West Midlands

West Midlands

• Arena

  The Arena Theatre is a small theatre at Wolverhampton University’s city centre campus, providing a key venue for presenting the small-scale national touring theatre productions.

• Belgrade Theatre

  The Belgrade Theatre is Coventry's main producing and presentiang theatre. Their programme includes producing new work, co-productions with independent companies, international collaboration, outdoor site-specific work and education and young people’s projects. Belgrade productions also tour middle and large-scale theatres across England.

  
  
• Big Brum

  The Big Brum provides a theatre in education service which offers theatre performances and special projects to schools, pupils’ referral units, youth groups and community organisations. Big Brum also runs a youth theatre in North Birmingham.

• Birmingham Rep

  This is one of the largest theatres outside London. The company produces up to 12 main stage productions each year as well as smaller scale productions for tours in outlying communites around Birmingham and the Black Country.

• Foursight

  Foursight Theatre is a highly acclaimed national and international touring theatre company. It has a reputation for creating unusual, multi-disciplinary works, which review history through the eyes of women: unknown, famous and infamous. Foursight is committed to creating total theatre combining physical theatre, spoken word, movement and music in equal measure. The company also runs local and regional education and community projects and a summer school.

• Gazebo

  Gazebo is one of the longest serving Theatre in Education companies still in existence in the country and has been providing inspirational T.I.E. programmes and arts activities for children and young people since 1979.

• Geese Theatre Company

  The Geese Theatre is a National touring company working exclusively within the criminal justice system. Geese present performances and run groupwork programmes with offenders and young people at risk of offending.

• Heartbreak Productions

  Touring theatre company production outdoor productions. For the last 15 years these have ranged from the small and intimate to over 700 per night depending on audience capacity.

• mac

  mac (Midlands Arts Centre) exists to make innovative creative arts activities an important part of people’s lives. It is a mixed arts venue presenting a programme of theatre, music, comedy, films, dance performances, plays for children, family show, literature and poetry events, courses and exhibitions. It also runs theatre workshops and a youth theatre group.

• Open Theatre

  Open Theatre Company specialises in developing large-scale community plays and learning disability led theatre. Based in Coventry, it operates training and development programmes, tours, and runs a permanent company of learning-disabled actors – The Shysters.

• Rage

  Rage set off on the road of telling stories and enabling others to tell their stories in 1996 and in 2000 started The Rage Ensemble giving young people the opportunity to create productions using theatre,film and music. Rage seeks to assist people of all ages races and cultures and at what ever stage of their careers or life they may be at.

• Round Midnight

  Round Midnight produces work for theatre, television, education and community, radio, conferences and corporate events. The company was established in July 1992. Round Midnights work includes Theatre in Education, a Radio 4 comedy series, a situation comedy, casting workshops and film coaching for the TV and film industry, numerous tours of theatres and comedy venues.

• Stans Cafe

  Stan’s Café is an experimental performing arts company in Birmingham. Its work encompasses theatre, film and live art, taking place in street settings, galleries, festival arts and non-arts venues. The company tours nationally and internationally and provides education resources to schools and teachers.

• Talking Birds

  Talking Birds is an experimental performing arts company in Coventry. It produces new work in film, music, theatre and web-based media, which challenges traditional form and content.

• The Alexandra Theatre

  A Live Nation theatre venue.

• The Birmingham Young Rep

  The Young REP is a Youth Theatre Company based at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, that works with young people aged between eight and eighteen across Birmingham and the West Midlands. We work with professional staff to create and produce a broad range of high quality theatrical experiences.

• The Drum

  The Drum is a Birmingham-based, multi-purpose arts centre dedicated to developing and promoting African, Asian and Caribbean arts. It comprises a theatre, studio, seminar room, gallery, multimedia and recording suites and a café bar.

  
• Theatre Absolute

  Theatre Absolute is a Coventry-based company which commissions, produces and tours new plays about the experiences of disenfranchised young people.

• Warwick Arts Centre

  Warwick Arts Centre in Coventry is the largest arts centre in the Midlands, attracting around 280,000 visitors a year to over 2,000 individual events embracing music, drama, dance, comedy, literature, films and visual art.

Herefordshire

• Conquest Theatre

  Bromyard has had a theatre group since 1950. Since 1991 it has enjoyed a purpose built, designed theatre at its present location.

• New Theatre Works

  Whether it's devised, site specific, work in progress, a full production from a new playwright or rehearsed extracts, New Theatre Works is game to develop any interesting performance idea with energy, commitment and an open mind.

• Phoenix Theatre

  A busy local venue with touring shows and a youth theatre.

• The Courtyard

  The Courtyard is a multi-purpose arts centre in Hereford. It's programme covers the whole range of the arts and includes both its own and touring theatre productions. It has a well established participatory programme of workshops and a youth theatre.

• The Market Theatre, Ledbury

  The first theatre to open in the new millennium!

Shropshire

• Arts Alive

  A rural touring scheme for Shropshire

• Ludlow Assembly

  Ludlow Assembly Rooms is a small arts centre in Shropshire. As the only arts and entertainment centre in a large rural area, it offers a mixed programme including live music, dance, film, theatre, comedy, club nights, exhibitions, talks and workshops.

  
• Pentabus Theatre

  A Ludlow-based producing touring theatre company with a focus on producing new writing for rural audiences regionally and nationally.

• The Fetch

  A Shropshire-based puppet and mask-making company

• Trading Faces

  Trading Faces is a theatre company specialising in mask and physical theatre.

Staffordshire

• B-Arts

  B-Arts are based in Newcastle under Lyme. They use their skills in theatre, performance, design, new media, video, sculpture, and music to work with local communities and groups of people from different backgrounds, to create exciting arts projects.

• Lichfield Garrick

  The Lichfield Garrick is a mixed use venue programming a wide range of events from band nights, to large-scale touring shows, and productions from local theatre groups and exhibitions. It also runs an education programme.

• New Vic Theatre

  The New Vic, in Newcastle-Under-Lyme in Staffordshire, is a theatre in the round that creates and presents a culturally diverse mix of theatre performances. It has extended its audience base through partnerships with business, education, community and arts organisations and through its acclaimed outreach programme, Borderlines.

• Regent Theatre

  Originally opened in 1929 as a super cinema, its first presentation was a silent film, The Last Command. The foyer was luxuriously decorated in the fashionable Art Deco style, with similar splendour in the auditorium and its reputation grew for presenting Sunday concerts. Following a three year, £23 million development of the city centre, The Regent was reopened on 22 September 1999 after being fully restored to its previously elegant Art Deco style. As a number one touring venue, The Regent is capable of taking the largest touring productions and has already played host to the very best opera, dance, drama and musicals, direct from Broadway and the West End.

• Rideout (Creative Arts For Rehabilitation)

  Rideout (Creative Arts for Rehabilitation) was established in 1999 in order to develop innovative, arts-based approaches to working with prisoners and staff within UK prisons.

• Shoebox

  Shoebox works with older generations and children, encouraging intergenerational exchange using the medium of drama and storytelling.

• The Victoria Hall

  The Victoria Hall, the premier concert venue for the Heart of England, is twinned with The Regent Theatre. The Victoria Hall offers a hugely varied and popular programme of music, dance, children’s shows, comedy and local events for all the community, and is only 2 minutes walk from The Regent. For details of The Victoria Hall's Education & Outreach programme, please see The Regent Theatre's website.

Warkwickshire

• Bridge House Theatre

  A small-scale local touring venue.

• Civic Hall Stratford

  A local small-scale touring venue.

• Illyria

  Due to demand created by their international reputation for excellence, Illyria now performs more plays to more people across a wider area than any other open-air touring theatre company. Illyria's mission is to create a varied programme of outstandingly enjoyable theatre and to enable everyone to see it.

• Play Box Theatre Company

  A Warwick-based theatre company for everyone, focussing on young people as performers and as an audience.

• Royal Shakespeare Company

  The world's leading company performing and producing work by Shakespeare.

  
  
  
  
• Rugby Theatre

  An amateur society which owns its own 313 seat theatre. It puts on ten live shows each year

Worcestershire

• C&T

  C&T produces new theatre works for young people. The company regularly programmes work for primary, secondary and special schools using drama as a means to explore the ideas, values and aspirations of young people and the world around them.

  
  
• Evesham Arts Centre

  The principal forum for theatre, music and cinema in the Vale of Evesham

• Malvern Theatres

  Set against the dramatic backdrop of the Malvern Hills, Malvern Theatres is one of the country's leading regional arts centres. It comprises three auditoria: the 800-seat Festival Theatre, famous for its programme of top touring drama and musicals; the Forum Theatre, a flexible space used for concerts and dance as well as a 400-seat cinema.

• Number 8 Community Arts Centre

  A local community arts centre with a wide range of events and activities

• Redditch Palace Theatre

  The Palace Theatre first opened its doors in 1913 and was described at the time as as a miniature opera house of classic design and seating. Since then, it has served te town as a roller-skating rink, a dance hall and a bingo hall - and as a theatre again since 1985.

• Shindig

  SHINDIG Rural Touring Scheme offers a wide range of subsidised tours including theatre, music, opera, dance, storytelling, children's theatre and cabaret theatre and is hosted in partnership with village hall committees, community associations, parish councils and PTAs. Shindig enables groups across Worcestershire to promote live professional arts in their local community venues to local people.

• Swan Theatre, Worcester

  Provides a broad programme of professional theatre, live music, dance and comedy, as well as a venue for amateur dramatic societies and other arts organisations. The adjacent Studio is also used for theatre workshops, smaller scale productions and events. RE:ACT is a project aimed at young people aged between 13 and 16 years olds who enjoy the theatre and want to learn how to critically review the arts.

• The Norbury Theatre

  The totally volunteer-run amateur theatre situated in the heart of historic Droitwich Spa