Written by Anna Holmes
The end of July brought about the completion of our Spring Tour of Sunny Side. Since we opened back in April at The Place, we’ve all - the show, the company, the van! - gone on such a journey. One that still feels too close to properly sit back and take stock.
It’s been a season of firsts. First substantial national tour, first time in places like Newcastle, Bournemouth and Isle of Wight, first time performing at venues that we used to dream of like York Theatre Royal and Leeds Playhouse. 2 nights at Leeds Playhouse (my 10 year old self will never get over this). With this scale comes so much room for inspection and I think this is where the real growth has come. You can sit in the studio, in your room, in your mind and dream these big dreams, plan and create this beautiful thing, but it’s only when those dreams come true, and the work is out of your hands and is picked apart in the same breath it’s being celebrated that you really understand what this thing is that you have created and what it truly means to work at this scale in the current independent touring network in England.
Touring is no easy feat, and in our inexperience it was something that we underestimated. I thought the hard work was in the creating, but my gosh - that is an absolute joyous, creatively enriching, almost holy part of the process. The hard work, nail-bitingly frustrating part of the job, is getting people through those theatre doors, no matter how much outreach, no matter how much work in the community, no matter how much taking a work that matters to the place you’re touring to. No matter how much press, how many 4 star reviews, how much leafleting, ticket discounts, trying every single tactic under the sun you do, no matter how much you follow the rulebook to a T. If the infrastructure is not there, if the public opinion of the arts does not change, if dance is absent from schools, absent from our curriculum, if our attention spans cannot sustain longer than 45minutes in one sitting, if people just don’t go to the theatre anymore, if you’re not a big name - then I fear touring is no longer the end goal. Live performance isn’t the pinnacle and how gutting is that.
In the same breath, Sunny Side Spring Tour - you have been everything we love about being artists. The grit and hard work, the DIY homemade magic of independent theatre - the feeling of family, friends, company, strangers coming together and forcing important socially driven, political work into our stages, into our discourse, into our minds.
Thank you to everyone who made this possible, the venues that fought for us, the funders that believed in us, the volunteers from Andy’s Man Club - the ordinary blokes who took hours out of their busy lives to offer support to our audiences, the parents that brought their struggling sons, the children that brought their parents, our parents!, our industry peers that came (my gosh it’s never been more important to support your industry - buy the ticket!), our marketing goddess Jess who has worked above and beyond, Sarah who has calmed and problem solved every producing qualm, Natalie who has held us all together, and of course our bloody beautiful creatives: Wilf, Caitlin, Aaron, Barnaby, Ben, Grace, Adam, Ed, Sophie and Soul - you are everything xx