feelgood theatre productions
London
Founded by Artistic Director Caroline Clegg Feelgood have been creating award
winning theatre since 1994 fusing the unusual with the imaginative - classical
texts and ground breaking new commissions at traditional and site specific
venue. A cappella singing and drumming, Shakespeare and African dance,
abseiling, pyrotechnics and fire sculpting with music and drama - in parks,
cliff tops, garden centres, African townships, museums and traditional theatres,
national tours and West End transfers. We have distinguished ourselves with an
array of acclaimed shows following our spectacular launch with the musical Our
Girls in 1994, where the audience lined the runway at Barton Aerodrome and
looked on in awe as a World War II bomber landed to disembark the cast. We have
followed that with 24 years of incredible productions: Blue Remembered Hills,
Pictures at An Exhibition, (Mussorgsky), La Boheme (Puccini), Wind in the
Willows, Robin Hood, The Wizard of Oz, Rosa, The Three Musketeers, Dracula - The
Blood Count, Arthur - King of the Britons, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, national tours and West End transfers of Not About Heroes, and we were
honoured to be presented to HM The Queen and HRH Duke of Edinburgh at the
opening of The Lowry theatre where we opened our production of Crystal Clear
followed by The Wizard Of Oz, which sold out for their first Christmas show.
Integral to each production is our commitment to making innovative education and
community programmes. In 2007, Artistic Director Caroline Clegg and the company
were awarded the prestigious Horniman Award at the Manchester Evening News
Awards for their outstanding contribution to live theatre. They also hold the
Angel Award for Artistic Excellence and Caroline was awarded the John Thaw
Fellowship at the University of Manchester in honour of her companies work. In
2002 we developed Romeo & Juliet - Thando & Ruvhengo a riveting multi-cultural
production made in Bulawayo Zimbabwe and performed in Bulawayo, Harare and
Manchester as part of the Culture Shock Commonwealth Games programme. The
journey was made into an award-winning documentary. In 2009 we collaborated in
Manchester with the thrilling company exiled from Zimbabwe Theatre Under Fire to
create our incredibly moving Macbeth in Heaton Park. In 2010 the world premiere
of Slave - A Question of Freedom (the story of Mende Nazer) followed a
trajectory of thrilling work from Africa that aims to celebrate the joy of
diversity and raise awareness of modern slavery. It won the Pete Postlethwaite
Best New Play Award and the Inaugural Human Trafficking Foundation Media Award
which was presented at No 10 Downing Street. It was also performed in the House
of Lords to aid the Nuba Mountains Solidarity campaign to highlight not only
slavery in Sudan but the continued persecution of the Nuba people. In 2014 on
the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the Frist World War we followed in the
footsteps of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon went on an 18 venue national and
European tour of Not About Heroes. We began at Craiglockhart War Hospital and
toured across the UK to places pertinent to them both including La Maison
Forestiers – (the Foresters House) in Ors France where Wilfred Owen spent his
last few days before a 5 week residency beginning on the 11th of November at the
Trafalgar Studios in the West End. The same year Feelgood were honoured with a
second Lord Mayor's Civic Reception for our dedication to the arts. Alongside
this tour we also created an international poetry competition to raise awareness
of PTSD. Workshops took place at Catterick Garrison and in schools and community
venues at our 18 venues culminating in a special winners award ceremony in 2015.
Heaton Park is a special place for Feelgood. We used to tour our summer open-air
shows across the country and went to Heaton in 1998 where we performed for 11
yrs. After a gap of 9 years we returned in May 2016 with Whispers of Heaton. We
presented two new immersive site-specific commission plays, The Bugler and The
Fight to commemorate the Battle of the Somme and the Manchester Pals regiments
in Heaton Hall and Park. This announced our return to Heaton, the place we love
to call our spiritual home and where we are now the Official Theatre Partner
with Manchester City Council. In the summer of 2017 we brought back our open-air
promenade productions with A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The park is a unique place
with hundreds of stories to tell and we aim to reveal them as we re-ignite a
passion for culture in the park. Our long term vision which we announced at a
special dinner hosted by our sponsor PZ Cussons on November 14th 2017 is to
build a theatre in the park. We are in year two of our vision development which
is called ‘Field of Dreams’. We are undertaking a feasibility study in
consultation with Manchester City Council in line with their new Manchester Park
Strategy. We hope a Feelgood Theatre in the Park will be a cultural space for
world class theatre, music, dance and open air activities. Heaton Park is
cherished by so many and our aim is that we build a lasting legacy to ensure
that theatre can be accessed by everyone.
