latest news...

The Adventures of Perseus is our new show for schools and is already proving to be a particular hit.

A couple of colourful professors play out the popular Greek myth with Gill proving to be a particularly truculent youth as Perseus and Bill taking on all the women's parts - very fetching as the beautiful Hesperides and suitably hideous as Medusa.

We're particularly pleased that the younger end of the age spectrum - Key Stage 1 - are so excited by the piece. Key Stage 2 tend to be studying myths and often have some knowledge of the Greeks, but even the younger ones are enthralled by the story.

The programme for Barnstaple's Fringe TheatreFest 12 has been published and offers a dazzling array of small-scale productions. Companies from around the UK - and one from Canada - alongside exciting homegrown talent.

Visit the website for full details and start working out how you're going to fit everything in.

www.theatrefest.co.uk.

Beast! is proving a big hit with secondary schools and colleges.

An amalgam of fact and myth, the hunt for the Beast of Exmoor provides the framework for a taut psychological drama about our need for Beasts and what happens as we hunt them. The hunter becomes the hunted and hero and beast are in danger of becoming indistinguishable.

This is entertainment with substance for adult and student audiences.

We've played a large number of colleges, schools and community venues in the South West and beyond with great success.

Backward Glance, extensively reworked after its initial outings at the Brighton and Barnstaple Fringe Festivals, proved a major success at Prague Fringe Festival in 2009, netting multi story the Kreativni Cena (Creative Award) as well as a glowing review from the Prague Post.

We reworked the piece again for The Bike Shed Theatre in Exeter and picked up a fabulous review in Devon Life. In the process we learned even more about the piece which means further re-writing and re-staging before a performance at studio@QT, Barnstaple, on May 1st.

We're on to something special and we want to get it right!

Josh's Monsters is something rather different for us - and is turning out to be something very special indeed.

Firmly rooted in North Devon - and developed through the agency of Beaford Arts' 'Breathing Space' programme - the play charts an agonizing hour as a mother prepares to see her son off for a second tour of duty to Afghanistan - and tries to persuade her husband that, whatever his qualms, he has to come with her to say goodbye.

She is in the kitchen and he is in the cellar. They communicate via their laptops - and he streams images of their past and their present - and of conflicts both real and virtual.

We have had hugely enthusiastic feedback from the early performances and are now offering dates in the autumn and beyond.

Twelve Wild Ducks, last year's show for schools, is playing to family audiences in theatres and on Rural Touring circuits around the country.

The play is our own version of the traditional Norwegian folk-tale - which is part of a family of similar stories told right around the world.

This is a stirring tale of courage in the face of adversity. Something in the dream-like quality we bring to the production particularly enthralls the children. And several adults have owned up to shedding the odd tear.

Over the last year we have been working in partnership with Arts and Learning to tailor theatre-visits, workshops and extension activities around the differing requirements of a number of primary schools in Cambridgeshire.

We have performed specific productions as requested by the schools to dovetail with curriculum and themed work. In some cases we have provided follow-up drama workshops ourselves. In other cases Arts and Learning have taken the work into other areas ranging from dance, to kite-making and ceramic murals.

The project, supported by Cambridgeshire County Council, has encouraged schools to think imaginatively about how to get the best value out of a theatre visit and additional creative input.

We are now about to start Phase 2, inviting a new group of a dozen schools to a performance and introductory discussion before rolling out the programme over the autumn and spring terms.