It’s a New year, a new start and we are now ready to put our 18 month plan into action.  We’ve decided to call 2020 the year of progress. We’ve been in the Liverpool theatre scene since 2017 with our first production, ‘The man with no identity’.  We feel after all the hard work through our three productions plus two short films and two script books, we’ve finally laid the foundations to build Likeminded into something great!

 So, why do we call this particular year ‘The year of progress’? I recently went along to ‘Friends of Hope Street’ in November which was put on by the resident production company, Barewaters and Sam Donovan, Artistic Director of The Hope Street Theatre. The night was an opportunity in a open forum to talk about press, how to get funding, branding etc. It was a great turnout and a very good eye opener. They had Karen Brown from the Royal Court Studio, Gordon Millar from the Unity Theatre and Andrew Sherlock from LJMU speaking. Andrew, was a pleasure listening to and I felt like finally someone speaking my language. It was straight to the point and about opportunity for all with an idea he had called Edge. Andrew also spoke about how he started off as an independent theatre maker and of the golden age where artistic directors gave grass-root creatives a chance. He put it nicely: ‘What happened to taking an artistic director from the Everyman or the Unity for a pint and giving a local lad a chance. When I heard this I was saying to myself “Exactly, what has happened?” I have so much frustration towards the Everyman and many share the same views but I will leave that for another day with Gemma. 

All we ask for, like Andrew when he first started, is a chance. Without chance there is no progress. Without chance there is no opportunity, its as simple as that. We want to grow but without the help and opportunity from our local theatres then we are stuck where we started in 2017.  I also learned it’s who is in the audience and not how many tickets you sell that count. Of course you have to have a play that meets there criteria to get into the theatres we want to get into. So, we will be inviting artistic directors across the UK to attend our productions. Let’s hope they don’t ignore our invitations and actually come and support local talent.

The Hope Street Theatre has gave us and other companies the opportunity to express our creativity in a space that we have all dreamed of having. It’s a space we’re you can sharpen your tools, a place to meet other creatives, see what works and what doesn’t on stage. This place has helped all four of our ambitions grow at Likeminded, which you can clearly see that in our 18 month plan. Our productions are now getting bigger, our marketing and branding of each productions are also bigger and it’s only going to get better. We will be in this great space for our next couple of productions and hopefully we have the right people in the audience to give us the opportunity to showcase in their theatres if all goes well. This is the year of progress and we hope you will continue to enjoy and join us on the journey. It’s going to be amazing. Thanks for reading everyone.

Words by Christopher Woodward
Images by Andrew Smith