A moment of reflection from Director Amy Golding on the process of making Penguin and the relationship built between Hamzeh and Amy over five years on their creative journey together.

24th August - Gosforth Civic Theatre

Happiness in the posh bottle is a fun filled cabaret evening, for people aged 65+, with sit down food and entertainment to celebrate and listen to our older generation. The event is organised by Md Mominal Hamid with Curious Monkey. Md wants to give back to the older generation.

Though it’s been a challenging era for all of us, the young people and staff of Troupe are masters of adapting to the times. Since the start of the first lockdown in 2020, we have only had one week where our session hasn’t taken place. We knew how important it was to ensure the young people didn’t become isolated and were able to join in sessions to connect with their friends, take part in activities and have fun

Curious Monkey is a theatre company of sanctuary. It is important to us that our team of trustees is representative of the people we work with, so we are looking to welcome a new trustee with lived experience from a refugee or asylum- seeking background to help us improve and grow.

We, the undersigned from the cultural sector of the North East, declare that silence is not ok and silence is seen as complicity. Racism has no place in a just and humane society.

We join the campaign to speak out and condemn the terrible murders of George Floyd and others. At Curious Monkey, a Theatre Company of Sanctuary we are committed to anti-racism and to exposing structural and systemic inequalities. We’re feeling the anger and we know we can’t bring back lives or stop police brutality, we also recognise we are a collection of mostly (but not entirely) white people. We know this isn’t new.

Hello from Curious Monkey HQ – which is currently a series of bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens across the North East. Despite the physical distance we are still very much a hive of activity connecting with each other regularly – our staff team, our team of associates artists and freelancers and of course our co-creators and community members.

We were wondering in rehearsals yesterday whether there were a bunch of medieval players facing the same dilemma as us back in the 1300s when the great plague hit. Surely ‘the show must go on’ no matter what, hasn’t that always been our theatre motto? But today it’s official the show will not go on, the theatres have closed their doors.

We’ve recently been bestowed with the prestigious Theatre of Sanctuary Award. We’re proud of being part of a commitment to being a safe space to those in need of sanctuary in the UK!