Playtime Theatre Co

General information

Playtime Theatre Company was established in 1983 with the aim of bringing innovative and entertaining drama to young people in the South of England. Since that time we have established ourselves as one of the leading children's theatre companies, taking our productions to schools and theatres throughout the UK.

We have now grown to become one of the foremost children’s theatre companies in the UK, touring nationally and internationally.

We produce between one and three plays per year and give in the region of 200 performances per year, principally in schools but also in theatres, arts centres, and youth clubs and at festivals. Topics are wide-ranging - everything from fairy tales to local history stories, Chaucer to the environment! We also run drama workshops, as well as offering residencies in schools, inset days for teachers and work experience for students.

Our plays are highly visual and most include audience participation – in some productions, the audience even determines the ending of the play! All have strong narrative and wherever possible, incorporate a variety of different art forms, including mime, puppetry, physical theatre, music and song.

We have a particular interest in foreign touring and in 1993 began a reciprocal exchange programme with other children’s theatre companies in Europe and to date, have brought companies from Hungary, Czech Republic, Germany and Portugal to tour their work in England. Similarly, Playtime Theatre has toured its plays to theatres, schools and festivals in Hungary, Germany, Czech Republic, Holland, Slovakia and the former Yugoslavia; more recently we have toured our work to the Middle East. We have also collaborated on several international co-productions.

We run an extensive Drama Workshop programme , both in school and in art centres across Kent. Our workshop leaders are all professional, trained actors with plenty of experience running drama workshops, in a variety of different settings, be it in schools, art-centres, theatres or festivals.

Using a mixture of drama skills, theatre games, voice work, mime, improvisation, hot-seating and role-play, our workshops promote learning through informal discovery and participation. They are designed to assist your students explore new ideas. Whatever your subject, from PSHE to History, from English to Science, our workshops can help you.

You may want a workshop to run in conjunction with a particular performance, as a means for your students to explore topics and ideas touched upon in our plays. Or maybe you would like us to design a workshop, on a topic of your choosing and give your students the opportunity of working with professional actors. Whatever your reason, we have the workshop for you!

Also find us on Twitter at - @PlaytimeTheatre.