Multi-award winning Osmington based, AsOne Theatre Company celebrated its 10th Birthday this autumn by researching, then commissioning its eighth new play. It premiered in its second home of Dorchester on 8th October and this Friday 21 November AsOne comes home to Weymouth’s Pavilion Theatre for its final performance after a tour of 21 venues this autumn. AsOne Theatre Company present a gripping new piece of theatre with live music – five incredible stories of families affected by war. The play has been created using real testimony from people: who’ve fought in Afghanistan; who’ve waved their child off to fight; who’ve discovered a WW1 relative’s diary. Intertwined with extensive research and dusted with talent this is affecting theatre at its best.
Artistic Director Jane McKell said: “I dream about projects for a year, plan for another, and implement in the third. Meanwhile all the other projects progress one year ahead of the one following on. It is hectic, sometimes stressful but always fulfilling and often joyous. We are incredibly lucky for our tenth year to have secured the best Creative team. PASSION’s playwright Stephanie Dale has had 30 years in the business, with four plays commissioned this year! Peter Leslie Wild our director, has been nipping between Weymouth and Ambridge – he directs The Archers often at the moment, and has been directing solidly up until and beyond our three and half weeks of rehearsal in both Theatre and Radio. The cast and crew are the best I could have wished for. However it is the remarkable – ‘gold-dust’ stories we recorded in lounges and conservatories in Dorchester, Bournemouth, Bath, Boscombe, Weymouth and Portland that have been the joy. These have come to be interwoven by Stephanie Dale along with some evocative new and arranged music by Dorset’s much loved and talented Tim Laycock.
A professional theatre company, – Osmington based AsOne has won many Awards to bring Dorset stories to life out of testimonial and research since 2004. Over the years they have been recognised as a company of excellence by Dorset Business, Arts Council of England, Heritage Lottery Trust, West Dorset District Council, Weymouth and Portland Strategic Planning , Dorset Teenage Pregnancy Prevention, Weymouth and Portland Surestart, Dorchester Town, International Thomas Hardy Festival, New Hardy Players, Weymouth, and Melcombe Regis Rotary Clubs, as well as our success with the SW Arts and Business Heightened Branding Award which placed the company as National Finalists.
The company has won many commissions. Surestart funded the theatre touring play with music, Hey Baby – the story of five Portland parent’s journey into parenthood; along with a parallel project devised for schools, with real teenage mums telling their stories, an aerial performer as Baby and newly commissioned music The Foetal Position. She Opened the Door (the Wife, the Mother, the Other Woman and the Ruined Maid) was commissioned for Dorchester’s International Thomas Hardy Society Festival in 2010 – it told the story of the women surrounding Thomas Hardy at the height of his fame. The Cabinet Maker’s Daughter toured 9 counties in 2011/12 telling the 19th Century story of Mary Anning, the Lyme Regis born Palaeontologist and Fossil expert fossil who was virtually unrecognised outside of Dorset although visited by the King of Saxony and all the all male members of The Royal Geological Society of her time. Last year the company – in partnership with Arts University Bournemouth, and newly appointed Assistant Director of AsOne, Jacqueline Avery – launched the AsCend Graduate Internship Award. In its second year AsOne has two recent graduates awarded a place in mentorship on their 2014 project PASSION. One is an actor – Ieuan Jeffcott playing the central character, a young Great War volunteer soldier, Bob from Bridport; the other is Georgia Riley who has received one month’s training within the company with West End and Internationally experienced, Stage Manager, Marina Kilby. Georgia now tours alongside Ieuan with AsOne and PASSION in charge of everything on-stage.
Jane added: “ It was with huge pride after three years of dreaming, researching and creating we announced one of our biggest projects yet 2014 to commemorate and mark the start of the Great War and the withdrawal of our troops from the Present Afghanistan Conflict. Please support us and our rescued, now thriving Pavilion Theatre, as AsOne we bring you high energy ensemble storytelling, evocative imagery and music; powerful affecting theatre to touch, surprise and entertain. The FINAL performance of this tour’s PASSION – Line of Departure, Weymouth Pavilion Theatre, 21 November 2014, 7.30 pm with an optional Question and Answer session after an interval in the theatre bar upstairs.
To book tickets Tel 01305 783 225 or online https://www.weymouthpavilion.com/page21.html AsOne Theatre brings newly devised, quality performance with music and projected image to venues throughout Wessex. AsOne Theatre Company was set up in 2004 to explore timeless human stories – encouraging the development of new writing, and employing the most talented regional professionals to create intimate, powerful and affecting theatre. The performances are an innovative combination of high energy ensemble storytelling, evocative imagery and music in order to touch, surprise and entertain. The company prides itself in being accessible and engaging to a diverse audience. Although we are based in Dorset, we tour venues throughout Dorset, Devon, Wiltshire, Somerset, Hampshire, Bristol, Bath and Gloucestershire. This year during an 21 date tour we headed for new venues to us: Clapham’s Omnibus Theatre, and The Roses in Tewkesbury; and included three schools in our schedule facilitating parallel educational performances and workshops.
