Nick’s First Starting a Theatre Company Blog. And stuff…

In the Beginning…

… there was ME. This is my pic below. Looking old now and, yes, with a glass of red wine. Out of shot. And some 30 years after I came along, there was an idea for a theatre company. T’was 1992 and as a council estate kid I’d been doing all sorts of career rubbish. Me and a mate, Rob Vomit — the only actor I knew from an am-dram company I joined thanks to an older woman (that’s another story!) did a one-man version of Shakespeare’s Henry V wot I wrote. I called it Henry V — Lion of England. We performed it at the mac – Midlands Arts Centre – in Brum for 1 night. Another mate, Robb Williams, wrote an atmospheric soundtrack. Cost me fifty quid to hire the venue and I asked me family and mates along.

Unbeknownst to me, famous UK comedian Jasper Carrott’s then managers were also present. At the end of the night, I presumed everyone was running for the bar — but it turned out to be my first standing ovation! And Starward, Jasper’s managers, offered to take us to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that night. I’d never heard of it, but said okay and so we went. I was BLOWN AWAY by the democracy of the event. But also HUGELY puzzled why my beloved home city of Birmingham — the UK’s Second City — hadn’t got a single fringe venue apart from the mac. So I was inspired to start a theatre company in Birmingham that would be true to the spirit of the Fringe and be truly accessible to non-theatre attenders. I was born and raised on a housing project council estate. Later I realised theatre-going was not down to intellect… but opportunity. No one on our estate went to the theatre… because no one invited us. So I started the Maverick Theatre Company at the Billesley Pub in South Birmingham on the edge of a council estate where, coincidentally, I was born and brought up, to attract other kids like I was!

It was hard, artistically and financially and still is. But we’re still going.

Why? Mmm. Good question.

NEXT TIME. Why I hate Michael Palin.