Back on the road and looking ahead

Executive Director and Joint CEO Ruth Cooke talks about Northern Broadsides’ return to touring, its deepening community work, and future plans for the company.

Back on the road with Crime and Punishment

We’ve recently completed a tour of a new adaptation of Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, visiting five studio spaces. As a company we were excited to be back on the road, reconnecting and meeting with audiences and venues old and new.

Over the last two  years we’ve focused our attention to making work at our home in Halifax and with the artists and people of Calderdale,  building meaningful partnerships with local communities and organisations. There have been some incredible highlights during this period – more on this below – and looking ahead, we’re excited about bringing these two strands of our work closer together, creating more opportunities for our touring productions and community work to connect and inform one another.

But back to the tour – it was owing constraints on budget, timeframe and resource that we had to explore something of smaller scale, and embrace agility and flexibility whilst holding on to our artistic ambition. Laurie [Sansom, Artistic Director] did an incredible job of adapting a sweeping Russian novel into a 2-hour play for three actors and it offered some exciting creative options, such as the self-contained lighting design that is operated almost entirely by the cast, and the way the smaller-scale format brought audiences closer to the story, creating a more immediate and immersive experience.

It also opened up new possibilities in terms of venues and partnerships, exploring how Northern Broadsides can continue to reach audiences in different ways.

For example, since the closure of the Viaduct Theatre, previously our regular Halifax home, we have partnered with the Victoria Theatre, who were generous and open in their willingness to work with us and transform their stage into a studio theatre for Crime and Punishment. We hope this will be model that can be replicated, both at the Victoria and for other theatre who don’t have a smaller second space.

We also established a new education partnership with Leeds City College – two of their students were Trainee Assistant Stage Managers during rehearsals, others supported the get in and fit up when we arrived, and we ran a workshop and additional show for the students. This deeper engagement with a venue is something we want to develop further and we want to do more support the careers and skills development of young people from the North starting out in our industry.

Being a touring company without a fixed venue gives us the freedom to adapt and evolve – and this tour has been an important step in shaping what the next phase of Broadsides touring could look like.

Rooted in Yorkshire 

As a company rooted in Halifax, it’s important to us that the work we create reflects the voices and stories of the North. Building genuine relationships with local communities is a vital part of that.

There’s an incredible wealth of creativity across our region, but access to the arts isn’t always equal. We are passionate about making sure that everybody, no matter your background, can be creative and consider a career in the arts.

In 2024, we launched Broadsides’ first ever Youth Theatre in Park Ward, Halifax. It’s quickly become a vital part of the company – a group of around 30 young people aged 8-18 now meet weekly, building confidence, developing skills, and shaping their own creative work. It’s been one of the most important and rewarding things that I’ve ever been part of.

What’s been most exciting is seeing them take ownership: making decisions about performances, developing scripts, and growing as artists and collaborators.

Another major recent highlight was Iron People, a large-scale community production which we were commissioned to create as part of Calderdale’s Year of Culture 2025. Working with hundreds of local participants, we delivered an ambitious open-air performance at Eureka! last summer- a real celebration of creativity carrying an important message about our environment.

Alongside this, we’re working on Life in a Northern Town, a partnership with Blackpool Grand and The Customs House in South Shields. This project supports young writers from across the North to develop new plays rooted in their own lived experiences – helping ensure that northern voices continue to shape the stories we see on stage.

The reality of funding

It’s worth saying that Arts Council England’s regular grant supports our core costs (staff and administration) and, crucially, enables us to plan ahead as a company. However, their funding no longer covers mounting and putting on a tour and all of our youth and community engagement work is funded from elsewhere. We’ve been successful in an ambitious funding and income generation campaign that has seen the company make new connections and relationships with trusts, foundations and donors, but we need to do more if we’re going to continue to bring more powerful theatre to venues around the country and offer more people the opportunity to experience the arts.

There’s a real opportunity for audiences to play a deeper role in that journey – every ticket, donation, legacy or membership purchased is crucial to our future and to making sure Northern Broadsides continues to thrive.

Looking ahead

We’re currently working towards returning to mid-scale touring through new funding opportunities, with exciting plans underway to bring Shakespeare back to our repertoire in the near future.

I first saw Northern Broadsides perform in my home theatre, Hull Truck Theatre, many (many) years ago, and this was before I realised that not all Shakespeare was spoken with a Yorkshire accent – so I thought it was totally normal.

It was only as I saw more work outside of Yorkshire that I realised what an extraordinary thing Northern Broadsides were doing in taking classic plays and performing them in a Northern voice. I count myself as a loyal Broadsides audience member, as well as one of its employees, and remain committed to delivering that honest, authentic performance style that I and other Broadsides audiences have always loved and responded to.

We’re so grateful for our loyal audiences, many of whom have supported the company for years. At the same time, it’s crucial that we engage, meet and inspire new audiences, remaining relevant for future generations.

That balance – honouring our roots while continuing to evolve – is what keeps the company moving forward.