Stepping Out Theatre - The UK’s Leading Mental Health Theatre Group

Founded inside a Bristol psychiatric hospital on All Fools' Day 1997, we celebrated our Silver Anniversary in 2022, and are still going strong. Stepping Out Theatre occupy a unique place in the UK's history of theatre and mental health. It has produced a huge range of work on mental health themes and is open to people who have used mental health services and their allies.

In nearly three decades of producing live theatre, we have produced well over 100 live theatre shows, ranging from large scale community theatre productions with dozens of service users involved to small scale touring professional fringe productions, and from full scale musical theatre to shows rehearsed and performed entirely online during Covid lockdowns.

To mark our silver anniversary, we made our third, and most ambitious trip yet to the greatest theatre festival in the world. In August 2022, a dedicated 24 strong team of Stepping Out Artists and Ambassadors took no fewer than SIX productions to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Six months of planning and preparation, with previews in London, Clevedon and Bristol led up to 48 performances of our six shows in just 9 days in Edinburgh over the first two weeks of the Fringe Festival.

Postponed twice because of Covid, in 2023 we took two productions of new work by Ukrainian playwrights to the international 'Water is Memory' Festival in Vichy, where we performed inside an Art Deco World Heritage listed 1920s theatre. Our Ukrainian work continued in 2025 with the world premiere of 'Diary of a Ukrainian Madman' by Liudmyla Tymoshenko.

Here's to the next 30 years!

Mark Rylance, Patron

"The work Stepping Out Theatre is doing should be supported by all interested in a society that is healthy. Stepping Out understands and does not shy away from the possibility that theatre, the ancient art of these islands North West of Europe, is a transformative and healing activity which brings joy into people's lives. If you want to hear something true, go and hear what Stepping Out Theatre are saying. I only found myself in theatre, and I hear that Stepping Out is helping other people do the same. I have great hopes for this company and deep respect for what they are doing right now."

Most Recent Show

Sizzling Summer Special

Written and performed by group members

We hope you can join us for our fantastic fundraising cabaret.

For nearly 30 years Stepping Out Theatre have offered the joyous experience of participating in live theatre to mental health service users in Bristol and beyond. With a tougher funding climate, events like this can help to ensure we survive.

You can support us by booking a free ticket and making a donation here.

Or if you can't join us, we'd love a donation anyway! You can donate directly to Stepping Out here.

[more details . . ]

02 Aug 2026
Chicken Shed, Hen and Chicken, Bristol, BS3 1JF

Latest News

Winter Warmer Cabaret
Nov 2026

Our sizzling summer cabaret was such a success with audience and participants alike that we're going to do it all again, this time as a winter warmer cabaret! We'll be performing this in February and beginning rehearsals shortly. Open to almost anything, ideally under five minutes with a small cast: poems, songs, sketches, stand up, dramatic pieces, monologues and more! If you'd like to join us contact mark@steppingouttheatre.co.uk

Writing for Wellbeing
Nov 2026

Our recent Writing for Wellbeing workshops with Elisabeth Winkler were inspiring and helped free up creativity as expressed by participants in a group poem (below).

The next Writing for Wellbeing workshops will be from March 2027 with an invitation to submit poems and prose for publication in Plumb Lines, a writing for wellbeing anthology.

Five minutes is not to be sniffed at

Free myself from the roles
Silence, void - let me jump in
Creating in the book from Korea
find it, use it
Listen to great stories
audio books
book club podcast
Stop sabotaging your creativity
- turn off the crap telly, put down your phone

I will buy myself a bunch of flowers -
blue irises in a jug in front of my pen and notebook
Be like Bowie
cut at snippets of writing
read random books
A Painted Symbol.
weekly

Pick up a pen more often
Pick up a paint brush more often
A noisy, buzzing cafe -
some people-watching
some eavesdropping
gather material.

Go on a journey somewhere different
Plan some artist dates
- visit a church
- listen to a piece of music I've never listened to before
- tidy up my art drawer.
creative buddy/buddies.

Music is the best medicine
Early morning wakening
sunlight through curtains.
First coffee, pristine page
and lovely pen.
Energise.

Name the trickster.

Find time for fun
Don't worry about age
No more knowing or seeking is necessary -
it all exists within you. Give it a voice.
The sky - the sun and the moon.
Silence, silence, silence
- the chance to hear my own rhythm and breath and see
where my thoughts spool.

Enjoy the words.
Listen to the growing rumbling of ideas
rolling and forming
- keep sight of where they are headed.
Writing into the depth of my days - dive below the surface
Write about it.

[news archive . . .]