With productions of Memoirs of An Amnesiac and Canute The King – the latter premiered in Moseley Road Swimming Baths – Stan's Cafe established itself as a company of exciting potential.

Having rehearsed these early productions in borrowed spaces and a spare room in a rented house in the Balsall Heath district of Birmingham, the company started rehearsing and presenting work at mac (formerly Midlands Arts Centre) once it received its first significant public funding for Bingo in the House of Babel, inspired by theories of artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

"[7] In 1996, Stan's Cafe won a Barclays New Stages award for its two-woman production, Ocean of Storms, about notions of gravity and ohm.

[9] It was commissioned for The Bond, a small independent art gallery and whilst originally planned to be presented for one night only, it went on to become an extremely prolific show touring to 37 cities in 15 countries, including an international premiere at the Theatre Formen Festival in Hannover, Germany in June 2000.

In 2000, Good and True, a comedy that "explores how questions produce more queries than answers",[10] was commissioned by Birmingham City Council's Forward Festival.

This production toured the United Kingdom and remained in the company's repertoire long enough to be shown at the Linbury Studio in the Royal Opera House in 2003.

In order to rehearse their ambitious 'rock musical' Lurid and Insane, inspired by an obituary for the Bokassa, the company moved out of mac into a factory unit on New Canal Street above a firm of die stampers.

Before its demolition in 2006, this space hosted the devising of Be Proud of Me, a collaboration with photographer Ed Dimsdale built on the language of tourist phrase books – early versions of the company's training day, A City Adventure (which is discussed further in the Education section).

This production defied financial logic by touring extensively with a show with a cast of 7 and 2 tonnes of equipment whose audience, for reasons of sightlines, was limited to fifty per performance.

[12] In 2009, Stan's Cafe moved into a vacant portion of the A E Harris and Co. metal working factory which provided sufficient space to host rehearsals, storage and the company's office.

This low budget 'austerity production' was promoted almost entirely through social media and was initially presented for just three nights at the company's home venues using set and costumes recycled from The Cleansing of Constance Brown.

After a further week at The Drum in Plymouth, another year would elapse before the production was re-performed at The Roundhouse in London and Stan's Cafe's own venue in Birmingham in January and February 2013.

The flat, almost childlike set of the cardinal's puppet theatre, is reminiscent of the company's very first production Perry Como's Christmas Cracker,[15] in which two incompetent theatrical impresarios attempt to squeeze the Christian nativity story into a pantomime form.

[17] To make the piece possible, negotiations with the Department of Transport were needed in order to install the platform and stop the train at an authorized point to allow the astronauts to board at the end of the day.

The project's simple premise that "one grain = one person"[21] allowed for human population statistics to be represented as carefully counted/weighed piles of rice sitting on labelled sheets of white paper.

The 104 tonne version for Theatre De Welt, commissioned by Marie Zimmerman, is documented in a book with photographs by Ed Dimsdale and poetry by Alan Hay.

The company's policy of pressing interesting projects without a close scrutiny of long term viability was again vindicated as schools started to request their own miniature versions of the race in order to promote literacy and mathematics.

Also spinning off from the race were the two commentator figures who were later commissioned by East Side Gallery, Fierce Festival and projects who variously requested the commentators webcast commentaries on a football match – whilst only being able to watch an audience watch a match on a big screen, view from a hotel window just overlooking Birmingham's busiest street of nightclubs, the Crab Fair in Egremont, including the World Gurning Championships in 2011.

The initiation of Arts Council England's Creative Partnerships program led to an increase in the company's education work and its move away from performative traditions.

In 2002, Stan's Cafe was tasked to develop a day-long experience that would explore the role of risk-taking in creative learning for teachers from the 26 schools working as part of this initiative.

[32] The CD was an hour long improvised piece recorded by the cast of Lurid and Insane and produced by Brian Duffy with text by James Yarker.

The company's second collaboration with Wolters resulted in The Voyage, a 12 long minute opera[36] commissioned by PRS for Music for the Cultural Olympiad, staged at Stan's Cafe's venue.

"[39] In 1999, the company undertook a pioneering project of re-staging The Carrier Frequency, Impact Theatre's highly regarded collaboration with novelist Russell Hoban, better known for his dystopian novels such as Ridley Walker,[40] for Birmingham City Council's Towards the Millennium Festival.

Edited by novelist Catherine O'Flynn, this project included photographs of displays, interviews with their creators, reviews, editorial comment, suggested tours and safety advice.

In more recent years, as opportunities to tour in the UK have drastically reduced, the company has looked to present shows for a week at a time in the studio spaces of larger theatres.

Bernadette Russell devised and performed in Framed, Home of the Wriggler and The Cleansing of Constance Brown as well as being recast into The Just Price of Flowers and guest starring in Tuning Out With Radio Z. Playwright, novelist and founding member of Talking Birds Theatre Company Nick Walker devised and performed in Simple Maths and Good and True as well as touring with It's Your Film and making a special guest appearance in I See with My Eyes Closed.

Chris Dugrenier, Charlotte Gregory, Kerrie Reading and Lucy Nicholls have all performed of All the People in All the World on numerous occasions, undertaken education work with the company, and appeared in the original production of The Just Price of Flowers.

Richard Chew composed and recorded music for all Stan's Cafe's productions between 1991 and 1995 as well as Still, a side-project with James Yarker commissioned by English National Opera's Baylis program New Visions/New Voices.

[48] He also recorded indents and programmed the message board software for Tuning Out With Radio Z. Nina West started composing for Stan's Cafe when a track of hers was heard at a party by James Yarker.

Through hosting performances and rehearsals from many local companies as well as the inaugural BE Festival (Birmingham European), the venue came to gain an international reputation as an artist-run space.