Now in our 30th year, New Earth is the leading and longest-running British East and Southeast Asian (BESEA) touring theatre company in the UK. Our mission is to bring nuanced BESEA representation to the widest possible audience. 

  • We seek to bring nuanced BESEA representation to the widest possible audience.

  • Our mission is to combat inequality and racism by humanising the BESEA experience within the broader British cultural consciousness.  We have developed a 4-phase strategic approach to change:

    1. Leadership: BESEAs are supported to develop needed skills to be included.

    2. Nuance: BESEA representation is constructed with nuance.

    3. Visibility: This nuanced representation is developed to exist at scale.

    4. Consideration: We provide further opportunities to consider BESEAs outside of theatre spaces.

  • We celebrate and champion the work of our artists and communities

    The company was renamed New Earth Theatre in 2020 to signal new beginnings, new growth and new possibilities. We adopt the following values to guide us on that journey.

    • We place BESEA artists and communities at the heart of everything we do

    • We believe to work in a collaborative way is to engage at the deepest level

    • We work to create an open, safe and accessible working space with care and respect

    • We place integrity and excellence as cornerstones of our work

    • We listen, innovate and adapt to a changing world

  • We use the term BESEA to mean anyone from the following countries and their diasporas who live and work in Britain.

    These countries make up an area that is known as East and South East Asia; Brunei, Cambodia, China, East Timor, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, North Korea, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

  • Everyone self identifies in their own way and that identity is not necessarily fixed. We currently use the term BESEA so that we can have collective power when making our case for the many artists from communities that continue to be severely underrepresented in our theatre industry.