Headlong (theatre company)

Headlong is a British touring theatre company noted for making bold, innovative productions with some of the UK’s finest artists. Jeremy Herrin took over the artistic directorship of the company in 2013, and is the current artistic director.

Originally set up in 1974 as The Oxford Stage Company, the company underwent a major rebranding and received its current name under the leadership of artistic director Rupert Goold (2005-2013). Previous artistic directors include John Retallack (1989-1999) and Dominic Dromgoole (1999-2005).

Under Jeremy Herrin's artistic directorship Headlong has showcased new work including the Olivier Award-winning productions of The Nether and People, Places & Things. The Nether by American playwright Jennifer Haley (directed by Jeremy Herrin), transferred to the West End in 2015 after a successful run at the Royal Court Theatre. People, Places and Things by Duncan Macmillan (directed by Jeremy Herrin) played at the National Theatre in 2015 before transferring to he West End and will embark on a UK tour in 2017. Other new work under Jeremy Herrin's artistic directorship includes Junkyard by Jack Thorne, Common by DC Moore and The House They Grew Up In by Deborah Bruce.

The revival of both classic and modern masterpieces have also been part of the canon led Jeremy Herrin, including a radical new version of Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening in an adaptation by Anya Reiss, David Hare's The Absence of War and Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie.

Headlong’s first season (2006-2008), was called Reinventing the Epic. Headlong began with two major revivals: Edward Bond’s Restoration (with new songs written for the revival by Bond, scored by Adam Cork) and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. The major production, however, was Faustus. This radical reworking of Christopher Marlowe’s epic was a reimagining, half-Marlowe and half new text (written by Rupert Goold and Ben Power) contrasting Faustus’s story with that of the Chapman Brothers and their rectifying of Goya’s The Disasters of War etchings by adding clown faces to them.

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