Lancaster Arts has announced its autumn season, exploring what it means to question, challenge and imagine things differently.
Continuing its year-long exploration of Dissent, the new season will bring together artists from across the UK and Europe to ask questions about pushing back against the status-quo.
The theatre programme begins with Belgium-based Ontroerend Goed's Thanks for Being Here on 9 October, turning the typical relationship between performer and audience on its head in a celebration of the shared experience theatre provides and the people who make it possible - the audience themselves.
Forced Entertainment's Cold Sweat (14 October) uses music loops and AI-generated voices as the figures on stage try to articulate their dreams and desires, and Tim Etchells / Bert & Nasi's L'Addition (16 October) presents an increasingly chaotic scene between a diner and waiter that plays out over and over again as it spins out of control.
The performance programme continues with Action Hero's A Song and Dance on 5 November, a darkly funny work about masking, performing and 'acting the part', in which a reluctant performer confronts stage fright.
On 13 November, choreographer and performer Seke Chimutengwende returns to the Nuffield Theatre with The Last Quartet, in which four performers imagine what a last attempt at choreography might look like.
This autumn's concert programme begins with Kantos Chamber Choir: Brontë on 12 November. Combining choral music and spoken word, the concert explores the lives and imaginations of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, as seen through the eyes of their friend and champion, Elizabeth Gaskell.
Join Dr Sherry Ashworth (Elizabeth Gaskell specialist) and Ellie Slorach (Creative Director of the choir) for a pre-concert conversation about how these women challenged the social expectations of their time.
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra arrives at the Great Hall on 19 November as part of its 80th anniversary year. Against the Tide brings together four works that resist the grand gestures traditionally associated with orchestral romanticism and includes the European premiere of Byron Adams' Cello Concerto.
The orchestra will be joined by cello soloist Simon Tetzlaff, who was recently named Young Talent of the Year 2026 by Opus Klassik.
The season concludes in December with renowned guitarist Sean Shibe: Echoes and Reinventions on 3 December, connecting Renaissance masters with contemporary composers.
This is followed by Maja Bugge: HOMELANDS on 4 December bringing together cello, piano, film and field recordings to explore belonging, place and identity.
Dissent Works, a free exhibition at the Peter Scott Gallery, runs until 17 October, bringing together work by artists from across north Lancashire alongside selections from the Lancaster University art collections.
The exhibition explores how dissent can be loud or quiet, public or personal, with a shared willingness to ask whether things could be different.
From 2 November to 4 December, Peter Fillingham's Fruit Salad transforms the Peter Scott Gallery with an explosion of colour, using found and unconventional materials to explore dissent, valuing the unruly, vulnerable, makeshift and unfixed.
Jocelyn Cunningham, Director of Lancaster Arts, said: "Dissent can be a collective act, but it can also be personal and quiet.
"It can be a refusal, a question, a song and dance or simply the decision to imagine that things could be different.
"This autumn's programme will be a joyful celebration of dissent in so many different ways, full of humour, with thoughtful observations on the madness of our times.
"We hope audiences will come curious, encounter something unexpected and have a good laugh!"
The Autumn 2026 season takes place across the Nuffield Theatre, Great Hall and Peter Scott Gallery at Lancaster University, with free exhibitions and conversations alongside ticketed performances and concerts.
For the full Autumn 2026 programme and booking information, visit lancasterarts.org.
