Professional touring theatre company reaches out to rural communities

TV reporter Clive Gunnell reports from the Beaford Arts Centre in North Devon on the setting up of a professional rural touring theatre group known as the Orchard Theatre. The group are shown in rehearsal performing Sweeney Todd and Charles Loosen is the producer. The company has the aim of taking professional theatre to new audiences in small villages and hamlets and to rural communities who are less likely to have experienced live theatre previously.

The theatre group is the brainchild of second year drama students who while studying at the East 15 Acting School start a pilot scheme for a North Devon ensemble theatre company. The group is named after the last line of a John Arden play entitled Serjeant Musgrave's Dance (1959), Let's start and orchard. Key members are Andrew Noble, Alison Steadman, Peter Armitage and Millie Sidaway. Founder of the Beaford Arts Centre John Lane sees potential in the venture and secures funding from the Dartington Hall Trust to set up the Orchard Theatre Group as a regional touring company. Their first production in September 1969 was Harold Brighouse's Hobson's Choice directed by Terry Palmer.