HOW THEATRE BRISTOL SUPPORTED David Lane and Sita Calvert-Ennals

 

TB helped us as regional artists to begin, develop, support and guide an international collaboration to production with support and advice and advocacy.

Back in 2014 Sita and I were eager to step our work up to a national and international level. We’d both had successful regional shows and had freshly established our collaborative writer-director partnership via a young company project at the egg in Bath. Now we’d stumbled across an idea for a play rooted in real-life stories that meant going to Korea for research.

TB’s former lead Tanuja Amarasuriya had been on a British Council Korea delegation to Seoul not long before, and guided Sita and I with an application to ACE’s Artist’s International Development Fund. Theatre Bristol brokered a research partnership with Doosan Art Center, British Council Korea and Producer Group DOT in Seoul, and current producer Judy Owen in the UK.

We were successful with the application and in October 2015 we spent an incredible week in Seoul embedding ourselves in interviews, site visits, research and Korean theatre. In 2016 TB again supported us via Tanuja, this time with advice on an ACE R+D application to develop our research into early material.

Five people, including David Lane and Sita Calvert-Ennals, are gathered together, leaning forwards to look at a laptop screen.

This took place in June 2016, and then TB again advised us through 2017-18 on one failed and then one successful production application to ACE which finally came through in 2019, and had been shaped and supported via advice from Artist Support Associates Ella Good and Laura Drane. Having an organisation prop you up and then pick you up throughout that process is invaluable.

In 2019, after five years of coming through adversity with TB and our brilliant producer at our side, we were equipped with the tools and confidence for further collaboration. We landed a dramaturgical partnership with Korea National University of Arts, partner funding from the British Korean Society, and a renewed understanding of our work’s potential. Despite Covid’s interruption for two years, we are now in production at the Bristol Old Vic (buy your tickets here).

TB helped us as regional artists to begin, develop, support and guide an international collaboration to production with support and advice and advocacy. Now we can’t wait to build our next piece of work with a similar international reach, and you know who we’ll be calling for advice…

 

DONATE £15 to fund a one to one support session so we can reach more artists. 

 

Did you know that Theatre Bristol can provide the following support to develop your ideas and career:

  • Getting your work out there
  • Mentoring and support in difficult times
  • Finding new networks and collaborators
  • Nailing budgets and funding applications
  • Creating clear and compelling artistic ideas
  • Providing an outside eye and critical feedback
  • Long term planning and strategic development
  • Writing about your work and presenting it online
  • Addressing problems you’re facing in the theatre industry
  • Finding strategies to make your practice more sustainable

For more information about what we can offer, please contact Tessa Wills, by emailing tessa@theatrebristol.net

Two actors, one older, one younger, are looking at each other with their arms outstretched, about to hug.

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