Welcome the new look website for THE REP (the Rotherhithe and East London Playhouse) and WELCOME BACK to the many, many thousands of you who've discovered a love of theatre through the 52 productions our director, Phil Willmott, has offered Londoners for free, over the past 22 years.
Welcome too if your one of the hundreds of actors and creatives who've applied their time and talent, often voluntarily, for the past two decades to ensure we could all enjoy this affordable access to meaningful theatre.
Unfortunately we're needed today more than ever.
Welcome too if your one of the hundreds of actors and creatives who've applied their time and talent, often voluntarily, for the past two decades to ensure we could all enjoy this affordable access to meaningful theatre.
Unfortunately we're needed today more than ever.
With deeper and deeper cuts in public funding, the vast majority of kids today, and those on the lowest incomes, are about to take their place in the world with no introduction to the arts which have so enriched and empowered us.
In response today marks the launch of our new initiative, THEATRE FOR LIFE.
FOR YOUNGER AUDIENCES
We aim to create a new 60-minute family theatre production for each major school holiday. We'll regularly introduce our younger audiences to the most treasured stories ever told to children, in fun, engaging ways. Sparking a lifelong love for theatre with world myths, local legends, and modern classics such as Treasure Island, Alice in Wonderland, and Pinocchio. Priceless flights of magic and imagination that every child, from any background, should encounter, in their formative years. |
FOR OLDER AUDIENCES
Later the same day, we will also present an undisputed masterpiece for older audiences to enjoy. We'll bring the greatest plays in history back to life, not in some distant, imposing theatre building but up close in welcoming, relaxed places at the heart of our community, making the stories and characters of ancient times, of Shakespeare and more recent writers like Brecht, Lorca and Chekhov, pertinent to today's world, with their their thoughts on the same issues we face today. |
FOR STUDENTS OF ALL AGES
Our selection of plays will include those currently being studied in classrooms. Through workshops, talks and performances we'll help students gain the invaluable insights to the texts they study that can only be gained from rediscovering them in live performances. Whilst stringent cuts in education funding and increased pressure on teachers make class trips to theatre a thing of the past we'll take a fresh look at when we schedule our shows. Currently in development, we're looking for funding and sponsorship for a new initiative AFTER SCHOOL THEATRE CLUB that will give pupils and parents the chance to see a play on their way home from school rather than be out late on a school night. |
FOR SOUTH EAST LONDON
Each production will play an opening long weekend of performances at our home venue in Rotherhithe before moving on to long weekends at venues in three of our poorest neighbouring boroughs (as identified by Trust for London.) |
Or that's the hope.
The truth is for us to succeed
this spectacularly uneconomically viable project
will need the help of every single adult reading this.
There are three ways you can help...
and it needn't cost you a penny!
The truth is for us to succeed
this spectacularly uneconomically viable project
will need the help of every single adult reading this.
There are three ways you can help...
and it needn't cost you a penny!
1. To anyone who can afford to donate, or provide access to public funding or corporate sponsorship -
FOR ACTORS, STAGE MANAGEMENT, AND CREATIVE TEAMS
For our upcoming productions, we are experimenting with a new rehearsal structure to ensure everyone's time is respected.
Euphemistically named A MONTH OF SUNDAYS (after the old English phrase for a series of extraordinary events) this approach consolidates rehearsals into four intensive long weekends: Fridays from 7pm to 10pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 10am to 10pm, and Mondays from 7pm to 10pm.
For our upcoming productions, we are experimenting with a new rehearsal structure to ensure everyone's time is respected.
Euphemistically named A MONTH OF SUNDAYS (after the old English phrase for a series of extraordinary events) this approach consolidates rehearsals into four intensive long weekends: Fridays from 7pm to 10pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 10am to 10pm, and Mondays from 7pm to 10pm.
Oscar winning actor Eddie Redmayne on the difference theatre and Phil Willmott has made on his life.
Sir Ian McKellen: "Kids don't understand... and it's shameful"
Since graduating I’ve always put on at least one free show each year, giving everyone in my community, regardless of background and income, the same change to discover theatre I’d had as a teenager from a working family in Bristol. Back then, sitting in the dark watching wonderful actors bringing classic stories to vivid new life was where I was happiest. The inspiration and education I got from those great plays allowed me to think beyond the future laid out for me and empowering me to becoming the first person in my family to leave the area, first studying acting in London and then fighting for a successful international career as a playwright and director. Immediately following the first COVID lockdown THE REP was one of the first companies in the UK to use theatre as a means to reunify their community when they presented an audacious staging of HAMLET played out on the banks of the river Thames for hundreds of people not only discovering Shakespeare for the first time but with a hunger for new words, voices and story telling after weeks of isolation. Their followed two years of productions reachable for those reluctant to use public transport performed in pop-up performance spaces where audiences could feel safe from in infection. Twenty years later mum was finally persuaded her theatre hunch had paid off, when I was made an honorary fellow of my drama school and she got a pic of us for the living room with me in a cap and gown. PHIL WILLMOTT |
Phil Willmott founded THE ROTHERHITHE PLAYHOUSE, as it was then, immediately following the first lockdown in 2020 to ensure local theatre not only survived the COVID pandemic but flourished as a force for good in his part of London.
Since those early days the organisation has rebranded itself as THE REP (The Rotherhithe & East London Theatre Company) as a statement of intent to share their work in neighbouring under resourced London Boroughs
Over the past three years and nine critically-acclaimed productions the Playhouse project has established itself as a completely unique theatre company both in its objectives and the means by which they are achieved.
Covid’s lingering impact has brought investment in the performing arts and audience confidence in attending live events to an all-time low. For this reason professional theatre makers volunteer their spare time at the Playhouse so that local, affordable theatre not only survives but flourishes during this crisis.
At the heart of our ethos is theatre for families and we are committed to producing a family show during every school holiday so that kids don't just go the theatre once or twice during their childhood but can visit regularly and on into adulthood, where we'll bring them the great stories of world literature staged in accessible, topical, lively productions.
We guarantee every audience member at every production a memorable encounter with work that is relevant and of value to them, and ensure our artists consolidate their existing skills and potential by interpreting rich and fulfilling source material.
Fully dedicated to sustainability all Playhouse productions use sets and costumes that have been recycled from existing stock, the cast have divided up stage management, technical operation, set and costume maintenance, marketing and building a social media following between them, and our fine-looking shows have mostly been ingeniously lit by battery operated torches from the pound shop!
OUR PRODUCTIONS SO FAR.
In just under two years our body of work has been remarkable. Only performing masterpieces to ensure every theatre experience is a memorable encounter with a great work, the company began by performing HAMLET on the sand banks of the Thames immediately following the first lockdown being lifted. That Christmas we performed a pocket-sized CHRISTMAS CAROL in a pub garden so every family in Rotherhithe could see a festive show in conditions as safe from covid as possible. Emerging from the second lockdown the company staged the beautiful MEDIEVAL GOSPELS recreating the spirit of the mystery plays when the common man took ownership of the formally sacred texts. Audiences packed out our revival of Charles Dickens’ GREAT EXPECATIONS, in the gardens of Rotherhithe’s Victorian former mortuary (now home to the Time and Talents organisation) keeping a whole new generation on the edge of their seats as many people experienced the sweeping narrative for the first time. This was followed by a bracingly cold but covid safe winter residency in the courtyard of The Ship public house, which allowed the company to bring their own take on MACBETH to a wide range of eager theatregoers. When the covid omicron variant brought the run of and their second Christmas show, the classic kids’ adventure, TREASURE ISLAND to an early close, the cast reunited in January to ensure everyone who had been disappointed could get to see the show. When a new landmark building THE HIVE opened up in the heart of Rotherhithe we next built a pop-up theatre inside and brought local families free school holiday productions based on THE WIZARD OF OZ and FOLK TALES FROM UKRAINE in support of the Ukrainian's in our midst. Whilst for adults we staged Shakespeare's rarely performed, enigmatic ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL to critical and public acclaim.
AN INTERVIEW WITH ROTHERHITHE PLAYHOUSE' ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PHIL WILLMOTT
Reproduced by kind permission of WHARF LIFE
Reproduced by kind permission of WHARF LIFE
Phil Willmott of Rotherhithe Playhouse – image Matt Grayson
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BY LAURA ENFIELD
When life fell apart, Phil Willmott found himself broke and bored.
The Rotherhithe resident went from being one of the most commissioned theatre writers in the UK as well as a director, artistic director, composer, librettist, teacher, arts journalist and actor to, well, a man sat in a room.
As he has done since childhood, the 55-year-old turned to theatre, launching Rotherhithe Playhouse just after the first lockdown.
It started with Hamlet on the riverside and progressed to A Christmas Carol, the Rotherhithe Gospels and Great Expectations, each performed in a different open air location with sets built from recycled and found materials.
Current production The Macbeths runs until November 6 in the courtyard of The Ship in Rotherhithe
We sat down to find out more about the man behind the company.
How did Rotherhithe Playhouse start?
As a kid, theatre was really important to me. I didn’t go to a particularly good school so I would take myself off on Saturday afternoons to see plays and musicals at Bristol Old Vic.
It was how I learnt about the world. When Covid closed all the theatres, I realised there was a real danger of a whole generation of kids never being taken to the theatre, who will have never seen the plays they are studying.
I felt the longer the pandemic went on, the more people would get out of the habit of going to the theatre, so an entire art form could die away.
There is a beautiful riverfront outside my window so I thought I would get some actors together and we would go and do Hamlet down there.
It was very simply staged and the audience was really transported by it. I just thought we had to keep it going.
What makes it different from a conventional theatre?
Each production is in a different venue in Rotherhithe to help bring them to a wider public. I don’t think I would be interested in the nuts and bolts of running a permanent venue but each month we build a new theatre from scratch – it’s very exciting and you can adapt the performance to the site you are in and make it very special.
Tickets are free if you access food banks or subsidised school meals and for everyone else we run the Pay What You Can scheme. That way I hope it will always be affordable for people to take their kids to see a magnificent piece of literature, which is really life enhancing.
The other innovative thing we do is with the creatives. Because of the pandemic, lots of them took proper full-time jobs and now they find it impossible to give them up for short-term theatre commitments. So we only work outside of office hours so they can participate.
What sparked your interest in theatre?
Pantomime. I was taken as an annual treat and I used to sit there intently watching it so that for months, as I fell asleep, I could run it in my mind.
I came from quite a working class background in Bristol so there was no-one to explain theatre to me. I assumed it was just the actors. It didn’t occur to me that someone wrote and directed and designed it.
I thought I wanted to be an actor and trained for three years and was relatively successful playing, ironically, upper class twits in light entertainment and ended up in a Science Fiction soap opera Jupiter Moon that they used to launch Sky.
It was a fantastic cast with people like Anna Chancellor and Jamie Glover. I have never laughed so much and made lifelong friends. But after that, I realised acting wasn’t for me.
I started writing plays and sent one in a brown envelope literally addressed to The BBC, London and a fantastic producer picked it up and they did it on Radio 4. One day I wanted someone to direct a version of it and I decided to have a go myself. Ever since I have had this three-pronged career.
I prefer theatre, as being on TV is more like being in a factory. Theatre is a knife edge and I still feel that now times ten because every day is fighting fires. I just wish I could make a living at it on its own.
How did lockdown affect you?
It was truly shocking and even now I’m struggling to acclimatise. I hadn’t been unemployed for 30 years. Suddenly it all stopped and, from an incredibly busy, stressful life there was just me, sat in a room. I was forced to say: “I’m not my career. Who am I? What do I believe in? What do I want to happen?”.
I discovered I had to make theatre because it was in my blood but I had to find a new way of doing it for life, during and after this wretched pandemic.
Before, I was glued to my diary and didn’t know who I was. Now, ironically, because of this project, I’m still a person rushing around putting on plays but I know why. It was a chance to throw it all up in the air and decide what I wanted to take from my old life into my new life.
Also, for the first time in my life, I became penniless. I wasn’t wealthy before but never in my life, even as a student, had I had to stop and think: “Can I afford a coffee?”
.
That was very sobering and fuelled me to think about how I could help other people in this situation. There are many wonderful people running food banks but I think as humans we have to be a bit more than that.
Why did you choose to perform classics?
I always assume people will be sick of things like Macbeth or Great Expectations and know them inside and backwards.
But people come who have no idea of the story and who have never heard them and it’s so exciting to give people their first experience of these incredible pieces of work.
Shakespeare is this miraculous, ridiculous phenomenon because there are these words and every time you go back to them they mean something different. It’s endlessly rich and rewarding.
Have you discovered any parallels between your latest production and your present situation?
Completely. Macbeth starts off with a very certain trajectory and then everything falls apart and it comes from an unexpected quarter, his encounter with the three witches, which feels a bit like our encounter with this strange disease which came out of nowhere.
He’s ruthless and violent and I’m not those things but we were all brought up to think about career and how we advance and get a better job.
Then, suddenly that rug is pulled away and we are in the situation that Macbeth is in. What does he pursue and what feels wrong? Of course he makes all the wrong choices, but watching him do that tells us a lot about our lives and our choices.
Are you happy with your choices?
I’m making the best choices I can and struggling every day to do it better. When we started, nobody showed up and now it has a little fanbase, so I’m sure there is a need for it. But it is endlessly exhausting not having any money.
Everything has to be found on the street or bought in the pound shop. There’s no way it can make money, unless it’s very heavily subsidised, because the pop-up theatres we make seat a maximum of 60 people.
I haven’t taken another job so far, but will have to change that because it’s impossible to keep living on £20 a week. I just know we have to always be there for our community. So, no matter what, they can go to the theatre and see something fantastic.
How has the community responded?
It’s very difficult to get places to perform. I’m quite cross with some people who won’t let me put our theatre up in their forecourt. It’s troubling and has been a bit of an eye-opener.
Organisations that you think would go out of their way to help you find all sorts of by-laws and nonsense in order to justify saying no. But we are winning people over.
We need about 5m by 9m for our marquee and, if you give us that, we will create something magical for your part of the community. We don’t even need your electricity supply as we run everything on batteries.
What other help do you need?
We had a fantastic general manager, who has now moved on, so I’m looking. I feel there might be recent retirees out there who’d like to learn to project manage one show a year.
My absolute dream would be just to worry about what happened on stage. Also, if anyone has any money and would like to sponsor us, they would be contributing to something wonderful
.
Will you perform any new plays?
I only want people who come to see masterpieces – nothing second rate because a bad theatre experience can mean you don’t go for the next 10 years.
I might write something about Doctor Salter and his wife who have statues on the riverbank because not many people know about them. They really suffered for what they believed but stayed and improved the area for everyone.
BY LAURA ENFIELD
When life fell apart, Phil Willmott found himself broke and bored.
The Rotherhithe resident went from being one of the most commissioned theatre writers in the UK as well as a director, artistic director, composer, librettist, teacher, arts journalist and actor to, well, a man sat in a room.
As he has done since childhood, the 55-year-old turned to theatre, launching Rotherhithe Playhouse just after the first lockdown.
It started with Hamlet on the riverside and progressed to A Christmas Carol, the Rotherhithe Gospels and Great Expectations, each performed in a different open air location with sets built from recycled and found materials.
Current production The Macbeths runs until November 6 in the courtyard of The Ship in Rotherhithe
We sat down to find out more about the man behind the company.
How did Rotherhithe Playhouse start?
As a kid, theatre was really important to me. I didn’t go to a particularly good school so I would take myself off on Saturday afternoons to see plays and musicals at Bristol Old Vic.
It was how I learnt about the world. When Covid closed all the theatres, I realised there was a real danger of a whole generation of kids never being taken to the theatre, who will have never seen the plays they are studying.
I felt the longer the pandemic went on, the more people would get out of the habit of going to the theatre, so an entire art form could die away.
There is a beautiful riverfront outside my window so I thought I would get some actors together and we would go and do Hamlet down there.
It was very simply staged and the audience was really transported by it. I just thought we had to keep it going.
What makes it different from a conventional theatre?
Each production is in a different venue in Rotherhithe to help bring them to a wider public. I don’t think I would be interested in the nuts and bolts of running a permanent venue but each month we build a new theatre from scratch – it’s very exciting and you can adapt the performance to the site you are in and make it very special.
Tickets are free if you access food banks or subsidised school meals and for everyone else we run the Pay What You Can scheme. That way I hope it will always be affordable for people to take their kids to see a magnificent piece of literature, which is really life enhancing.
The other innovative thing we do is with the creatives. Because of the pandemic, lots of them took proper full-time jobs and now they find it impossible to give them up for short-term theatre commitments. So we only work outside of office hours so they can participate.
What sparked your interest in theatre?
Pantomime. I was taken as an annual treat and I used to sit there intently watching it so that for months, as I fell asleep, I could run it in my mind.
I came from quite a working class background in Bristol so there was no-one to explain theatre to me. I assumed it was just the actors. It didn’t occur to me that someone wrote and directed and designed it.
I thought I wanted to be an actor and trained for three years and was relatively successful playing, ironically, upper class twits in light entertainment and ended up in a Science Fiction soap opera Jupiter Moon that they used to launch Sky.
It was a fantastic cast with people like Anna Chancellor and Jamie Glover. I have never laughed so much and made lifelong friends. But after that, I realised acting wasn’t for me.
I started writing plays and sent one in a brown envelope literally addressed to The BBC, London and a fantastic producer picked it up and they did it on Radio 4. One day I wanted someone to direct a version of it and I decided to have a go myself. Ever since I have had this three-pronged career.
I prefer theatre, as being on TV is more like being in a factory. Theatre is a knife edge and I still feel that now times ten because every day is fighting fires. I just wish I could make a living at it on its own.
How did lockdown affect you?
It was truly shocking and even now I’m struggling to acclimatise. I hadn’t been unemployed for 30 years. Suddenly it all stopped and, from an incredibly busy, stressful life there was just me, sat in a room. I was forced to say: “I’m not my career. Who am I? What do I believe in? What do I want to happen?”.
I discovered I had to make theatre because it was in my blood but I had to find a new way of doing it for life, during and after this wretched pandemic.
Before, I was glued to my diary and didn’t know who I was. Now, ironically, because of this project, I’m still a person rushing around putting on plays but I know why. It was a chance to throw it all up in the air and decide what I wanted to take from my old life into my new life.
Also, for the first time in my life, I became penniless. I wasn’t wealthy before but never in my life, even as a student, had I had to stop and think: “Can I afford a coffee?”
.
That was very sobering and fuelled me to think about how I could help other people in this situation. There are many wonderful people running food banks but I think as humans we have to be a bit more than that.
Why did you choose to perform classics?
I always assume people will be sick of things like Macbeth or Great Expectations and know them inside and backwards.
But people come who have no idea of the story and who have never heard them and it’s so exciting to give people their first experience of these incredible pieces of work.
Shakespeare is this miraculous, ridiculous phenomenon because there are these words and every time you go back to them they mean something different. It’s endlessly rich and rewarding.
Have you discovered any parallels between your latest production and your present situation?
Completely. Macbeth starts off with a very certain trajectory and then everything falls apart and it comes from an unexpected quarter, his encounter with the three witches, which feels a bit like our encounter with this strange disease which came out of nowhere.
He’s ruthless and violent and I’m not those things but we were all brought up to think about career and how we advance and get a better job.
Then, suddenly that rug is pulled away and we are in the situation that Macbeth is in. What does he pursue and what feels wrong? Of course he makes all the wrong choices, but watching him do that tells us a lot about our lives and our choices.
Are you happy with your choices?
I’m making the best choices I can and struggling every day to do it better. When we started, nobody showed up and now it has a little fanbase, so I’m sure there is a need for it. But it is endlessly exhausting not having any money.
Everything has to be found on the street or bought in the pound shop. There’s no way it can make money, unless it’s very heavily subsidised, because the pop-up theatres we make seat a maximum of 60 people.
I haven’t taken another job so far, but will have to change that because it’s impossible to keep living on £20 a week. I just know we have to always be there for our community. So, no matter what, they can go to the theatre and see something fantastic.
How has the community responded?
It’s very difficult to get places to perform. I’m quite cross with some people who won’t let me put our theatre up in their forecourt. It’s troubling and has been a bit of an eye-opener.
Organisations that you think would go out of their way to help you find all sorts of by-laws and nonsense in order to justify saying no. But we are winning people over.
We need about 5m by 9m for our marquee and, if you give us that, we will create something magical for your part of the community. We don’t even need your electricity supply as we run everything on batteries.
What other help do you need?
We had a fantastic general manager, who has now moved on, so I’m looking. I feel there might be recent retirees out there who’d like to learn to project manage one show a year.
My absolute dream would be just to worry about what happened on stage. Also, if anyone has any money and would like to sponsor us, they would be contributing to something wonderful
.
Will you perform any new plays?
I only want people who come to see masterpieces – nothing second rate because a bad theatre experience can mean you don’t go for the next 10 years.
I might write something about Doctor Salter and his wife who have statues on the riverbank because not many people know about them. They really suffered for what they believed but stayed and improved the area for everyone.