Advice for New Theatre Companies

So we’re a few days from being four months into 2026. That’s a quarter of the way through the year. Man is it going quick this year! I mainly boil it down to being so busy. Busy is good. We like busy. We’d complain otherwise, however we somehow complain when being so busy as well. I guess it’s just in human nature to complain.

The purpose of this blog will be reflection and some advice to theatre companies starting out. Peripeteia Theatre has now been going for five and a half years. In that time, and just at the start of the month we celebrated, doing twenty-six productions. When you put the facts into numbers it looks like a lot and it probably is if I’m honest. But we’ve done as much as we can manage to do each year. We started ambitious but realistic.

Our start as a collective is a bit different if we were to start now. We started in the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Everyone was locked in their houses and craving to do art, any type of art. We knew we couldn’t do theatre in the sense of being in a theatre but we did different types of theatre; audio plays, digital theatre, online festivals, monologue showings – anything we could do to feed the hunger. But all of it was done with a realistic plan in mind. Each year, about half way through the year, we start a timeline map of what the next five years might look like. We focus in on the next twelve months in particular. What we want to say with the work we do. What impact we want to make. And how achievable it will be to do these productions with the current resources we have.

If you make one production a year – that is okay. Do what you can do. Everyone who works in the arts is aware of how increasingly hard funding is. The majority of time independent theatre companies are self-funded. We have been for the majority of this time. It’s hard and it’s difficult to make great art on a good enough budget. Don’t make too many sacrifices in order to do art though. I aways give the advice that art is significant. It’s the way we learn about history and the political climate of the current world. But it’s not important. It’s not curing any diseases or performing life saving operations. You can, although a hard thing to do, live without creating art for a period of time.

Social media is impactful in getting you an audience. It’ll feel like a full-time job at some point, and that’s because it really is. But use it well and to your advantage and it’ll help you promote your work and connect with people you’d otherwise never have connected with.

This industry is, at the best of times, a beast that you’re trying to tame. It’ll eat you up and spit you out. But on the flip side of this, the community that you are a part of will support and encourage you probably even more that members of your own family. Lean on them for support and advice. More than likely they will give it in bucket loads.

This has been a whirlwind of a blog. But my advice has always been scatty at the best of times. I think what I’m trying to say enjoy it the most you can. We’re only a DM or email away if you need to meet for that coffee.

This post was written by:

Adam Cachia [they/them], Artistic Director of Peripeteia Theatre.