Theatres team up to tackle touring challenges

The New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich is one of the seven organisations involved in the consortium

Theatres and production companies across a region have teamed up to tackle the challenges of mid-scale touring.

Seven organisations from Suffolk, Essex and Peterborough have launched the East Anglian Touring Consortium.

Douglas Rintoul of the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich, which forms part of the group, said there was a "real shortage of high-quality work" for mid-scale tour productions and tours were often "incredibly tough" due to costs.

The group will pilot a touring model, with a focus on new writing and the development of local talent, to tackle the issue.

As well as the New Wolsey, the theatres and production companies involved in the project include:

• Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

• Mercury Colchester Theatre, Essex

• Queen's Theatre Hornchurch, London

• Eastern Angles Theatre Company, based in Ipswich

• Landmark Theatres, which operates the New Theatre Peterborough

• HighTide, based in Ipswich and London.

The Mercury Theatre in Colchester is another of the organisations involved

Mr Rintoul, who is the chief executive of New Wolsey, said: "Across the country, there's a real shortage of high-quality work for the mid-scale, especially in town-based theatres like ours," Mr Rintoul said.

"For those of us still producing at that level, the landscape has changed dramatically."

He added that while large, complex co-productions with other partners could be "thrilling", they limited the "kind of stories we can tell" that were not necessarily "rooted in our towns and relevant to the communities we serve".

The consortium will work to tour between five venues across East Anglia and employ local staff who can then stay within the region.

In total, it hoped to reach an audience of more than 15,000, with an additional 3,000 on digital platforms.

The first production will launch in spring next year and will be a musical set in the 1960s based around young people from Clacton in Essex.