Emergence Festival
Emergence Festival returns with a dazzling programme of performance from Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's Classical and Contemporary Text students!
About Emergence Festival
Emergence is a festival of new work from the graduating artists of the MFA Acting/Directing Classical and Contemporary Text programme.
Emergence 2026 will include ten live performances and two gripping short films presented across four days in January. For another year the festival returns to Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts, and also this year will also include a performance at the Vic Bar and Assembly Rooms at Glasgow School of Art.
A Pan***ic Play (Emergence 2026)
Inspired by verbatim theatre and works such as The Vagina Monologues, A Pan***ic Play shares the real, lived experiences of everyday people during the COVID-19 pandemic through the voice of one actor.
More Than Conquerors (Emergence 2026)
Siblings Grant and Niamh, and their ailing Grandfather Eric were raised Anglican, middle class and repressed. This gently comedic family drama explores the ways our relationship with our faith can bring us together and pull us apart.
The Prince of the Underground (Emergence 2026)
A blinding light and shadow duel over a forbidden prize in a silent, inherited house, blurring innocence and madness.
Rockpools (Emergence 2026)
Rockpools is a darkly comic, surreal, one-woman play which uses comedy, 12 porcelain dogs and a secret room to dive into a story of female identity, fertility, hoarding and love.
Bird Eats Bread (Emergence 2026)
A woman learns to live in a body that no longer feels her own. Combining music, object puppetry and multilingual text, Bird Eats Bread traces displacement, and the quiet work of repair.
Nuclear War (Emergence 2026)
This encounter with Simon Stephens’ NUCLEAR WAR is a probing, experimental collaboration between physical theatre, music, and design that asks what we mean to each other in a world that won’t stop changing."
The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven (Emergence 2026)
A revolutionary queer ritual where bread is shared, wine is drunk, and Biblical stories are reimagined by a transgender Jesus.
The Killing Steel (Emergence 2026)
Over sixteen years, an ambitious young woman paints Alexander the Great as he rises from prince to king to conqueror.
Samadhi (Emergence 2026)
In Samadhi: Birth of Kabandha, Vishvasu, a celestial musician, disrupts the heavens — unravelling the “model minority” myth, disrupting cosmic cycles, and daring to chase transcendence through chaos.
You Know Who (Emergence 2026)
You Know Who follows Toni, a young Black woman in Glasgow, as an ordinary evening reveals a deeper truth she has learned to carry.
Shown as part of the Short Film Triple Bill.
UNICORN (Emergence 2026)
A modern coming-of-age sitcom episode journeys Jaz, a black American, who is met with the horrific realization she might be the only person of colour in Scotland.
Shown as part of the Short Film Triple Bill.
How to Make Friends at the End of the World (Emergence 2026)
369 days after everyone disappeared, Jane finds another survivor. As their different approaches to the apocalypse collide, two strangers discover what it takes to be human when the world has ended.
Shown as part of the Short Film Triple Bill.
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