The First Year

In June 2025 I made a decision.

Not a drift. Not a redundancy. Not a crisis. A decision. I decided to transition to commercial producing — deliberately, on my own terms, without permission and without a safety net.

I had been building toward it for years without calling it that. The CPD I sought out on my own initiative. The commercial programmes nobody encouraged me to apply for. The growing sense that my ambition had simply outgrown what public funding is designed to support. Public funding is set up to make work. It is not set up to build companies. I wanted to build a company.

In July 2025 I incorporated Rafia Hussain Productions Ltd.

By that point I was already feeling disillusioned with a system that had supported my development as far as it could. I had taken everything the subsidised sector had to teach me. The ACE funding, the partnerships, the craft — all of it had been genuinely valuable. But the system that had held my development so far was no longer capable of helping me achieve the next milestones. I had reached its ceiling.

November 2025. I made the public declaration. This was the hardest step. Not because I doubted the direction — the conviction had held clearly since June. But because saying it publicly made it real in a way that private certainty doesn't.

A few months later, the decision letter arrived for my final Arts Council England project grant application. It wasn’t successful. I noticed something unexpected. I felt a flash of disappointment — and then, almost immediately, nothing. Neutrality. Relief. I could feel a smile forming on my face. A clean break. No more designing projects with funders in mind instead of my own creative and commercial instincts. No more competing with peers I respect for pots of money that keep shrinking. No more waiting.

I could step into my new chapter as my authentic self.

I want to be clear about something. ACE gave me everything I needed to reach this point. Over a decade they invested in my work, my development, and my vision. I am genuinely grateful. But good public investment should make itself unnecessary. In my case, it did exactly that.

Soon after the declaration, I met one of the most respected producers working in the West End today. I recognised someone I could learn from. She recognised the calibre of the producer sitting in front of her.

Then came the news I had been manifesting.

I had been selected for Stage One’s 5 at 50 programme — five producers chosen from across their entire alumni network to mark Stage One’s 50th anniversary with their biggest investment in a generation. The acceptance rate was 6% from an already elite applicant pool. I would be mentored by Zareen Walker, who co-leads ATG Productions — the largest commercial theatre production company in the world.

Where the subsidised sector had reached the limit of what it could offer me, the Stage One network is now capable of helping me achieve the next milestones. The rooms I am now in, the mentorship I am receiving, the peers I am learning alongside — this is the infrastructure that matches the scale of my ambitions.

I moved to London in April 2026. The first week was quiet in the way that new beginnings are — finding a new centre of gravity, doing a grocery shop in an unfamiliar place, recalibrating to a new city. And then, on the evening of the Olivier Awards, I was with my fellow 5 at 50 cohort members and I knew. I was exactly where I was supposed to be. My first meeting with my mentor cemented it. I was going to learn more in the next twelve months than I had in years.

I am more excited about the commercial model than I ever was about the subsidised one.

That’s not a criticism of the subsidised sector — it was the right world for the right chapter. But I am more suited to this. The producer-led model. The investor relationships. The audience-first thinking. The freedom to build something that belongs entirely to me. I didn’t emerge. I arrived. 

A year ago I made a decision.

In that time I have incorporated a commercial theatre company, secured a co-production with one of the best producers working in the West End today, earned a place on the most competitive commercial producing programme in the UK, relocated to London, created The Producing Diagnostic, and begun building a slate of work that reflects everything I believe about what commercial theatre can be — joyful, popular, ambitious, and rooted in Black and Brown stories.

They say start as you mean to go on, and I shall.

—— Rafia