The company

Six people, one van, and a swimming baths with no water in it

Stannerbridge Baths closed in 2009. We have had the deep end since 2021 and we rehearse on boards laid over it.

Who we are

All of us, and what each one actually does

Everybody here performs, builds, loads the van or answers the phone, and most do more than one. The job titles are what we each do most of.

Roz Kettle
Writes, and directs when nobody else wants to
Wrote every play the company has made. Was a school caretaker for nine years and still measures halls in the way caretakers do, by whether the door takes a table sideways.
Abe Marchetti
Performs, and builds the set
Makes everything we carry, on the rule that two people must be able to lift any piece of it. Trained as a joiner before he trained as anything else.
Sunny Idowu
Performs, and runs the tour
Books the halls, finds the beds, and knows which four of the fourteen have a kettle that works. Has done every date since 2022.
Tam Broadribb
Light, sound, and the van
Lights a play with six lamps and a domestic socket because that is what most halls have. Holds the licence that lets the van be the van.
Fen Okada
Performs, and runs the workshops
Takes the morning-after workshop in schools, youth clubs and one prison. Joined after doing the Nettlefold workshop as a participant.
Dilys Carrow
Money, grants and the accounts
Writes the applications, keeps the books, publishes them in April. Was a credit union manager and treats a theatre budget exactly the same way.

How it is run

Everyone here is paid 00 a week

Reviewed every April

There are six of us and we are all paid 00 a week. Not a scale, not a band, not a figure that goes up if your name is on the poster: the same number for the person who wrote the play, the person who lights it and the person who drives the van at one in the morning.

Why the figure is on the website

Because for four years we were asked what we paid and gave a vague answer, and a vague answer is how people end up working for nothing. Putting it here means a performer knows before the first email, a hall knows what its fee buys, and we cannot quietly let it slip.

It is not a generous wage. It is a wage that is paid every week of a contract, including rehearsals, including the weeks the van is off the road, and including the fortnight in August when nothing happens at all.

How the money comes in

Fees from halls, which are 00 a date and are the largest part of it.
Two grants, one of them annual and one of them not, which together cover the making of a new play.
The door on our own dates at the Baths, which we keep.
Three hundred people who give a small amount each month, which is what pays the rent on the building.

We do not take ticket money from touring dates. The hall keeps it. That is a deliberate loss and it is why the fee is what it is.

How decisions are made

Six people, one vote each, including on what we make next and who joins. Nobody here is a director in the sense of being in charge of the others, and nobody has been here long enough to have earned the right to overrule anybody. Two of us do the administration; that is a job, not a rank.

The accounts, including every wage, are published each April as a two-page document that anybody can read without an accountant.

What we will not do

Unpaid work experience, profit shares instead of wages, and dates where the fee is made up of whatever is left after everything else has been paid. We have said no to all three this year and we will say why if you ask.

Since 2021

The numbers we are asked for

6: Plays madeAll new, all written here
41: Towns playedThirty-four of them have no theatre
00: Weekly wageThe same for all six
1: VanOn its second engine

The dated version

Every show, and where it went

Six plays in five years, and one year we would rather not repeat.

2026
Everything Flooded
Fourteen towns, February to April
Four actors and two centimetres of water. The biggest tour we have done and the first with every date booked before the play was written.
2025
Sixteen Halls
Sixteen towns, March to June
Four monologues written for four specific rooms and swapped around until they stopped belonging to them. Also the year we abandoned a play about a hospital closure after eight months.
2024
Six Feet of Copper
Eleven towns and one prison, April to June
A play about metal theft from a chapel roof, made with the congregation that lost it. The prison date is the one we are asked about most.
2023
Pit Ponies
Nine towns, and our first full-time year
The year everybody went on the same wage. It cost us two dates we could not afford to play and we did it anyway.
2022
The Meeting Will Come to Order
Seven village halls, one of them twice
Ninety minutes of a parish council meeting about a bus route, performed in rooms where that meeting really happens. Our first play with four actors in it.
2021
The Last Bus from Hallow
Hallowmere chapel, nineteen people
One actor, one bench, and no plan beyond the single night. Somebody asked us to bring it to the next village, and that was the company decided.
2021
The deep end at Stannerbridge Baths
Stannerbridge
The baths closed in 2009. The council let us have the pool hall for a peppercorn rent on the condition that we keep the roof watertight, which we mostly do.
2023
Constituted as a workers' co-operative
Six members, one vote each
Written down properly, with the equal-wage rule in the rules rather than in a conversation.

Working with us

How a date actually happens

From the first email to the van leaving, this is all of it.

You write, and say which room
The name of the hall, its width, whether there are stairs, and roughly how many people have come to the last thing you put on. Four lines is enough. We answer within a week, and if the answer is no you get a reason.
One of us telephones
Ten minutes about the room and the money. We will tell you on that call whether your hall can take the show and whether the fee is a problem, rather than finding out in March.
A date, and one page
One page: the date, the fee of 00, what we bring, what you provide, who sells the tickets, and what happens if either of us has to pull out. No rider, no small print, and you keep the door.
The day, and the morning after
We arrive at two, you get the hall back by eleven with the floor swept, and one of us is in a school or a back room at ten the next morning doing the workshop that came with the fee.

Asked often

Before you write

Joining

Do you audition?
Rarely, and when we do it is paid for the day and advertised in one place: this website. Everyone who joins has usually done a workshop with us first.
Can we do work experience with you?
Not unpaid. We take one paid placement a year for six months at the same wage as everyone else, advertised in September.
Will you read my play?
Honestly, no. We make our own work and there are six of us. Saying no quickly is more use to you than a maybe that lasts a year.

Money

Why is the wage the same for everybody?
Because we could not defend any of the alternatives out loud. The play does not happen without the van being driven.
Do you make a surplus?
A small one in two of the last five years, and it went into the roof and the engine. The accounts are published each April.
Will you play a proper theatre?
Occasionally, and it pays for two dates in halls that cannot pay. We are not against theatres; we are against only going to places that already have one.

There is a hall near you with a stage nobody uses

Tell us where it is and who holds the keys. The next tour is routed in October.

Write to us See this year's dates

Six people, one van, and a swimming baths with no water in it

Roz Kettle

Abe Marchetti

Sunny Idowu

Tam Broadribb

Fen Okada

Dilys Carrow

Why the figure is on the website

How the money comes in

How decisions are made

What we will not do

Everything Flooded

Sixteen Halls

Six Feet of Copper

Pit Ponies

The Meeting Will Come to Order

The Last Bus from Hallow

The deep end at Stannerbridge Baths

Constituted as a workers' co-operative

You write, and say which room

One of us telephones

A date, and one page

The day, and the morning after

Joining

Money

There is a hall near you with a stage nobody uses