported by all interested in a society that is healthy. Stepping Out understands and does not shy away from the possibility that theatre, the ancient art of these islands North West of Europe, is a transformative and healing activity which brings joy into people's lives. If you want to hear something true, go and hear what Stepping Out Theatre are saying. I only found myself in theatre, and I hear that Stepping Out is helping other people do the same. I have great hopes for this company and deep respect for what they are doing right now."