They have a show, a cast and a venue, but how to afford them? In the second of her blogs charting the highs and lows of starting a theatre company, Bronwen Wilson, cofounder of Cilgwyn Theatre Company, finds that money does indeed make their world go round.
As anyone who's tried to raise money will know there are thousands of charities and trusts willing to dish it out, but only if you're a one-armed former nun from Mongolia. Once we managed to compile a list of potential organisations, we then faced the masochistic task of filling in their application forms. These things are generally very long, very detailed and require you to dig out bits of paper that haven't seen the light of day since David Hasselhoff was only famous for having a talking car.
Once said bits of paper are gathered you must prove your work is beneficial to the world, its grandmother and her parrot. All these forms duly posted we waited. And waited.
Eventually Awards for All contacted us. For another bit of paper. Four months later they turned us down, mainly because we didn't have a child protection policy. We do, but clearly the whole section we wrote about CRB checks went unread.
We went to meet our last hope, the Cripplegate Foundation, and promptly buried them with as many excel spreadsheets as we could find. From somewhere under the pile of paper we heard they would give us a grant. The day we received the cheque, producer Becca and I waited till we were out of sight of their offices and then skipped down the road whooping.
Some of our revenue also comes from the work we're doing with schools. Now teachers are busy at the best of times, but trying to get hold of them during exam term to book workshops is nigh on impossible. After getting to know several school secretaries intimately from our frequent phone calls we decided to escalate our assault. I expect there are still some teachers in Islington recovering from our unique "stalking" technique: we turn up grinning and bearing shiny brochures, and refuse to leave till they say yes. It seems to have worked as we are now working with 16 schools and 364 children, and the numbers are still growing.
Unfortunately it doesn't end there. The grant cheque covered our venue hire and the schools workshops covered a few other bills, but we still needed costumes, a set and staff. We've now become super scavengers. Ten tonnes of vintage luggage? It's safe to say our relatives' attics are all a bit emptier now. Costumes? Various wardrobes Trinny and Susanna-ed. Box office staff? Every friend who has ever slept on my sofa. We're still trying to convince Gap's customer services to give us their current window displays (perfect for our set). Apparently they only give to "good causes". That'd be us then.
So if you're reading this and a) have an old tail coat or b) work for Gap you could really help us out.
