An introduction
The WESSEX ACTORS COMPANY was a professional touring theatre
company and operated in the period 1993-2006.
The company’s policy
was to:
To achieve this
policy, the company pursued a touring programme that catered for theatre-goers
on the one hand, and for a wide range of specific community groupings on the
other.
HISTORY
The Company was
formed in 1993 and toured its first production in the autumn of that year, with
financial help from The Foundation for Sport and The Arts. Thomas Hardy's own
second dramatization of "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" proved a winner
with regional audiences.
The Company has from
the start filled a unique niche with its focus on regional talent. All writers
performed have been from or live in the south west. All creative talent lives
in or comes from the south west and is not imported from
Above all the
Company aims to provide a public service for the south west - with
"something for everyone as often as possible".
From the start the
Company faced a wide variety of challenging factors (lack of finance, thinly
spread rural population, lack of word-of-mouth publicity, limited availability
of good and affordable creative talent, regional recessions, an indifferent
arts bureaucracy etc etc). Persistence and steady progress against such
influences brought the Company to the point where consistency of production
quality was achieved.
An outstanding range
of regional drama has been presented over thirteen years in a wide variety of
venues to an increasing response of plaudits.
The Company's
innovative Community Chest programme comprised a portfolio of small-scale,
low-cost productions for the widest range of community venues throughout the
South West.
Capital funding from
the Lottery Board, with help from The Chase Charity and The Pilgrim Trust made
an enormous difference to the Company's fortunes - providing it with a base
level of capital items available for its daily use.
A sponsored
production base firstly at The Blakehay, an Arts Centre in Weston-super-Mare,
then at the David Hall Arts Centre, South Petherton, and finally at Quantock
Lodge, Over Stowey, also gave a significant boost to the Company's ability to
operate without core funding.
Special initiatives
have provided a range of benefits to the Company:
- Arts for Everyone
Express funding for a provocative triple bill of new plays "lifting the
lid on bureaucracy" collectively called "The Organisation".
- Arts for Everyone
Express support for a short film "featuring members of the Wessex Actors
Company" made by Artistic Director Michael Barry's independent production
company Perceptive Creation. "Old Mrs Chundle" was a pilot for a long
series of TV films of the short stories of Thomas Hardy, a project that could have
brought further financial and promotional benefits to The Wessex Actors Company
and its creative talent associates.
- A co-production
with
- A Summer Season
Classic (a repeat of "Tess") toured external venues and theatres in
2001.
- A high-powered
in-service training course for professional and semi-pro actors was trialled
with funding from the Somerset Skills Support Service.
The Company established
itself securely enough in terms of both artistic achievement and stability for
its future to be looked at and planned for positively, in spite of severely
impoverished resources. It has been a pleasure to have played a role in this
achievement - and my grateful thanks go above all to our supporters in
audiences everywhere, to our Board and Patrons, to those who have financed the
Company's operations and not least to all those creative talents who have put
financial considerations aside in order to work with us.
Michael Barry,
Artistic Director.