For the past few years, I’ve given myself some sort of annual cultural challenge, partly to give the year a bit of shape and partly to make sure I don’t just keep doing the things I already know I like.

In 2024, I went back to 1984, revisiting as much as I could of what I had seen at the theatre and cinema that year. In 2025, it was Sondheim, with live productions alongside a rather large trawl through his favourite films. And in 2026, I went Gothic, taking the theme into theatre, film and fiction.

So what on earth do I do in 2027?

I’ve been pondering this for quite a while and, after considering various themes, I’ve decided not to have a theme at all. Instead, I’m going to spend the year discovering theatres I haven’t been to.

The idea is fairly simple. Each month, I want to see something at a theatre that is new to me. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a new theatre in the sense of a new building. I’ve been to most of the obvious local and London theatres, but there are plenty of smaller theatres, studios, arts centres and other venues that I’ve somehow never got round to visiting.

And this time I’d quite like to explore a bit closer to home too.

I’m going to look at theatres across Sussex, Hampshire and Surrey, as well as making the occasional trip further afield if something particularly tempting turns up. There are an astonishing number of theatres within fairly easy reach of where I am based that I have never been to.

The theatre will be the main event, but I don’t want to turn the year into another carefully constructed syllabus. Whilst I’m in that neck of the woods, if there’s a cinema nearby that I’ve never been to, I might go there too. Or an exhibition, a museum or simply somewhere interesting to have a look around. Or I might just go to the theatre and come home.

I am going to aim to watch some films and read a couple of books that in some way chime with the live theatre element, hopefully drawing on films already on my watchlist or an unread book that’s been sitting on my shelves for far too long. The connections might be obvious, or they might be rather tenuous. That’s fine. I’m not looking to create a reading list for the year. I just want to see where the theatre takes me.

January is already sorted, and there’s a rather nice little connection with 2026. I’m going to see The Turn of the Screw at Mayflower Studios in Southampton, a venue I’ve never been to. After a year of Gothic ghosts, psychological unease and Henry James’s rather wonderful capacity for making you wonder what exactly is going on, it seemed like a good way to start the new year. And I've plenty of unread Gothic fiction on the shelves.

February should be rather different. I’m planning to see A Thing of Beauty at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford, with Imogen Stubbs playing Leni Riefenstahl. I’ve spent quite a lot of time thinking and writing about Riefenstahl over the years, so that one immediately caught my attention. And, of course, the Yvonne Arnaud is another theatre I haven’t been to.

And there are a few books on my shelves that might make interesting companions to it. Gert Hoffmann’s The Film Explainer is an obvious possibility, while Timur Vermes’s Look Who’s Back and Robert Harris’s Fatherland both take rather different approaches to the Nazi past and the way history can be represented and manipulated. I haven’t read any of them yet, so we’ll see what happens.

March takes me much closer to home, to The Nest at Chichester Festival Theatre. I’ve booked A Murder Most Foley, presented by Fools Rush In on Saturday 13 March. A murder at McDougal Manor, a questionable private detective called Dick Reference, a group of strangers on an island and a live Foley desk. It's a comedy spoofing the Queen of Mystery herself, Agatha Christie. I did briefly consider making 2027 a year of crime and Christie, but perhaps I can still fit in a little murder along the way. And The Nest opened in September 2025, but I've not yet visited. And I've plenty of unread detective fiction on the shelf!

And that’s pretty much as far as I’ve got.

So that’s the plan. Twelve months, hopefully twelve theatres I haven’t visited before, and plenty of scope for the occasional film, book, exhibition or completely unexpected detour along the way.

Let’s see where it takes me.