What is Kilter?

Kilter’s work is mainly based around Bath. We are the first theatre company in the area to strive towards low carbon theatre practice and promote sustainable living through theatre.

What do we do?

Theatre

We find interesting places like allotments, cemeteries, cycle paths or old buildings and use the sites (and the people and things we find there) to create our shows. We want to connect with our audience in a new way.

Our work is often in the open air and our audiences are on foot, travelling around the show and interacting – so they’re really involved in the work we create. You can find out more about our style of work and the productions we’ve made on our theatre page.

We also hold practical theatre workshops to let you in on some of the secrets of producing our particular brand of site-specific and ‘issue’ theatre.

Communications, training and workshops

Kilter can support your business to communicate in new and unforgettable ways. Through bespoke creations, film or interactive theatre we can help you get to the hearts and minds of your audience. We also offer training courses in creative brainstorming, presentation technique and networking skills.

Why do we do it?

We want to make theatre that talks about the environment, social justice and English heritage. For us it’s really important to make new work about the issues that are affecting our world today but we want to do it without preaching and with a large dose of humour and fun.

Our main focus is to inspire debate between audience members and to empower them to take action in their lives for a positive, healthier future. Our participatory approach helps people to engage more practically with the themes in our shows.

How do we do it?

Let’s take Roots as an example. We wanted to create a show about food security in a world without oil, so we found an allotment site. We devised at the site and responded to the stimuli that we found there.  We used stories and quotes from people who grew there and objects we found were used as props. This process helped us build characters and narrative. All this combined to create a show that was more rooted in its subject matter, evoked a more personal response to the issues for the audience member and had a much lower environmental footprint than conventional theatre-based work.

We work really hard to make sure that our work is ethical and sustainable; we use renewable power to generate light and amplified sound (if we need it), use found or recycled sets and costumes, use public transport or bikes to get around and we strive to use local companies when we take commissions or create work for organisations. We only ever take on the project if we feel it meets our ethical criteria.

Anything else?

Kilter was set up in 2006 by Oliver Langdon, Claire Wyatt and Caroline Garland. We’d all been working in the theatre industry for years, but found we had a common interest in exploring how to make site-specific and sustainable theatre. We are based in Bath but we work anywhere!

Our past productions have been funded by:

• National Lottery – Awards For All 
• Arts Council England – Grants for the Arts
• The Quartet Community Foundation
• Institute of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts (ICIA at University of Bath)
• B&NES Arts Development Office (Bath & North East Somerset Council)

Past productions

• Remote Patrol, 2007, performed in the Bath Abbey Cemetery
• Back on Track, 2008, performed on bikes on the Bristol-Bath Railway Path
• Back in the Bike Shed 2008 was an accompanying exhibition for Back on Track in John’s Bikes bikeshop, Walcot Street, Bath.
• Everything Must Go!, 2008, a theatrical installation, looking into consumerism and ways of communicating the issue through immersive theatre
• Roots, 2009, performed at the Bath Organic Group Allotments.
• Little Month, 2009, a month-long durational theatrical treasure trail around Bath.  It was commissioned by the egg theatre at the Theatre Royal, Bath, for their family theatre festival.
• Passengers, 2010, a storytelling piece about the history of Green Park Station, Bath.
• Roots Replanted, 2010, an allotment tour of Roots?

Mission statement

Kilter aims to redefine theatre as a widely accessible, participatory, change-driving experience. To physically and mentally involve the audience, igniting imagination as well as encouraging debate and positive change for themselves, their community and the rest of the world. This is achieved through the development of an economically and environmentally sustainable business.