Troubadour Stageworks

Our work exists at the intersection of community, heritage and culture.

We bring communities together to experience their local history or rediscover an old classic in a new context, and help to raise awareness of their core heritage buildings and how they might generate a new income.

It can start with something small, such as a rehearsed reading, music, online resources, a short film or interactive activities.

We build long term relationships with councils, schools, community leaders, and heritage organisations aiming to spark a growing culture of arts events and activities in local areas.

Heritage should be alive and engaging, so we make our work interactive, affordable and bespoke. We often work with sites who have little to no experience of hosting events, to create an effective model for their future events that keeps these spaces alive and funded.

With more established partners our plans grow larger: we accept commissions, create holistic events, may be hired for private functions, and stage site-complementary adaptations and plays.

High quality arts should be accessible to all audiences regardless of means, prior experience, or geography. From our base in South West England we tour nationwide, taking our knowledge, experience, and high quality productions and workshops to all manner of communities.

In November 2021 we were touring Redruth and the rural tin coast of Cornwall. In Pennoweth Primary School, the children were so excited when told they were doing a drama workshop, and then they asked us ‘what is drama?’. It wasn’t something they’d ever had the opportunity to experience.

Since the pandemic, many children have missed not only two years of in-person teaching, but also the opportunity to access key social experiences. Drama relies on communication and teamwork, and gives students the opportunity to build their confidence in a safe environment. Overwhelming feedback from teachers has been their delight at seeing how our workshops not only began to bridge that gap, but also gave students who had been struggling a new way of working which created an equal footing with their classmates.

Troubadour promotes the work of emerging creatives and offers an alternate route into the professional performing arts to industry. We offer supportive spaces to collaborate and gain professional experience working across a range of venues; from established theatres to small rural churches, training adaptable and engaged actors, writers, directors, and facilitators.