Likeminded Productions is immensely excited to announce our Opening Nights series of podcasts as grass roots theatres emerge from lockdown.

For more than a year, theatres have been ghostly silent and now they are back with a vengeance as brand-new productions compete for audiences with shows held up during the pandemic.

Now it’s time to Access All Areas as we help bring you up close and personal with those at the very heart of new shows. Bob and Caitlin and the Likeminded Podcast crew will bring you behind-the-scenes interviews and insightful comment from actors and theatre-makers alike imminently before ‘curtain up’. We will bring you the intoxicating buzz and thrill of opening night flurry.

Experience at first-hand the nervous energy of cast and crew as they hurtle towards opening night in front of a live audience, a night which is unique and never replicated. A night when everything they have been working towards is showcased in a torrent of exhilaration when a hair’s breadth can mean the difference between triumphant success and crushing disappointment.

The podcast will explore the unpredictability of audiences as they return after so long, some enthusiastically and some cautiously. How do theatre-makers plan for audience reaction and how much is audience experience on their minds on opening night?

We will bring you the reactions of actors and how they have bonded during rehearsal as they prepare to launch themselves on stages which can be as unforgiving as they are iconic.

Opening night is the fruition of a theatre company’s values, concepts, innovation, skills and damn hard work. Join us for this ground-breaking series as we put grass roots theatre in the spotlight in a way that is truly imaginative.

Words by Bob Towers
Images by Andrew Smith