‘O Brave New World’

When we moved to Culan, in the middle of France, at the end of 2020 we had no idea that we would end up running an international theatre company that just happened to be based 30km up the road from us.

Sadie officially became artistic director of Footsbarn Travelling Theatre on the last evening of its 50th anniversary festival that was held at La Chaussée, the company’s arts complex, near Herisson.

The ritual was full of drama and symbolism as the co-founders and actors handed over the torch to Sadie adopting text from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: ‘ How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in ‘t!”’.

It’s as much a surprise to Sadie as to anyone else that she has taken the helm of such an established and iconic theatre company because a) Footsbarn has never had a de facto artistic director in the past, and B) the leader or figurehead has always been recruited from within its ranks.

That role has been inhabited by Paddy and Freddy Hayter for the past 30-odd years and now they are at retirement age they were faced with the distinct possibility that Footsbarn would wither and if no one suitable could be found to takeover.

Footsbarn is such an anarchic, vagabond, organisation, a little like the Grateful Dead, where anything goes, and no one is in charge.

The management structure is kind of like a group of people that initially squats a house, and when the founders gradually move away, those left end up running the place.

Times have changed and the theatre company is not the great rock ’n’ roll circus it once was, where a convoy of up to 30-plus trucks would hit the road and go on tour for up to three years, playing sell-out shows across the world

Most of the original cast moved on years ago leaving a small group of core actors who only come together to perform shows. They have other interests outside of Footsbarn and so they don’t have the same relationship to it as Paddy and Freddy — and anyway taking it on is a huge challenge.

Although not a part of the Footsbarn family, Sadie understands the company. She first saw them in Berlin in 1991 and has been a huge fan of their work. She also appreciates the company’s values as a community-based organisation and respects its reputation for producing ground-breaking and exceptional-based theatre.

While Sadie is mostly known for her work as a singer-songwriter, she comes from a theatrical background; both her parents were actors, her brother is a director based in Paris and she studied drama at the famous Lecoq school in Paris, where many of the original Footsbarn founders studied, along with some of the current actors in the company.

She has also worked in theatre as a music composer for many years and brings to the role a fresh and modernising approach and great contacts within the theatre and arts world.

Her first job will be to secure funding for the next four years, outline a new artistic programme and rejuvenate La Chaussée.

It is a huge task and I will be involved in the background, building a new website, digitising Footsbarn’s vast archive, fundraising and being in charge of press and media.

For now I will keep my day job, but I think the nature of the Footsbarn beast will be all consuming — but we are both excited by the opportunity.

The scale and richness of the company became evident during its 50th anniversary festival that stretched over two weekends and included great theatre, live music, and raucous partying around the fire.

I was responsible for showing documentary films of the company during the festival, which was a revelation and allowed me to understand its psyche and how it has evolved over the years.

Footsbarn Travelling Theatre was formed in 1971 in Cornwall. It moved to France in the mid-1980s and was successful enough to own two massive marquee tents, which allowed it to put on shows, literally anywhere in the world.

The larger of the tents has seating for 400 people and takes 10-men two days to erect. For the festival they had both tents in operation and it was quite a magical site in a wonderful setting.

Because it was the company’s 50th birthday people had come from all over the world to take part in the celebrations.

It was an impressive event, but this is exactly what Footsbarn has been doing for the past 50 years. The challenge now is to guide it into another era, adopt it for a new audience and not get bogged down with its legacy and myth.

I’ll let you know how it goes.