So … we started a theatre company!

Before we get into the chaos of the here and now, I thought it was probably worth going back to the beginning. There’s a lot I want to share about what it’s actually like to run a theatre company — the shows, the decisions, the things that go wrong, the things we learn and, hopefully, the things that go right. But before we dive into all of that, I wanted to give you a little run-down of …

How on earth we got here in the first place.

If you’d told me a few years ago that I’d be running a theatre company, producing our own shows and spending an unreasonable amount of my life thinking (well, let’s be honest, panicking) about ticket sales, rehearsal schedules and spreadsheets, I’m not sure I’d have believed you.

Although, if you’d told Adam, he probably would have. This was actually his idea, and I have a tendency to get started when Adam comes up with one of his big ideas. It’s not the first time this has happened. Take the loft, for example. Adam suggested we board it out. Three days later, 30 square metres of loft boards had arrived at the house and apparently we were committed to the project.

Starting a theatre company was, admittedly, a slightly bigger undertaking. But there was a very specific reason behind it: we wanted to produce Next to Normal.

Next to Normal is, quite simply, the most powerful piece of musical theatre I have ever experienced. I first discovered it more than half my lifetime ago, and it has stayed with me ever since. There are very few pieces of theatre that leave such a lasting mark on you. Next to Normal did that for me. I genuinely don't have the words to explain what an incredible piece of theatre it is. It is extraordinary.

So when Adam suggested we set up our own theatre company, there was a bigger idea behind it. We wanted to produce work we cared deeply about and particularly stories that have something to say, resonate with people and leave audiences feeling something. We wanted people to walk out of the theatre still thinking about what they'd seen. Alongside that, we wanted to create opportunities for talented local performers and creatives and bring ambitious theatre to audiences here in West Yorkshire.

So, That’s The Badger Productions was born … following a frankly ridiculous amount of time spent considering increasingly cheesy theatre-related names, terrible acronyms and ideas that, thankfully, never made it past the discussion stage. Then came the slightly less glamorous bit: actually registering the company, buying the domain, building a website and discovering that apparently being a theatre company also involves things like safeguarding policies, risk assessments and codes of conduct. Who knew? There’s a whole other blog in the boring-but-important business of setting up a theatre company, so I’ll save that for another day. For now, let’s get back to the fun bit…

Of course, deciding you want to produce a musical and actually producing one are two very different things. And that brings me to our first lesson.

Lesson 1: Surround yourself with people who complement your skills

The moment we decided we were actually going to do this, we knew we needed an experienced director on board. Not just anyone. We needed someone we trusted, whose skills complemented ours, who would keep us grounded, challenge us when needed and, importantly, be willing to come on the journey with us. We also wanted someone who would help us learn and grow as producers.

Enter Rick Hyland.

What a guy.

I'll be honest, I was nervous going to meet him. I remember thinking, “I think he’s going to think we’re stupid.” Instead, it turns out he's just as mad as we are. We sat and talked for a couple of hours about why we wanted to do this, what we wanted the company to be and the kind of theatre we wanted to create: stories with meaning, stories that resonate, stories that might challenge you, and stories where the audience leave the theatre and continue to think about what they’ve just experienced.

Rick got it. More importantly, he got us. And he was in.

Job one: complete.

We had our director, someone with a different skill set to ours and someone willing to let us learn rather than expecting us to know everything already. That turned out to be incredibly important, because there is a lot we don't know. And I'm learning to be okay with that. (Let’s call that a sub-lesson — and probably one we can explore more deeply in the future.)

Lesson 2: Find the venue before you pick the show

The next thing we learnt was that finding a venue is much harder than we thought. In fact, it is 1,000,000 times harder than booking a wedding venue.

Early on, Rick gave us what has probably been one of the best pieces of advice we've had:

“Find the venue and then pick the show. Finding the venue will be the hardest part and you need to make sure that you pick a show that works in the venue.”

I walked away thinking, “Really? Surely it can’t be THAT hard?” and, admittedly, took this advice with a fairly generous pinch of salt. Turns out, he was right. Annoyingly right. Consider this Step One in my ongoing journey towards accepting that I might not know everything.

The venue affects almost everything. It dictates the size of the stage, audience capacity, technical facilities, the set you can build, the number of performances you can schedule, your costs and ultimately the shows you can produce.

So we took the advice. In February 2025, we secured Yeadon Town Hall Theatre for September 2026 and September 2027. Yes, you read that correctly. We committed to our venues 18 and 30 months before the shows.

Lesson 2.1: Commit early. Theatre venues get booked up. Really booked up. If you have a particular venue in mind, waiting until you know exactly what show you want to do can mean you've already missed your opportunity.

And Yeadon made sense for us for another reason. It's where Adam and I met. Although, technically, we met at an old gym that has since burnt down, which probably isn't the sort of romantic origin story you put on the back of a theatre programme. But Yeadon has been a big part of our story. We knew the space, we knew the people and we knew that it was somewhere we could build something.

We had a venue.

There was just one small problem.

Problem 1: The Next to Normal problem

Yeadon Town Hall Theatre is too big for Next to Normal. Remember, Next to Normal was the reason we started the company in the first place. So once we'd committed to Yeadon, we had to work out where on earth we were going to put the show that had started all of this.

We started looking at other venues. Some studio spaces were too small. We wanted to give the production the space it deserved, but we also had to be realistic. If the venue only seated a small audience, we simply wouldn't be able to cover the costs.

So we needed a very specific sweet spot: somewhere around 180–250 seats. Big enough to make the production financially viable, but intimate enough for Next to Normal to have the impact we wanted. Finding that turned out to be harder than expected. It took a while - in fact, it took long enough that Next to Normal wasn't going to be our first musical after all. But eventually, we found it.

Bradford Playhouse.

And we couldn't be more excited.

Finding the right space has simply made us even more determined to do it properly. Sometimes producing theatre means accepting that you can't just do the show you want, in the place you want, whenever you want. The venue, audience, finances, technical requirements and production itself all have to work together. And sometimes, you just have to wait for the right space to come along.

So, Next to Normal is coming. It just took us a little longer to find its home.

So, what were we going to do?

We had the venue for September 2026. Now we needed a show.

Our first thought was Jesus Christ Superstar. It felt like a great fit for what we wanted That’s The Badger to be: ambitious, powerful musical theatre, incredible music and a story with enough depth to leave an audience feeling something. And, let's be honest, some very big tunes.

Except ... no. It had already been taken for Bradford in 2026. Ironically, that production was subsequently pulled following the announcement of the London revival and tour. Let’s not even open the “you can’t always have what you want…” topic.

So, what else?

Then came RENT. Bold, challenging, emotional, musically brilliant and full of stories that still resonate. It was exactly the kind of theatre we'd talked about wanting to create, so RENT was booked. There was just one problem.

September 2026 was a long way away.

We had a company, a venue and a musical, but we were itching to get started. So ... time for some plays.

So along came Teechers

We wanted our first production to reflect what we were trying to achieve as a company: interesting stories, strong characters, something to say and something that would hopefully leave an audience feeling something.

Teechers ticked those boxes. It was also a smaller production - three actors, one set, one theatre and a short run. How hard could it be?

We chose Teechers and suddenly our theoretical theatre company became a real one. Casting, rehearsals, rights, marketing, ticketing, programmes, set, props, technical planning, front of house, volunteers, emails, more emails and then the emails about the emails. And, of course, actually making the show good.

We staged Teechers at Ilkley Playhouse in June 2026. It was brilliant, chaotic, exhausting and hugely rewarding. There were things we got right, things we got wrong and things we thought would take an hour that somehow took an entire evening.

But when the audience arrived and the lights went down, all of that disappeared for a couple of hours.

We had a show. Our show. And that feeling was pretty special.

on to RENT

Obviously, Teechers wasn't quite finished before we started RENT. Because why would we do one show at a time when we could make life considerably more complicated?

While Teechers was still in rehearsals, we’d already assembled our cast and had started rehearsals for RENT. So suddenly we were juggling two productions at once - and I was actually performing in one of them too. Because apparently running a new theatre company wasn't enough.

And as I write this, we are now just over three weeks away from opening night.

There hasn't really been a neat progression from one show to the next. It's been more of a constant juggling act: finishing one production while casting and rehearsing the next, all while trying to run the actual business of the company in the background.

And I'm beginning to realise that that's the bit I want to talk about. But what do you want to hear about? Drop me a comment and let me know and I will share what we're learning as we go - the good, the bad, the ridiculous and occasionally the “how on earth are we going to make this work?”

And we're only just getting started.

Teechers was our first production. RENT is our second. We're already planning our next three musicals, and there's a brand-new musical with some very big plans coming in early 2027.

So, come behind the sett with us.

Lucy 🦡🤍