Early Days
Neil Sissons and Richard Lewis founded Compass Theatre Company in 1981.
The Company began as a tiny profit-share company formed to produce The Collector on the Edinburgh Fringe. Over twenty five years of growth, consolidation and success later, Compass is one of the UK’s foremost touring theatre companies
The Company’s reputation was originally built on plays written by its members; Damocles, by Neil Sissons and Paul Rider, was universally praised and toured throughout the UK, France and the Netherlands. In 1982 Nick Chadwin joined Compass and collaborated with Neil Sissons on plays such as Refugees, Moonstomp and A Higher Passion.
During the early nineteen eighties the Company increased its range and versatility by also producing adaptations of classical work, such as Edward II by Neil Sissons and The Odyssey by Rex Doyle.
At the start of 1986 plans were announced to form a creative ensemble; the idea was to gather a company of actors together for the course of a year, and to work intensively, investigating a minimalist yet epic style of playing and concentrating on classic texts.
1987 saw this New Ensemble tour Macbeth, Spartacus and The Tempest throughout Britain and Europe. Over the next five years productions of Romeo and Juliet and Volpone, The Winter’s Tale and Hamlet, The Alchemist, The Merchant of Venice and Waiting for Godot, Measure for Measure, The Revenger’s Tragedy and Krapp’s Last Tape followed and in a vast expansion of the Company’s international work, we toured to Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, The Philippines and South Korea.
Around this time we began a long association with the Globe Theatre in Tokyo and also embarked on our most ambitious tour yet, a double bill of Hamlet and King Lear. These productions toured for 7 months and included residencies in London and Tokyo.
The Nineties
The Company’s success was acknowledged in April 1992 when we gained three-year franchise funding from the Arts Council of England. This meant that the Company had breathing space and the opportunity to plan ahead and expand its range still further.
This artistic success found an echo in popular acclaim later that year when we undertook hugely successful tours of Cymbeline, Hedda Gabler and The Wind in the Willows. The latter formed a new and hugely successful departure for Compass, with a brand new adaptation by Nick Chadwin and Neil Sissons.
Having been based at the Leadmill since our early days, Autumn 1993 saw the Company move to a permanent, larger base, which combined rehearsal rooms, offices, a green room and storage facilities; Compass had a true home.
Strindberg’s Miss Julie was toured in summer of 1994, and this fuelled the desire to explore more modern work with a classical status, and we went on to tour The Caretaker and Georg Buchner’s rarely performed Woyzeck.
Alongside this push for more modern writing ran the continued fascination with Shakespeare and his contemporaries; A Midsummer Night’s Dream was toured, as well as Dr Faustus.
In 1996 and to great acclaim, the Company mounted a Beckett festival in our home city of Sheffield following national tours of Endgame and Krapp’s Last Tape. This unique and bustling event was a fitting climax to the tours of these wonderful plays and featured lectures, readings, films, and productions of Beckett’s intriguing shorter plays, bringing audiences, local artists and organisations together in the city.
With support from our third Arts Council of England funding franchise, and major sponsorship from what was then the Midland Bank, 1997 and 1998 brought tours of The Merchant of Venice and The Tempest, and new adaptations by Neil Sissons and Nick Chadwin of A Christmas Carol and Jekyll and Hyde.
In 1999, we realised a long-held ambition and produced our first Ancient Greek play, Sophocles’ dramatic powerhouse Electra. This play went on to win a Manchester Evening News Theatre Award, and later in the year toured in tandem with a new translation of A Doll's House, delighting and challenging audiences across the nation.
2000 and Beyond
In 2000 we plunged headlong into Restoration Comedy, touring Goldsmith’s rollicking tale She Stoops to Conquer alongside our first ever production of Twelfth Night. This celebrated double bill saw the Company consolidate its ability to play large-scale venues whilst retaining a commitment to smaller theatres. This busy year was rounded off with a highly theatrical production of Charles Dickens’ Hard Times adapted by Stephen Jeffreys.
For our twentieth anniversary year, we took on the mammoth task of producing our first American play, Arthur Miller’s classic Death of a Salesman. During its ten week national tour in Autumn 2001, over 25,000 people saw the play.
There followed extensive and acclaimed national tours of Waiting for Godot in 2002, The Winter’s Tale in 2003 and The Rivals in 2004.
Our national tour of 2005 was a highly acclaimed production of The Seagull by Anton Chekhov in a version by Tom Stoppard and featured the Company’s largest cast to date.
Alongside this ran a new initiative for the Company – a Stage Exchange partnership with Wakefield Theatres. In addition to other activities, Neil Sissons produced new translations of two short, comic plays by Chekhov, The Evils of Tobacco and The Proposal and these toured to schools, community venues and other non-theatre spaces around Wakefield and West Yorkshire.
2006, our twenty fifth year, began with the world premiere of Richard Hurford’s adaptation of Herman Melville’s epic novel, Moby Dick. This thrilling production toured extensively and was nominated for a Manchester Evening News Theatre Award.
During 2006 we also began a new Stage Exchange partnership with the Plowright Theatre in Scunthorpe. A wide range of activities and projects for all members of the community were undertaken, including a small-scale tour to schools, village halls and other non-theatre spaces across Scunthorpe and North Lincolnshire of Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter. Our ongoing partnership with the Plowright Theatre continues with further initiatives taking place in 2007 and planned for 2008.
When we first toured Hard Times in 2000, we received a record number of letters praising the production. This, combined with the Company’s abiding passion for Dickens’ writing, was behind our decision to revive this hugely entertaining and atmospheric production for a national tour in Autumn 2006.
Spring 2007 saw us return to the work of Arthur Miller with an extensive national tour of The Price. Autumn sees the Company retaining a commitment to smaller theatres, with a national tour of a triple bill featuring The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter alongside The Evils of Tobacco and The Proposal by Anton Chekhov, new versions by Neil Sissons.
The Dresser by Ronald Harwood will be our first major production of 2008. This wonderful, affectionate and intelligent play about the theatre will be touring the UK throughout Spring and early Summer.
Our extensive tours continue to provide opportunities for our large and loyal audience to see each new production. However, each new production and our expanding repertoire continually take us to new venues, creating new audiences for our work.
The Company remains vibrant and vital, keen to continue creating and delivering high quality classical theatre with the same passion, intensity, wit and style that has characterised Compass Theatre Company since 1981.
September 2007