Crafting & Grafting

Across two meteorologically fickle September weeks, Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter witnessed what could almost be called a happening. Not a common occurrence, it had done well to court a range of reactions from onlookers: bafflement, delight, flitting interest, scorn, intrigue. And that’s to say nothing of what the paying audience thought. This was Gem of a

Green door, what’s that secret you’re keeping?

According to the 1956 hit song, ‘there’s an old piano and they play it hot behind the green door’. It’s a tune that was running through my head as I approached a battered green door in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. However, rather than finding a smoke-filled speakeasy, I discovered an entirely different world of wonders: a

Power of Invention

Lockdown and the closure of Birmingham museums meant a nine month postponement for this site-specific production about Matthew Boulton’s ground-breaking Lunar Society. We reconfigured the show as an outdoor production in the gardens of Soho House in Birmingham, to make it covid secure.  Click ‘continue reading’ or scroll down for older posts about the show.

Behind Bars: Ghosts of the Lock-Up

Our first site-specific production, Behind Bars took place within the walls of a 130 year-old Victorian prison. Kicking off with nine performances in October 2018, the show’s notoriety got it sent back to the clink for a further twelve performances the following year. Click ‘continue reading’ or scroll down for older posts about the show.

The show that almost went wrong

What could possibly go wrong, quipped our unflappable producer Julia as she signed up to her duties on Power of Invention back in 2019. Turns out, pretty much anything. The original plan was for a promenade show inside Soho House where the audience would meander through the house and encounter the industrial giants of the

Murder, she wrote…

Our new show ‘Behind Bars: Ghosts of the Lock-Up’ runs from the 19th-21st October for nine performances only.  Taking a theatrical journey through Birmingham’s Steelhouse Lane Lock-Up, it will raise spirits from the prison’s past. Vanessa Oakes writes about one of them… I’ve been writing about a murder. A murder involving two real life Peaky