Introducing our October 2025 Scratch Night Artists
Published October 3, 2025
For the first time, Exeter Phoenix are joining forces with Exeter Northcott for the October Scratch Night, which will be presented at Exeter Phoenix as part of Northcott’s Elevate Festival; an annual celebration of local artists and new work.
Ahead of their performances on Mon 13 Oct, we are pleased to present the selected artists for our Scratch Night in partnership with Exeter Northcott!
Glitches in Time
by Tom Marshman
Age guidance: 16+ (semi-nudity, sexual content)
Glitches in Time (working title) is a new solo performance in development exploring queer aging, digital exclusion, and the shifting idea of community. Through a mix of autobiographical storytelling, camp performance, and archival response, Tom opens up a conversation about desire, technology, and belonging.
Drawing on personal experience, including the absurdity of being banned from Grindr, Tom navigates mythologies of aging, the politics of visibility, and the glitches that occur when queer bodies meet digital worlds.
Tom Marshman is an artist based in Bristol who explores stories from the queer community, past, present, and future, often bringing people together through socially engaged projects such as tea parties. By sharing this project at its earliest stage, Tom hopes to spark a wider dialogue and create spaces where stories of aging and digital intimacy can be told, celebrated, and directly integrated into the show.
Image credit: Paul Blakemore
Bone Caves
by Alex Robins & Jon Nash
Age guidance: 12+ | Content warning: this performance will take place in the dark
‘Bone Caves’ is an immersive and multi-sensory audio experience inspired by the historic findings at Cattedown Bone Caves in Plymouth; home to some of the oldest human remains found in the United Kingdom.
You sink into a slowly darkening space as your current location and time fades, we guide you through a series of pitch black limestone caves scattered across the coast of Devon.
Through binaural sound and sensory immersion techniques you are transported to vast karst caverns - starting with their formation and use as shelter by early-humans and other animals. Mammoths and sabretooths, rhinoceroses and giraffes, thousands upon thousands of wolves. Then their ‘discovery’ in the 19th century by quarry workers, leading to documentation by geologist Richard Nicholls Worth. He unearthed 15 human skeletons, dating up to 140,000 years old. Finally, the modern day, where the Bone Caves entrances are hidden amongst the confines of an industrial estate, beneath a city which doesn’t know they exist.
The show explores hidden history, our ancestors, environmental and species changes, the psychology of darkness, mythologies of the underground and ideas around deep time.
Instagram (Alex Robins) | Instagram (Jon Nash)
Image credit: Torquay Museum
Don’t Swim Here (There’s Sewage Water)
by Cut the Bull Theatre Company
Age guidance: 14+ (strong language, themes of and references to discrimination)
Since the 18th Century, sea swimming has been recommended as the number 1 way to look after your health. It stimulates the brain, is good for the joints, and gives you a rush of endorphins. However, nowadays, you are playing roulette with whether you will emerge from the water unscathed by sewage poisoning.
Don’t Swim Here (There’s Sewage Water) is a one-woman exploration of our, sometimes poisonous, relationship with the sea. Swapping sertraline for the sea, what begins as a pandemic hobby quickly becomes a battle with sewage, sexism, racism, and privatised water companies pocketing billions while polluting our coasts.
This show invites us to look at our relationship with the ocean in a new way. Both funny and moving, it shines a light on the urgent need to protect our seas and keep them safe for everyone.
Along the way, we’re thrown into absurd encounters with seals, swans, and Halloween hepatitis horrors, all underscored by a fierce critique of the systems poisoning our waters. A touching love letter to the ocean and a call to arms.
Just Be!
by Alex King (writer) and Awkward Pigeon Theatre Company (Performers and Director)
Age guidance: 15+ (occasional mild swearing and references to grief, substance use and racism)
Just Be! is a new comedy play written by Teignmouth based Alex King and performed by Exeter's own well renowned Awkward Pigeon Theatre Company. Told in real time over one evening, the show tells the story of new teacher James as he struggles to convey his passion for meditation to a reluctant group of students.
Touching on themes of trauma, class, race, grief, disability, misinformation and eco-anxiety the show explores the power of groups and the complex nature of mindfulness. Navigating these issues as well as their own neuroses and interpersonal conflicts the group find themselves forming, storming and then storming a bit more. Coming 'highly commended' by the National Theatre this is a unique opportunity to witness new comedy writing covering serious themes with a light and ultimately hopeful twist.
Join us on Mon 13 Oct, 7.30pm for Scratch Night in collaboration with Exeter Northcott and sample the delights of these bold, fresh, new work in progress performances!
Come along to the Workshop studio at Exeter Phoenix at 6.30pm on the night for a pre-Scratch gathering, Scratching the Itch: shaping platforms for sharing work-in-progress. Katy Danbury (Exeter Phoenix Performance Programmer & Scratch Night co-producer) and Sam Parker (Exeter Northcott Artist Development Producer) discuss how we might shape our collaborative Scratch Night offer in 2026. All people, ideas and feedback very welcome!