ENO’s Einstein on the Beach and Rambert’s It’s A Sin lead Factory International’s 2027 season
Gregory Maqoma’s dance opera Genesis: The Beginning and End of Time and Florentina Holzinger’s A Year Without Summer, performed by 24 women and non-binary artists, are also among nine UK and world premieres at Manchester’s Aviva Studios.
Factory International, the Manchester organisation behind Aviva Studios and Manchester International Festival (MIF), has announced its 2027 season, marking 20 years since the first MIF in 2007. The programme includes nine UK and world premieres, and MIF itself returns to the city from 1 to 18 July 2027.
For dance and opera audiences, the headline is a new Einstein on the Beach. English National Opera and Factory International are reimagining Philip Glass’s opera as an experiential production that fills the vast warehouse space of Aviva Studios. Improbable’s Phelim McDermott directs, with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, an award-winning design team and a large cast of singers and performers. The production, inspired by ideas on time, space and the birth of quantum physics, comes in the composer’s 90th year.
It’s A Sin becomes a dance work
Rambert brings the world premiere of a dance version of It’s A Sin, Russell T Davies’ TV series. Rambert’s artistic director, Benoit Swan Pouffer, directs and choreographs, and Davies, the Pet Shop Boys and Glyn Fussell are executive producers. Factory International describes it as “a raw, visceral and devastating dance story of love and survival”.
The South African choreographer Gregory Maqoma returns to Manchester with the UK premiere of Genesis: The Beginning and End of Time, a dance opera with a libretto by Karthika Nair. It explores the quest for Black liberation, drawing on the ideas of Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon and Steve Biko and on the defiance of migrant communities around the world.
The Austrian director and choreographer Florentina Holzinger, whose Seaworld Venice was shown at the Venice Biennale, comes for a rare UK residency with A Year Without Summer. The piece takes its cue from 1816, when the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia plunged the world into darkness and Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Its 24 women and non-binary performers, aged from their 20s to their 80s, explore health, identity, ageing, technology and the limits of the body.
Theatre, visual performance and Mixed Reality
Ian McKellen, Golda Rosheuvel, Arinzé Kene and Rosie Sheehy appear in the European premiere of AN ARK, billed as the world’s first Mixed Reality play and experienced through Mixed Reality glasses. It is by the Mixed Reality pioneer Todd Eckert, the Stockport-born writer Simon Stephens and the director Sarah Frankcom.
The Palestinian director Bashar Murkus brings DEADLIFT – الحَمّالون, a wordless visual performance about endurance and rebuilding in Palestine, presented with Shubbak Festival. Javaad Alipoor and Chris Thorpe’s Cinema Tehran starts from the thousands of reported sightings of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s face in the moon in 1978. Hetain Patel’s free exhibition Come As You Really Are, made with more than 250 people from across Greater Manchester, reaches its conclusion, and Darren Pritchard and Vicki Amedume’s Party In The Sky mixes circus, dance, drag and aerial work for the festive season.
Aviva Studios’ music programme includes the world premiere of Nubya Garcia’s first cello concerto, written for Manchester Camerata’s Hannah Roberts (18 March), alongside Bonobo, Ezra Collective and Snarky Puppy.
Twenty years of new work
John McGrath, Factory International’s artistic director and chief executive, said that 20 years ago MIF “put the city at the centre of the international cultural conversation, asking what the art of tomorrow could be”. The festival, he added, had invited “some of the world’s biggest artists to Manchester to create work that has shifted the artistic goalposts”.
He said the organisation would keep championing creative ambition and “fearless artists from near and far” at Aviva Studios, making work that changes how people see the world and how the world sees Manchester.
Councillor Garry Bridges, leader of Manchester City Council, said the festival was “a perfect example of our Mancunian ‘can do’ spirit”. He added that Manchester was now recognised worldwide as a place where ground-breaking art is both made and performed.
Rebecca Ball, Arts Council England’s area director for the North, said the funding body was proud to have supported MIF since its inception. “The 20th anniversary season will bring more pioneering premieres to the city and we are excited to see what is planned for the next 20 years!” she said.
Factory International says it has commissioned more than 200 new works since 2007. This autumn, Radiohead and the RSC’s Hamlet Hail to the Thief plays at the Barbican and ENO’s Angel’s Bone opens at the London Coliseum.
Dates and booking
- Come As You Really Are: 13–20 February 2027, The North Warehouse
- It’s A Sin: 16–27 February 2027, The Hall
- AN ARK: 27 March–10 April, The Hall
- Einstein on the Beach: 29 May–12 June 2027, The Warehouse
- DEADLIFT: 5–6 June, The Hall
- MIF27: 1–18 July 2027
- Cinema Tehran: 5–10 October 2027, The North Warehouse (on sale from spring 2027)
- A Year Without Summer: 14–16 October 2027, The Warehouse (on sale from spring 2027)
- Genesis: The Beginning and End of Time: 22–24 October 2027 (on sale from spring 2027)
- Party In The Sky: winter 2027
Tickets are on sale to members now, to Amex holders from 16 October and to the general public from 20 October, priced from £10. The full MIF27 programme will be announced in March. Full details at Factory International’s website.
