Interview with Denholm Spurr

I caught up with Denholm Spurr to talk about Off West End and the Offie Awards, and see the journey, and where he sees the role of off west end productions in the future.

Arts company OffWestEnd is celebrating 20 years this year. What does that milestone mean for the organisation and the wider independent theatre sector?

Twenty years is significant because very few grassroots cultural institutions survive this long, let alone remain relevant. OffWestEnd was founded in 2006, partly in response to a similar platform created for Off-Broadway a few years earlier. That site has long since disappeared, as have UK platforms like Fringe Review, MyTheatreMates and others. The fact that OffWestEnd is still here is proof not only that independent theatre in London needs a central space of its own, but that we provide a vital service that has kept us alive and thriving. We do not just celebrate the sector; we help define it, connect it, advocate for it, and create meaningful pathways for recognition and career development.

For the wider theatre ecology, I think it is a reminder that Off-West-End is not a decorative fringe to the “real” industry, but unique, purpose-made couture in its own right. We are foundational whilst also being a destination in our own right. So much of what later breaks through into the mainstream starts life here first, but just as importantly, more and more established artists are choosing to work OffWestEnd without looking to transfer at all. OffWestEnd reaching 20 is really a milestone for the sector itself and a sign of our growth into the biggest and brightest independent theatre sector in the world.

For readers who might be less familiar with them, how would you describe the role of the Offies within London’s theatre landscape?

Most people know what a major awards ceremony looks like: a glitzy, high-profile evening where an industry that is already visible gets together to congratulate itself. Fabulous, and we love it. The Oliviers did that brilliantly just the other day. But the Offies were never designed just to be a media moment. Their role is much broader and, I would argue, much more unusual.

The Offies are the recognition platform for London’s independent theatre sector, but at their best they are also a discovery mechanism, a marker of quality, a career pathway, and a way of making visible work that might otherwise be overlooked because it is happening outside the commercial centre. We exist to say that excellence is not confined to the biggest buildings, the biggest budgets, or the artists who are already known. Some of the most original work in this city happens in rooms above pubs, at festivals, in small studios, and in forms that do not fit neat industry boxes. The Offies help that work be seen, contextualised, and taken seriously. That is what makes them distinctive: they are not just celebrating success after the fact, they are often helping identify it in the first place.

The Offies have previously spotlighted shows like Fleabag and Operation Mincemeat. Why is recognising emerging work so important?

Because by the time something is obviously a success, it often no longer needs the same kind of advocacy. Recognition matters most when work is still vulnerable, when it is running for a short time, being made with limited means, and trying to build momentum. One of the things the Offies have done consistently is recognise quality early, before consensus catches up. That matters for artists, because it can change confidence, profile, and trajectory. And it matters for the industry, because it reminds people that major cultural success rarely appears fully formed in the commercial sector. It is usually developed in the independent one.

And that matters politically as much as culturally, because the ecology loop in this country is broken. We have too few mechanisms that genuinely support grassroots theatre, sustain it over time, and feed value back into the part of the industry where so much of the risk, innovation, and talent development actually happens. The Offies do that. We provide a vital service not just to the independent sector itself, but to the mainstream and commercial sector too, by helping surface work, artists, and companies of real quality and by adding value to shows as they move through our system. The data backs that up: the transfer rate of venues that regularly participate in our awards is roughly four times higher than those that do not. So for me, the Offies are not just an awards ceremony. They are one of the few structures actively helping repair a theatre ecology that otherwise asks the grassroots to generate huge amounts of cultural and commercial value without being properly sustained in return.

The awards introduced a new streamlined framework last year. What prompted the decision to rethink the traditional awards category system?

When I took over, I had already spent more than a decade making theatre Off-West-End myself, so I knew first-hand just how broad, unruly, and hard-to-categorise our sector really is. There had also been some inspiration in the Obies’ (our Off-Broadway equivalent awards institution) move away from strict categories a few years earlier, which I found interesting, but our sector is broader and structurally different, so this was never going to be a case of simply copying another model. I wanted to build something purpose-made for London’s independent theatre ecology.

At the same time, I did not want to rely only on my own perspective. I spent several months speaking to venue leads, creatives, critics, assessors, and others working in and around the sector to understand what people really thought of the Offies and, crucially, what they wanted from them. The same things came up again and again: too many categories, and a growing sense that everyone seemed to be nominated.

That told me two things. First, the old system was becoming too rigid for the reality of contemporary theatre-making, especially in independent theatre, where artists often work across disciplines, forms, and scales. Second, the awards needed to feel both more accessible and more exclusive at the same time - accessible in the sense that the system should be able to recognise the full breadth of the sector, but exclusive in the sense that nomination and winning had to mean something again. I did not want an old-fashioned gatekeeping model that simply said no thank you to work that did not follow the zeitgeist, but I also knew the framework needed more clarity, more prestige, and more value.

The move from categories to Areas was my attempt to solve that, developed with expert input from our long-standing super-assessors and critics panel. It was about flexibility and function, but also about fairness. It gives us a framework that better reflects how work is actually made now, without forcing everything into outdated boxes or pretending every production can be meaningfully compared on identical terms when the budgets, spaces, and timescales are often wildly different. It lets us recognise exceptional contribution without flattening the complexity of the sector. It also means forms that have historically been sidelined - cabaret, opera, immersive work, theatre for young audiences, and others can compete on equal terms across the system rather than being treated as specialist add-ons.

The Offies aim to recognise work across many forms, from immersive theatre to opera and cabaret. How important is that breadth to the awards?

It is absolutely central. If you are serious about representing independent theatre, you cannot only reward the kinds of work that most resemble mainstream plays and musicals. The sector’s real vitality comes from its range: immersive work, devised work, opera, cabaret, digital work, theatre for young audiences, multilingual work, hybrid forms that do not sit neatly anywhere. That is where the real innovation happens. Some of it fails, of course  but if nobody is pushing the form to its breaking point, the artform stagnates. That restless experimentation is a huge part of what keeps London at the forefront of theatre globally.

That is also why our specialisms matter so much. The Areas are the broad framework through which we recognise exceptional contribution across the sector, but the specialisms make sure particular artforms and modes of practice do not fall through the gaps. Each specialism is supported by dedicated Super Assessors with real expertise in those forms — people who understand the artistic language, the production realities, and the standards of excellence within them. That matters because work can otherwise be overlooked either by mainstream critical assumptions or by practical barriers to entry: smaller budgets, shorter runs, less development time, different audience relationships, or forms that simply do not fit the dominant model of what “serious theatre” is supposed to look like. The specialisms are there to make sure that kind of work is not politely nodded at from the sidelines, but properly understood and robustly championed within our process.

That is also why we announced Musicals as a new specialism this year. Musical theatre Off-West-End can be extraordinary, but it often operates under very different conditions from the better-funded productions people tend to picture when they hear the word “musical”. And that is increasingly true of the times we are in now. Rising costs across the board mean we would be doing new musicals a disservice if we forced them into eligibility models that assume they can afford longer runs. Requiring a two-week run in the current climate would simply narrow the field to those with the means to sustain it, which is the opposite of what independent theatre should be about. Some of the most ambitious musical work in this sector is being staged for three nights rather than three weeks, with far less money, less development time, and much less margin for error. Making Musicals a specialism helps us recognise that reality properly.

This year’s ceremony was hosted by Divina De Campo. What was it like?

This year’s ceremony really showed the direction we want to move in. Our host, Divina De Campo, returned with us to the glorious Central Hall Westminster, bringing her trademark authenticity, wit, warmth, and a real sense of occasion. What mattered most, though, was that the ceremony felt expansive enough to reflect the breadth of the sector itself. It is independent theatre’s biggest showcase moment of the year, and as both the ceremony and our wider process evolve, we have been determined to honour that.

This year, we switched from nominee videos to winner videos, which allowed us to give more time and visual space to the award-winning work that took place in 2025. But the evening was also jam-packed with live performance, including extracts from nominated shows audiences may have missed. The cherry on top was that, for the first time, a full awards programme was broadcast live in collaboration with ChewBoy Productions and The Theatre Channel, an important step in making the awards more visible and more accessible beyond the room.

The ambition is for the ceremony to match the scale, variety, and significance of the work it is celebrating. This year’s ceremony was the best version of that we have managed to deliver so far. We now feel established as a major fixture in the awards circuit, and I am excited to see where we go next.

If you missed it, you can catch up on the full ceremony programme on The Theatre Channel for free.

Independent venues often operate with smaller budgets and resources. How do OffWestEnd and the Offies help bring attention to the work being created in those spaces?

One of the problems with independent theatre is not a lack of quality. It is a lack of visibility, continuity, and amplification. Smaller venues are often where the artistic risk is happening, but they do not always have the marketing budgets, the press power, or the institutional weight to make that visible beyond their immediate audiences. OffWestEnd and the Offies help by creating a framework in which that work can be assessed, championed, and connected into a wider conversation. Recognition can bring press attention, industry attention, audience confidence, and a sense that a production is part of a larger cultural story rather than disappearing after a short run.

But for me, it has to go beyond that. OffWestEnd is not just here to applaud the sector; we are here to help organise it, advocate for it, and make the case for its value. For too long, independent theatre has been expected to generate huge amounts of artistic and commercial value while surviving on weak infrastructure and goodwill, with a real lack of meaningful trickle-down investment. That has to change. So our role is not only to celebrate the work, but to help build the ecosystem around it giving the sector more visibility, more coherence, and a stronger voice in the conversations that shape its future.

What is the most exciting thing about independent theatre?

Its freedom. Independent theatre is where people can still take genuine artistic risks, formally, politically, and aesthetically. It is where new languages of theatre emerge before the rest of the industry has worked out how to package them. There is often a directness to the work  a closeness to the audience and to the current moment  that can be very difficult to replicate at larger scale. The most exciting thing is that it still feels like a place where something genuinely unexpected can happen.

In your view, what makes the Off-West-End sector such a vital part of London’s cultural ecology?

It is where the ecosystem renews itself. New artists emerge there, new forms emerge there, new producing models emerge there. It is also where the city’s diversity is often most truthfully represented, because the barriers to experimentation are lower and the work is closer to communities rather than to market orthodoxy. For me, the Off-West-End sector embodies what theatre should be at its best: affordable, accessible, sustainable, and incredible. It is where audiences can take risks, where artists can develop, and where work can be made in a way that feels genuinely connected to the city around it. If the West End is one expression of London’s theatre identity, the Off-West-End sector is the research and development department, the talent engine, and often the conscience as well.

What developments have you noticed in independent theatre over the past few years?

I think Off-West-End theatre is living on the tail end of a golden age. We have seen a remarkable period of transfer success, but the conditions underneath it are getting worse, not better. Reaching audiences is harder, rising costs are making risk less viable, and the commercial sector has spent too long treating the grassroots like a free development wing without building any serious mechanism to sustain it in return.

You can already see the consequences: shows cancelling before press night, venue growth stalling and showing signs of decline, and a creeping sense that only those with enough money behind them can afford to absorb the risk of making new work. That should alarm everyone. Because if the grassroots becomes less porous, less risky, and less accessible, the whole ecology suffers, including the mainstream sectors that depend on it for ideas, talent, and cultural momentum.

We need to stop treating this as a niche concern. Theatre is one of the UK’s major exports and one of its major economic contributors. If we want it to keep growing in a country where many other sectors have long since stopped doing so, we have to repair the ecology loop and properly sustain the independent sector where the future is actually being made.

Has the scale or ambition of Off-West-End productions changed since OffWestEnd was first established?

Yes, the scale and ambition of Off-West-End productions has changed  and in some important ways it has evolved for the better, even under huge pressure. When I was doing profit-share theatre in 2013, I worked out that one production paid me the equivalent of about 49p an hour. That kind of exploitation was endemic. Now, most Off-West-End productions are paying actors at an Equity-approved rate, which is a significant shift and a sign that parts of the sector have matured professionally. Off-West-End is also more diverse than it was then, both in the stories being told and in the people telling them, which has made the work itself richer, broader, and more reflective of the city it serves.

At the same time, OffWestEnd remains comparatively affordable by international standards, and that is beginning to attract more outside interest and investment  including things like Broadway trial runs and other producers looking to test ambitious work in London without starting at full commercial scale. That is an opportunity we should be capitalising on much more strategically. If we get the conditions right, Off-West-End can be not just the research and development arm of British theatre, but an even more serious engine for international collaboration and growth. OffWestEnd as an organisation is here to support this.

At the same time, that ambition is being carried under enormous financial pressure, which makes the achievements of the sector even more remarkable.

As OffWestEnd celebrates its 20th birthday, what are your hopes for the future of the organisation, the Offies and the independent theatre sector?

My hope is that the Offies continue to evolve from being seen as a single annual event into being recognised for what they really are: part of the infrastructure of the sector. I want them to keep opening doors for artists, keep reflecting the full breadth of theatre being made, and keep building public and industry understanding of the value of independent work. We have some exciting plans on this front, so watch this space.

More broadly, I want to see an independent sector that is not surviving on goodwill alone. It should be properly visible, properly valued, and properly sustained. London’s independent theatre scene has shaped the wider industry for decades. The next step is making sure the structures around it catch up with that reality.

That is really what OffWestEnd 2.0 is about for me. It is our shorthand for the next twenty years: taking an organisation that has already played a huge role in defining and championing the sector, and building it into something more robust, more useful, and more future-facing. That means a new website and platform, yes, but not just as a cosmetic rebrand. It is about creating a stronger digital home for independent theatre — one that helps audiences discover work, helps venues and artists gain visibility, helps us better capture and communicate the sector’s impact, and helps strengthen the connective tissue between recognition, advocacy, and opportunity.

If the first twenty years were about proving that this sector matters, the next twenty have to be about building the systems that allow it to thrive. My ambition is for OffWestEnd to become not just a champion of independent theatre, but a central operating system for it: affordable, accessible, sustainable, and incredible. The future of independent theatre cannot just be survival. It has to be scale, strength, and security and I want OffWestEnd to help build that future.

A huge thank you to Denholm for taking the time to speak with me and for sharing such thoughtful insight into Off West End. It’s incredibly exciting to see such progressive change within the industry, and this is a reminder at just how powerful the talents of off west end theatre and how it is crucial that we support it.