A MONTH-LONG festival is now being staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in the newly opened Studio at The Other Place.

Entitled Making Mischief, it will be a first new work festival at the refurbished Stratford-upon-Avon venue and will run through from last week’s opening to August 27.

It features new commissions by some of today's rising playwrights.

Led by Deputy Artistic Director Erica Whyman, the festival will include:

• Two new plays, Fall of the Kingdom, Rise of the Foot Soldier written by Somalia Seaton and Always Orange by Fraser Grace, directed by Nadia Latif and Donnacadh O’Briain.

• The return of the award-winning Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. by Alice Birch, before runs in Edinburgh and London at Shoreditch Town Hall.

• Clean Break’s critically acclaimed one woman show Joanne performed by Tanya Moodie.

Fraser Grace and Somalia Seaton were invited to respond to the provocation ‘What is unsayable in the 21st Century?’

Fraser Grace returns to the RSC following Breakfast with Mugabe, which won the John Whiting Best Play Award in 2006 and, following its Stratford run, transferred to the West End and New York. In Always Orange, Fraser presents a tragi-comic exploration of how to be human in a world always on the edge.

Set in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in central London, a survivor of the first attack, Joe, is convinced that he has found the key to turning the tide of destruction and restoring tolerance and understanding. But the city is in no mood to listen… Somalia Seaton makes her RSC debut with Fall of the Kingdom, Rise of the foot Soldier.

Emerging as a major new talent, she is currently under commission to companies including Clean Break, Talawa and The Bush. In this provocative new play Somalia peels away the privileged ignorance of middle-class tolerance to expose the deep wound of cultural tension cutting through modern England. Set in London, a racially-motivated attack on a student forces her teacher to confront the uncomfortable truth lurking beneath the veneer of community cohesion.

Alice Birch’s Revolt. She said. Revolt again. returns to Stratford-upon-Avon following its debut in the 2014 Midsummer Mischief Festival, London run and was recently produced at New York’s Soho Rep.

Winner of the 2014 George Devine Award, this acclaimed play examines the language, behaviour and forces that shape women in the 21st century and asks what is stopping anyone from doing something truly radical to change them.

Directed by Erica Whyman, the production will transfer to Edinburgh and to the Shoreditch Town Hall, following the ‘Making Mischief Festival’.

Joanne joins the festival after its debut at Latitude Festival and a critically acclaimed run at Soho Theatre.

Performed by Tanya Moodie, who plays Gertrude in the RSC’s current production of Hamlet, and commissioned and produced by Clean Break, Joanne explores the pressures on our public services as one young woman buckles under pressures of her own.

It is written by five of the most exciting voices in theatre; Deborah Bruce, Theresa Ikoko, Laura Lomas, Chino Odimba and Ursula Rani Sarma and is directed by Róisín McBrinn.

For further details, and actual dates of the productions and for bookings, visit the RSC website - www.rsc.org.uk.