A reflection by our Executive Producer, Ellis.
In 2016 I joined Hijinx, fixed term, to project manage that year’s Unity Festival. That year also happened to be the year of Fred, who, as it turns out, needs full-time supervision... so the rest is history. Ten years later, I’m somehow Hijinx’s Executive Producer, looking back across a decade of international collaboration, five Unity Festivals in the rear-view mirror and our biggest one yet fast approaching.
Our Unity Festival comes round every two years and it’s such a highpoint in my calendar. As we hurtle toward this year’s edition, I’ve been sifting through old rehearsal shots, foyer selfies, blurry late-night celebrations and production photos, 10 years of memories where certain faces kept reappearing. Artists and companies from across Europe. Younger versions of our own team, many of whom are still part of the Hijinx story today. And amongst it all, a slightly bewildered version of me, ten years newer to the job and still figuring out what a Unity Festival week feels like and that yes, it will all work out in the end!
The photo collage below captures something important about Unity. It’s never really been about a single moment in time. It’s about continuity. People returning. Relationships deepening. The same artists reappearing in new shows, new collaborations, and new stages of their journeys.
Ten years ago the world looked different in plenty of ways. Back then, conversations about disability representation were only just starting to move into the mainstream. Authentic casting was largely absent from main stages, and inclusive practice was far less common in rehearsal rooms. Since then we’ve seen disabled performers winning major awards, leading television dramas and reshaping expectations of what stages and screens should look like.
But if you spend time in disability arts circles, you’ll know something else too. Much of the work now being “discovered” by the wider industry has been happening for decades already. Companies across Europe and beyond have been quietly building extraordinary bodies of work, developing performers, touring internationally and proving every night that disabled artists belong at the centre of the cultural landscape.
Unity has always been our vehicle to bring those artists together, proving as much to ourselves as to our audiences what’s possible, and what strikes me most is how many of those artists and companies are still part of our story.
Ten years ago, we welcomed Compañía Danza Mobile to Unity with the stunning El Espejo and Bailo... Luego Existo. This year, they return to the Wales Millennium Centre with The Day the Man Stepped on the Moon, carrying another decade of stories, touring and collaboration with them.
A decade ago, Taking Flight’s Romeo & Juliet was part of a Unity programme that helped shape the festival we know today. In 2026, we’re thrilled to welcome them back with two new productions: Kitty O’Neil and Twitch, Glitch & Flap.
Somewhere in the collage you can spot Annabelle Mailliez from La Compagnie de l'Oiseau-Mouche, who joined us ten years ago as part of the Crossing The Line cohort (a European collaboration project that Hijinx was briefly part of in a pre-Brexit dream). In 2026, Annabelle returns with colleagues to support our co-production Bon Appétit, following multiple residencies both here in Wales and across the Channel in France.
Some relationships begin with a single performance and quietly become part of the fabric of the festival itself. That’s certainly true of our connection with Brian Rodriguez who, under the guise of ClownBaret, co-created Sleepwalkers with Hijinx in 2016. After also collaborating on Astronauts for the 2019 festival, he returns to Unity this year with his new ensemble Satélite Teatro for Astronaut Fusion: an ambitious coming together that perfectly captures the kind of legacy these collaborations can both build and leave behind.
Over the same ten years, Hijinx itself has been constantly shifting too. Teams have grown, changed shape, moved on to new adventures and been joined by new colleagues bringing fresh ideas and energy. The scale of what we do now has expanded in every direction: more productions, more partnerships, more international work, more opportunities for our actors. But Unity remains the one moment in the calendar when everything else pauses and the whole organisation turns its attention to the same thing. For a few intense, joyful days everyone drops what they’re doing and pitches in, with day-to-day roles suddenly giving way to something much more collective, chaotic and fun. It’s when you’re reminded just how multi-talented and generous this team really is. Every year I find myself looking around the festival hubbub feeling enormously proud, slightly in awe, and deeply grateful for the people who make Hijinx what it is.
Plenty of other familiar faces remain: steady hands, returning collaborators, artists who’ve grown alongside us and audiences who’ve made Unity part of their calendar year after year. Equally, some of the artists we shared stages with have now retired. Some have become directors, choreographers or leaders of their own companies. We also remember those who’ve departed this life for the next, while sharing their light with new artists continuing the journey forward. Some of the performers we are welcoming to this year’s festival would have been in school ten years ago, dreaming of the future that is here.
And that’s the quiet magic of a festival like this.
Every two years we gather and say, in effect: look what everyone’s been making. Look how far things have travelled since last time. Artists meeting for the first time. Old collaborators bumping into each other in theatre foyers. Shows that challenge, delight, provoke and often leave you wondering how on earth they pulled that off.
So as we round the corner into our 2026 festival, it feels fitting to look both backwards and forwards:
- Back to the artists who helped shape Unity into what it is today.
- And forward to the artists who will define what the next ten years might look like.
Because if the last decade has taught me anything, it’s that the most exciting part of Unity is what happens next. The next show. The next collaboration. The next late-night conversation in a theatre foyer that sparks an idea nobody saw coming. The next artist arriving in Cardiff for the first time, unaware they’re about to become part of this strange, brilliant extended family too.
And somewhere in amongst it all, there’ll probably be another slightly chaotic collage of photos waiting to remind us that the next ten years have already begun.
Ellis Wrightbrook
