What next?

Over lunch and refreshments during the breaks in the presentation and in the bar afterwards, there was plenty of opportunity for all these theatre makers to get to know each other and find out more about their work.

The presentations that each award winner made about his or her company and its work were videoed. It is planned that those videos will be made available and transcripts of the presentations produced in book form to enable them to be more widely disseminated.

In his closing remarks, Brice Stratford looked forward to co-operation between companies, ensemble experience with mutual exploration and experimentation. These bodies shared many similar aims and all seemed to be yearning for something the establishment doesn’t offer but they were also very different.

It is difficult to understand another company’s practice, but he thought we should all seek to support each other and hoped for a world where we were not so separate and fragmented—reminding everyone that you often learn more by disagreeing than from consensus.

Brice had mounted this project from his own resources and almost single-handed, and for that service everyone should be grateful. What fruit it will bear can’t be known but it is a beginning.