Yeti Festive Show Collaboration: Quirk X HOP

Did you know our festive shows are co-created by Quirk Theatre every year with young people from the local community? For our 2026 festive show YETI, Exeter Phoenix & Quirk Theatre have collaborated with the amazing Happiness Outdoors Project (also known as HOP).

Working in local schools, they bring child led, outdoor experiences to young people during school time, whatever the weather, encouraging curiosity and fostering a care for natural environments - values we share. They are also 100% up for mud and creative chaos!

The YETI story follows a group of children out in the wilderness on an adventure to find the YETI, so we were keen to experience getting out in nature with these incredible, brave and curious young people. What adventures would we get up to? It turned out to be an amazing and inspiring few days.

The Quirk Theatre team went along to local schools in partnership with HOP for 6 days, bringing the YETI story into HOP's sessions. The sessions were amazingly varied and combined some brilliant outdoor skills with workshops that were themed around things that might happen in the show.

One week we were meeting the YETI, building his personality alongside building him (and his baby) a den. Another week we were making the YETI amazing culinary delights in the mud kitchen, exploring what a yeti might like to eat!

We were also thrilled to be able to bring in some of our wider team to help to develop music, characters and design for the show.

Zaid Al-Rikabi, who will be playing the character of Stanley, joined us for a whole whole day of sessions at Bowhill, joining the children on a mini beast hunt. Stanley is very afraid of the outside world and creepy crawlies, which made for a fun day of improvising, with the children supporting Stanley as he learned to be braver with mini beasts and mud.

Meanwhile, YETI’s amazing composer Jonny Wharton came along to Ladysmith, making brilliant music in the open air with the HOP students, informing the writing of the original music for the show. The children imagined stories around magical trees, dug up potatoes, made nests for a baby YETI and sang songs about being brave.

It was such a joy to collaborate with HOP in this way, allowing us to co-create with the children and to make sure their ideas are woven right through the fabric of this year’s magical festive show.