We have just completed our annual audit process for 2023/24, and our accounts and annual report can be downloaded below.
As London’s most vibrant producer for new theatre, comedy and cabaret, 2023/24 once again saw us present a really wide range of creative work in London, around the UK and internationally. We work on live stages, in digital and TV, and in supporting the development of emerging talents and wider participation in the arts both on and off stage.
As an entrepreneurial charity, all of our profits go back into our work. Our business model depends on earned box office and bar revenues that held up strongly in 2024, together with much valued commercial and philanthropic partnerships. Our crucial Arts Council funding represents about 8% of our turnover – this provides vital leverage for us to achieve £7.5m charitable turnover, creating wide public benefit activities whilst also enabling us to return nearly double that public investment of £600,000 back to the Treasury in the tax, NI and non-recoverable VAT that we pay.
Last year we welcomed 188,000 audience members to our own venue in Dean Street. We had our biggest ever Edinburgh Festival Fringe programme with 23 shows across six venues, reaching 40,000 audience members with critical success and nominations and winners in the major awards. Since April 2023 we’ve toured work all around the UK, and to the USA, Canada and India.
We were particularly proud to see Soho Theatre’s work in connecting UK audiences and South Asian performers recognised by the Asian Media Awards in October 2024. Our special relationship with Indian comedy and theatre took a leap forward as we presented artists at Soho, Edinburgh Fringe, the Southbank Centre, and major venues across London. Artists to achieve groundbreaking success included Zakir Khan becoming the first Indian comedian to headline the iconic Royal Albert Hall; Urooj Ashfaq as the first Indian based performer to have won a prestigious Edinburgh Comedy Award (Newcomer, 2023); Patchworks Ensemble’s The Gentleman’s Club becoming the first theatre production to be presented in the UK from Mumbai’s National Centre for the Performing Arts in a show celebrating drag king culture and Bollywood.
Digitally, we presented over thirty full length specials on Amazon Prime UK (the final year of a brilliant three year run) and Soho Theatre continues to have an inflight entertainment channel on British Airways. We significantly expanded our Digital team and social channels, and continue to find different ways to connect to global audiences.
Our Labs programme has seen us work with 421 emerging artists, and this continues to be one of London’s leading talent development programmes with alumni going on to perform and present work at Dean Street, at Edinburgh Fringe, and at venues around the country. This year our prestigious biennial new writing award, the Verity Bargate Award, sponsored by Character 7, opened its 2024 submissions just as the previous winner Boys on the Verge of Tears by Sam Grabiner opened to critical acclaim. We received over 1700 scripts, the highest in the history of the Award. At an event celebrating the five shortlisted plays, acclaimed playwright Moira Buffini announced Martina Laird’s Driftwood as runner-up and Eoin McAndrew’s Little Brother as Award winner. Moira Buffini’s debut play with Soho Theatre goes all the way back to our Dean Street pop-up season in 1997, which also featured a debut from playwright Tanika Gupta OBE and others.
Looking ahead
We’re nearing the end of 2024, with a packed programme at Dean Street: Biswa Kalyan Rath with his sold out run Hinglish & Engdi (performed in Hindi) alongside award-winning shows by Natalie Palamides, Joe Kent-Waters, Zainab Johnson, Sh!t Theatre, a new cohort of 48 playwrights on Writers’ Lab and showcases by our current Labs participants across Stand Up, Character Comedy, Cabaret & Drag and Comedy Plus. As well as upcoming new show debuts from Le Gateau Chocolat: Musical Mayham, Adam Riches and John Kearns ARE Ball & Boe, Prashasti Singh: Divine Feminine and the return of 2023 hit Julia Masli: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
We’re closing Soho Theatre over Christmas to give our team a well-earned rest and look forward to 2025, including the opening of our new 1,000 seat venue Soho Theatre Walthamstow (we’ll tell you all about it next year!).