Looking back over the past few years, I have set myself annual challenges that combine theatre and film in ways that push me to see work I might not ordinarily seek out. In 2024 I undertook a project revisiting all the productions I had seen at the theatre and cinema in 1984. In 2025 I focused on filling in gaps in my Sondheim knowledge, watching musicals live and exploring his top forty films. Both years encouraged me to view familiar works differently, to take risks and to draw connections across stage and screen.

For 2026 I am building on these experiences with a year-long Gothic project. Having completed an MA in Gothic studies and spent time researching and thinking about the ways the uncanny and the macabre can manifest in performance, I am setting out to explore Gothic themes month by month through live shows, films and fiction. The aim is to select works that challenge my expectations, expand my perspective and offer new ways of seeing, whether through fairy-tale darkness, domestic unease, obsessive artistry, psychological transformation, spectral hauntings or comic grotesque.

Here's the first six months mapped out. Theatre trips booked, films planned and a couple of novels selected, although may only get to read one!

January – Into the Woods

Venue: The Bridge Theatre, London Theme: Fairy-Tale Gothic: Innocence, Consequence and the Dark Forest

Sondheim and Lapine dismantle the logic of fairy tales by following the story beyond the wish fulfilment. The forest is a liminal Gothic space where moral choices accumulate weight. Community fractures, responsibility cannot be escaped and the comfort of narrative closure is exposed as a dangerous illusion.

Films: Into the Woods (2014), Tale of Tales (2015), Tideland (2005), The Singing Ringing Tree (1957)

Fiction: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and The Binding by Bridget Collins

Read more about January's adventures here.

February – It Walks Around the House at Night

Venue: Chichester Festival Theatre Theme: Haunted Houses

It Walks Around the House at Night is a contemporary ghost story that draws on the enduring power of the haunted house. An out-of-work actor is hired to impersonate the ghost said to haunt a remote country estate, only to find himself caught in something far less theatrical and far more unsettling. As myth, performance and reality begin to blur, the play explores why certain places seem to hold on to the past, and why some presences refuse to leave. Rooted in the imagery of the isolated house and surrounding woods, the production blends traditional Gothic atmosphere with modern psychological unease, allowing fear to emerge gradually as the familiar becomes strange.

Films: The Others (2001), The Uninvited (1944), Presence (2024), Burnt Offerings (1976)

Fiction: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons

Read more about February's adventures here.

March – The Red Shoes

Venue: Mayflower Theatre, Southampton Theme: Obsession and Art: When Performance Takes Possession

Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes presents artistic creation as something both transcendent and dangerous. Ambition becomes compulsion, and performance begins to eclipse the self, as identity dissolves into the demands of art. The body — disciplined, admired and exhausted — becomes the site of sacrifice, suggesting that beauty and destruction are inseparable when devotion to creation becomes absolute. Like the fairy tale that inspires it, the story asks what is lost when art refuses to release those who serve it.

Films: The Red Shoes (1948), Black Swan (2010), Perfect Blue (1997), All That Jazz (1979)

Fiction: The Turnout by Megan Abbott and Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead

April – Dracula

Venue: Noel Coward Theatre, London Theme: Vampires: Desire, Identity and Transformation (part 1)

This new reimagining of Dracula, performed by Cynthia Erivo in a one-woman production, reframes vampirism as something fluid and psychological rather than purely monstrous. By fragmenting identity and shifting between roles, the production explores the vampire as a figure shaped by desire, performance and transformation. Here, monstrosity is not simply an external threat but something bound up with longing, power and self-creation, continuing the Gothic tradition of using the vampire to explore anxieties around sexuality, identity and control.

The month’s films explore how contemporary cinema continues to reinterpret the vampire myth. Two offer striking modern perspectives directed by women, while two foreground Black vampire figures, reflecting how the mythology of Dracula continues to evolve across cultures, identities and creative voices.

Films: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023), Blade (1998), Ganja & Hess (1973)

Fiction: Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist and TBC

May – Dracula

Venue: London Palladium Theme: Vampires: Desire, Identity and Transformation (part 2)

Following April’s psychological reinterpretation, May turns to Dracula in a more operatic and sensual form. Joel Burke’s ballet transforms the vampire myth into movement, using classical music and choreography to express what Gothic literature has long suggested: that vampirism is as much about seduction and desire as it is about horror.

In dance, Dracula becomes less a monster lurking in shadows and more a figure of hypnotic attraction. Bodies circle, pursue and yield; the language of choreography mirrors the Gothic tension between control and surrender. The story’s themes of immortality, temptation and transformation are rendered physically, with dancers embodying the pull between life and death.

This month’s films reflect the enduring popularity of Bram Stoker’s creation across different styles and eras, from romantic reinterpretation to grand Gothic spectacle. Films: Dracula: A Love Story (2025), Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and TBC

Fiction: Dracula Untold by Dacre Stoker and The Dracula Tapes by Fred Saberhagen

June – Beetlejuice: The Musical

Venue: Prince Edward Theatre, London Theme: Carnivalesque Gothic: Spectacle, Mischief and the Afterlife as Theatre

Beetlejuice revels in grotesque humour and theatrical excess, transforming death into spectacle and the supernatural into entertainment. Authority collapses, rules are broken, and identity becomes fluid as the living and the dead collide in a world governed by chaos rather than morality. Blending horror with comedy, the story draws on the Gothic tradition of carnival and inversion, where laughter unsettles as much as fear and the familiar becomes gleefully strange.

Films: Beetlejuice (1988), House (1977), Death Becomes Her (1992), Delicatessen (1991)

Fiction: Funhouse by Diane Hoh and The Amazing Mr Blunden by Antonia Barber

July – -320°F

Venue: Sadler’s Wells, London

Theme: Technological Gothic: Creation, Control and the Future of Life

NODA MAP’s -320°F, written and directed by Hideki Noda, explores the consequences of technological ambition through a science-fiction narrative that spans eras and centres on reproductive medicine, anti-aging and human control over evolution. Echoing the Faustian Gothic tradition, the production interrogates what happens when humanity attempts to master life itself. Set against the metaphorical image of excavation — digging into the past while reshaping the future — the play positions technology not as neutral progress but as a destabilising force. In this framework, the Gothic emerges not from castles or spectres but from ethical transgression, bodily manipulation and the unsettling possibility that human desire may outrun human wisdom.

Films: Akira (1988), Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), Ex Machina (2014), Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Fiction: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

August – Death Note

Venue: Barbican Centre, London

Theme: Urban Moral Gothic: Power, Surveillance and the God Complex

Death Note: The Musical relocates Gothic anxiety to the contemporary metropolis. When a disaffected student gains the power to kill simply by writing a name, justice becomes obsession and morality fractures under the strain of absolute authority. The supernatural notebook functions as a modern Gothic object — a fatal manuscript granting godlike power while corrupting its wielder. Through doubling, rivalry and hidden identity, the narrative explores surveillance, control and the seduction of righteous extremism. The city replaces the castle; technology replaces the crypt; but the Gothic core remains — a study of ambition curdling into tyranny.

Films: Death Note (2006), Cure (1997), Confessions (2010), Battle Royale (2000)

Fiction: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami and TBC

Looking Ahead

The first eight months are now booked. For September onwards I am seeking suggestions. Whether it is an atmospheric play, a surreal dance, a horror-tinged opera or musical or something experimental, I want to continue exploring identity, desire, transformation and the uncanny in every form.

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