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Guildford Shakespeare Company began with an outdoor production of Much Ado About Nothing in Guildford Castle Grounds in 2006.
Eighteen years on, the company is celebrating its coming of age with a production of Romeo and Juliet which mostly takes place along Guildford High Street.
BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the company’s founders, Matt Pinches and Sarah Gobran, about the production and about the challenges, practical and financial, of mounting their style of theatre in spaces that were not designed for performance—including holding on to scenery in high winds and preventing foxes from chewing through microphone cables.
Romeo and Juliet from Guildford Shakespeare Company will take place in Guildford Castle Grounds and the town centre from Friday 21 June to Saturday 13 July 2024.
For more information and tickets, see www.guildford-shakespeare-company.co.uk.
(Photo of GSC Co-Founders Sarah Gobran and Matt Pinches in October 2022. Credit: Matt Pereira.)

The 2024 summer season at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London will open with a new production of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night Or What You Will directed by Owen Horsley, an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company and an Associate Director for Cheek by Jowl.
BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Owen at a break during rehearsals about his approach to the play, his love of Shakespeare and the perhaps unusual way he was originally introduced to the Bard’s work.
Twelfth Night Or What You Will directed by Owen Horsley runs at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre from 3 May to 8 June 2024.

Actor, writer, choreographer and film-maker Lanre Malaolu’s play Samskara had a sell-out run at London’s Yard Theatre in 2022 and was subsequently published by Nick Hern Books.
Now, I See is the second play of what has become a trilogy which, like the first part, examines family relationships through a modern black, British lens.
BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Lanre about the play, his writing process, how his work comes from his own experiences and observations and his introduction to creating theatre through Anna Scher drama classes and a transformational experience through Jonzi D’s Breakin’ Convention at Sadler’s Wells.
Now, I See runs at Theatre Royal, Stratford East in London from 10 May to 1 June 2024.

Actor Greg Hicks has played many leading roles at the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company over the last forty years, as well as starring on the West End and appearing on screen in films including The Mercy and Snow White and the Huntsman.
He is about to perform a one-man show, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, based on a short story by Dostoyevsky, at the new Marylebone Theatre in London.
BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to him a few days before it opened about the play and how much more of himself he will be presenting to an audience than in other roles he has played.
He also spoke about some of his past roles, including performing naked in Romans in Britain for a role that nearly ended him up in criminal court immediately followed by appearing in full costume and mask for Peter Hall’s famous Oresteia (he credits Hall as his mentor at the National in the 1970s).
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, adapted and directed by Laurence Boswell, is at Marylebone Theatre in London from 21 March to 20 April 2024.
(Rehearsal image of Greg Hicks in The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, credit Richard James Taylor)

Danish theatre company fix+foxy premièred Dark Noon at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe which “explores one of the great American myths—the Wild West” through seven South African actors.
The production will be restaged at Manchester’s Aviva Studios this spring. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to co-directors Tue Biering and Nhlanhla Mahlangu about what and whose story the play is telling and about the process of creating it.
Dark Noon will be performed in the South Warehouse of Aviva Studios in Manchester from 6 to 10 March 2024.

Following Night of the Living Dead—Remix and Dracula: The Untold Story, imitating the dog is again collaborating with Leeds Playhouse, this time on a new adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein co-created by Pete Brooks, Andrew Quick and Simon Wainwright.
BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Andrew Quick during rehearsals at Leeds Playhouse about the technical challenges of this two-hander for creators and performers, the state of touring shows around the UK and Europe at the moment and the company’s style and creative process.
Frankenstein, featuring design by Hayley Brindle, lighting by Andrew Crofts and original music by James Hamilton, will open at Leeds Playhouse from 15 February 2024, before touring to Oxford Playhouse, Watford Palace Theatre, The Lowry in Salford, Cast in Doncaster, Mercury Theatre in Colchester, Liverpool Playhouse, The Dukes Lancaster and Northern Stage in Newcastle.
(Photo of Andrew Quick, credit Ed Waring)