The Touring Consortium (RC) International
The Touring Consortium was started 17 years ago and is now led by producers Jenny King and Matthew Gale in a collaborative partnership with our eight regional touring theatres.
Our partner theatres are large scale theatres of over 1,000 seats that receive productions created elsewhere from producing theatres in London and the regions or from commercial producers.
Many of our large scale theatres survive on diminishing council grants and on their box office. In order to survive these theatres need to programme popular entertainment like stand up, musicals, variety, ice shows, pantomime of course. But they still want drama and there is not very much on offer for their theatres.
In 2012, together with York Theatre Royal, Pilot Theatre Company and the Royal & Derngate Northampton, we applied to the ACE Strategic Touring Fund for funding to support a programme of 5 productions to be presented on tour over two and half years with the aim of reaching out to new audiences. Our brief was enlarged to include not just young people but a more diverse audience who feel, perhaps, that theatre is ‘not for them’ – presenting plays that have no relevance ‘for them’ .
We have programmed 5 productions with the aim of addressing those concerns
We have developed a creative outreach programme that includes an ongoing relationship with 3 partnership schools in every town we visit
We have appointed local ambassadors:-
- to help us encourage a more diverse and multi cultural audience for our theatres;
- to promote our access facilities for impaired audiences
- to encourage families to make a visit to our theatres together
Through creative projects and our interactive digital hub,Theatre Cloud, we are working with schools, groups and organisations to help cultivate future independent theatregoers from schooldays to working lives and to involve and engage with people who currently feel that “Theatre is not for us”. (theatrecloud.com)
Presented by The Touring Consortium (RC) International
| The Railway Children | May 3rd, 2011 – August 14th, 2011 |
