A Staffordshire venue is to introduce professional theatre to its programme and has arranged its first two productions.
Foxlowe Arts Centre, Leek is to stage a new adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, performed by Rabbit Theatre, and This Land, created by West Midlands-based Pentabus Theatre Company in association with Salisbury Playhouse.
Actor Dave Mynne was a founder member of Cornish international touring theatre company Kneehigh and has worked for the organisation “on and off for the last 30-odd years”. Dracula plays at Foxlowe Arts Centre on Wednesday 24 February.
This Land is a piece of new writing “which digs down through the history and the future of a patch of earth and everything that has and will happen there, including, possibly, fracking”. It visits Leek on Thursday 17 March.
Michael Quine from Foxlowe Arts Centre said, “we're thrilled to bring these professional performances to Leek. Dracula and This Land are exciting and very different shows. We hope they’ll give our audiences a taste for theatre so that we can provide a continuing programme of high-quality live performances.”
The two shows are backed by Live and Local, a not-for-profit arts organisation which works across Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire. It “supports a network of voluntary organisations that bring communities together to experience quality, affordable and professional live performances”.