Every year, usually towards the end of the year, we ask the world and our patrons to vote for a new project to start producing. We produce a lot of shows, but mostly we choose them because of relative size and lack of complexity, to make the most of the resources we have. But then we ask the patrons, who pay for everything – WHAT DO YOU WANT?

The voting system has changed over the years, but has now landed with a two rounds of voting. A general public vote for the building of a long list, and then a final patreon vote for the final winner. The outright winner goes through into general production, and we try to record other plays on that list and do what we can to make them happen.

There have been bumps in the road – a number of pre-plague projects had to be indefinitely postponed, but we’re getting around to them again asap. And it is our policy to try and do more than we think we can sensibly produce – there have been many a promised project that hasn’t materialised (yet) but by trying to do more, we fail by still doing a hell of a lot. Other companies promise little and maybe deliver, we always deliver a lot, if not always everything.

This year of 2025 we had another vote, and the winner this year was… well, it was a tie!

The two plays at the top were Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay by Robert Greene and The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd… 13 votes each, but which playwright had more votes?

With a combined play/author total of 13/7 = 20 the winner was…

Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay by Robert Greene!

Which will be recorded next year, either as the cornerstone of a live season, or as a one off project. If in a season, we will endeavour to mix in the runners up, but there are many factors at play in such an event – which is discussed in this episode of the podcast! That might mean any of the below plays, or not. Live seasons are fiddly.

And for those who’d like to see all the runners and riders – here’s a chart showing all the current rankings! (We’ve not attempted to do this with the votes before as the way we did the voting originally was really complicated – we have a few years now of sensible voting forms to make the results chartable!) Apologies for the teeny-tiny size of the text.

Anyway, that’s the shape of things – the most popular playwright remains Thomas Dekker (12), and the most voted for genre was Tragedy (20) with Comedy (19) close behind.

2024 Winner was Doctor Faustus, which was recorded at the Wyrd Revels 2025 – runners up of The Witch of Edmonton and The Wise-woman of Hogston were also produced.

2023 Winter Winners were Thomas of Woodstock and The Castle of Perseverance – which are being slowly recorded in studio (first draft edits to come soon).

2023 Summer Winners were Arden of Faversham & Dido, Queen of Carthage, as well as The Old Wives’ Tale by George Peele (hold over from pre-plague) all of which were recorded at the following Winter Revels 2023.

2022 Winner was The Tragedy of Iphigenia by Lady Lumley (which we recorded the following year), with runners up including Arden of Faversham which we recorded at our Winter Revels 2023 (recording still in the edit).

2021 Some plague disruption still, so we weren’t able to schedule anything new.

2020 PLAGUE!

2019 – there were two votes this year (we were ambitious!) and many of those shows got shelved because of plague. The winner in the autumn was The World and the Child or, Mundus et Infans – which has been recorded, and also staged as part of Entertaining Henry 2025. The mini work The Prodigal Son (a fragment) also was voted for, and we produced soon after, though Nice Wanton never got an upgrade. The spring vote rewarded us with The Tragedy of Antony by Mary Sidney and Respublica by Nicholas Udall. Antony was put into production straight away to follow Mariam (though it came out first) and Respublica was half recorded before the plague struck. We technically now have takes for the whole show, but it’s unclear how good the final version can be when put together. Lost in the plague were ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore by John Ford, which had to be dropped from the recording schedule along with The Old Wives’ Tale (which was picked up again a few years later). Other plays were also voted for at this time for exploring sessions were A Game at Chess by Thomas Middleton, and James IV by Robert Greene. Chess was later upgraded to full production and was recorded with a host of other material as part of Middleton’s Endgame.

2018 winners were The Tragedy of Mariam, The Life and Death of Jack Straw, Jack Juggler and Gammer Gurton’s Needle. This was an ambitious first vote, and somehow we managed it – though some of the plays didn’t appear for about four years!