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Winner of Peter Brook Empty Space Award (Mark Marvin rent subsidy)

“Providing Exeter with a note of optimism”

The Guardian

“The arrival of The Bike Shed Theatre

has electrified the city’s arts scene”

Exeter Living

“A powerhouse of new writing.”

Offwestend.com

Nestled at the end of an alleyway between a strip club and a church, occupying two adjacent cellars of a Victorian Warehouse, you will find The Bike Shed Theatre & Bar. The theatre opened in February 2010 beneath a bike shop in Exeter, initially as a pop-up venue for a three-week run of a new play: The Distance by Craig Norman. Staying for a further five months, the venue produced two more world premieres (one of which, Beanfield by Shaun McCarthy, transferred to the Tobacco Factory, Bristol), and created the first Exeter Fringe Festival (now Exeter Ignite) with twenty-three visiting companies and sixty-five performances over eleven days.

Expanding into an adjacent cellar over the Summer of 2010, the theatre produced eight in-house productions in its first full year. These ranged from a jazz opera version of The Magic Flute to a critically acclaimed intimate production of The Dumb Waiter. The theatre also produced the first productions of Sam Randall’s Serendip, Neil Bebber’s Cul de Sac and Shaun McCarthy’s Circus Britannica (which transferred to Theatre503). Along with bringing in a range of visiting companies, including Paines Plough and Chris Goode and Company, the theatre created New Blood, a platform for playwrights to submit short plays in response to a public provocation. From this came Bunnies, in a shorter version, which became the opening production of the Bike Shed’s 2011-12 season, and won the theatre a Peter Brook Empty Space Award.

The Bike Shed continues to work with playwrights, showing Peter Kesterton’s Playing with Snails in 2012 and following this with a second season of New Blood with plays by Gerald Clarke, Rebecca Megson, Bea Roberts and Perdita Stott. The venue now focuses its programme around bringing in visiting companies for residencies, in which they can develop new work whilst showing existing productions. The theatre is dedicated to working with the wealth of artistic talent in Exeter and the South West, in supporting the development of playwrights and creatives and in providing a relaxed environment in which to enjoy quality theatre.

The Empty Space Award

‘The Empty Space Peter Brook Awards is a registered charity committed to supporting fringe/studio theatres throughout the UK. It has been doing so for more than 20 years. The awards are given for a body of work and in recognition of pioneering concepts/innovations, in the spirit of Peter Brook, achieved by venues that perform in smaller theatre spaces which receive little or no public funding. The awards consist of several categories to support various needs. They are the Empty Space Peter Brook Award, the Mark Marvin Rent Subsidy Award, the Peter Brook/Equity Ensemble Award, the Dan Crawford Innovation Award and the Peter Brook/Mobius Special Achievement Award. The awards are held every year at the National Theatre Studio.’

Blanche Marvin MBE, Founder