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How We Began Arena was founded in 1977 by Helen Lewis a Guildhall trained
director who had gone the way of so many in our profession and moved into
teaching. This wasn't enough to satisfy her artistic leanings
and so Arena started, at first as a Saturday drama school and then as
Arena Children's Theatre, with a car and a trailerful of set. Helen had
always enjoyed exploring the subtext and underlying issues in plays and
this led to Arena's move into writing and performing issue based plays
the first of which was "Beware of Beaming Uncle Bertie and Smiling Auntie
Sarah." A child protection play for 7 to 11 year olds "Bertie" dealt with
the difficult issues of child abuse in it's many forms. |
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Bill Smullen first joined Arena in 1988 when Arena gave it's first Equity contracts. The trailer soon became a van and the work began to build. Over the past 20 years we have built up a considerable reputation in terms of quality and for not avoiding difficult issues. We have also developed our own styles. We say styles because for different challenges different means of achieving them have to be found.Our T.I.E work for middle to upper schools tends to be minimalist, focusing on character and situation with a set designed to be symbolic as well as interesting. | |||||||
We usually dress in black enabling our actors to switch characters with the change
of an item of clothing and body language. This is done in full view of
the audience so demystifying the process of acting. |
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