Green Touring

Our unique way of touring means we are confident in being one of the most environmentally friendly companies in the country.
We have maintained this proud claim for the past 52 years and our ongoing ambition is to continue to keep this up and where we can, go further.

We bring theatre to you. Our average audience journey is under 13 miles.
We tour to rural venues - meaning audience travel is much lower than 'main house' theatre visits.

1. Sets props and costumes – although we re-use or recycle 65%
2. Road travel – although we have a two hour rule for van journeys and we have a modern, effi cient van that carries all cast, crew and set
3. Printed marketing materials – essential but heavy on paper usage. We audit every year how much we need, and try to order the right level – even if this means that we may spend slightly more money. We’ve reduced our print from 38,000 pieces in 2017 to 31,550 in 2023
4. Audience travel – we mainly travel to venues in villages and small towns where people can get to venues by foot, public transport or very short vehicle journeys
5. Lighting – our lighting rig (4 rechargeable LED lamps) is charged on the boat when the boat is running – effectively using the energy created by the engine twice, This means we require no power at all at shows.

Our office has as low an impact on the environment as possible.
• We have LED ceiling lighting

• We use recycled packaging for mailing outgoing product sales

• We successfully lobbied our landlords to install recycling facilities in the building, for us, other tenants and users. A green bin was installed last year

• When paper documents are no longer required we shred them and they are recycled by a local chicken owner for livestock bedding

As the engine is moving the boat to get us to our venues it is also charging the batteries that we use for both personal use, (charging phones, laptops, fridge, boat lights), and our lighting rig which we use to light our shows for evening performances. This means a dual use for our boat engine (propulsion and battery charging) and no mains power is necessary.

Our solar panels on the boat roof extend this battery life when we’re not moving, meaning we hardly need to run our engine when moored up.

We reuse these wherever possible. We also borrow and hire from other theatre companies before making new or buying. We are also committed to make our collection of props and costumes available to any other local companies when possible. We often reuse parts of sets from other years and do our best to locally source materials wherever possible.

Our set builder is only 14 miles away.

When touring by van, we try to be strategic when booking our venues keeping venues close together to avoid unnecessary travel. Our impact is minimal when we tour by boat in that it is both our accommodation and means of travel in the summer. Our home is our narrowboat so the actors often sleep very close to the venue. When we tour by van we plan our venues to be within a two hour drive so that we can get back to our accommodation each night.

We rarely use hotels and B&Bs. and during the 2023 season we didn’t use them at all.

We do our best to ensure that we don’t over-order our marketing materials. Each year we assess how much we need and refine our orders accordingly.
We have encouraged many of our friends and followers to receive information from us digitally and we are working on increasing our digital marketing and decreasing our paper marketing. We will endeavor to reduce our print list and increase our digital marketing list even further.