I have dedicated the best part of adult life to creating, watching, teaching and practising Theatre; demonstrating an unrelenting passion for, and commitment to, an art form that I feel is not just important, but essential to the progression of Society.

 

Elevating mankind and giving us our humanity are our imaginations. That we can imagine our death and are aware of our mortality inspires the need for us to live beyond ourselves. Intrinsic to this is our desire to tell stories, to share part of ourselves for posterity and also to help us make sense of things. From this quintessential part of our nature comes Theatre and it continues to satisfy this primal yearning.

 

More than any other, Theatre is a collaborative art form, discretely cultivated from the creative dialogue of its contributors and their shared or different cultures, traditions and experiences. Theatre also borrows from and blends disparate disciplines, constantly re-inventing its-self to create exciting and powerful hybrids, often so extreme that they cease to resemble each other. Ever evolving, Theatre is a living art form, incarnate in the creative process and essentially, alive in its live execution; creating an audience by grouping individuals as a whole physically but also implicating them in their shared experience and in doing so involving them intrinsically in the wider progressive dialogue.

 

By its very definition then, Theatre is an inclusive medium. It is the great leveller, able to encompass all because it is born of us, speaking to all because it is universally created, connecting because it is its fundamental nature to connect. Whether hard hitting, issue based drama, or light musical comedy, both experiences are profound because both draw from and reflect life back at us. Theatre invites us to engage with situations familiar and alien, encouraging us to explore emotions that are at once comforting or disturbing and to question the ambiguous and abstract concept of morality. In doing so, It helps us to understand who we are; as individuals and as part of the whole.

 

Theatre matters because it represents the enquiring mind; the shared momentum that inspires and challenges us to precipitate change and enlightenment for our progression. Theatre is both a symptom and a cause of this movement, playing a massively important role in our society. To an extent this could be argued for all creative arts, though for me, Theatre has an idiosyncratic difference. Theatre has a symbiotic relationship at its heart. Theatre creates an audience, who in turn create theatre. Neither exists without the other. We are essential to Theatre therefore Theatre is essential to us. If we matter, Theatre matters.