ABOUT COMMON GROUND THEATRE COMPANY
Common Ground Theatre Co was founded in 2007 by Pat Whymark and Julian Harries to create new music theatre. We have been touring steadily since then, mainly within East Anglia, producing eighteen new plays which have been received stunning reviews both here and in London. We have received funding from Heritage Lottery Fund, The Suffolk Foundation, The Seckford Foundation, Suffolk Youth Ops, The Brook Trust and Suffolk Single Gateway.
Common Ground are committed to keeping small-scale theatre alive and well in East Anglia, presenting shows that are, first and foremost, entertaining. Our productions are character-based and always emotionally engaging.
Julian Harries & Pat Whymark are the creative team behind Stoat Hall, The Mystery of St Finnigan's Elbow & many more Eastern Angles Christmas shows, and it is that sense of playfulness that we hope runs through all our work. As an actor Julian has appeared in Eastenders, Detectorists, Spies of Warsaw, Doctors, and performed with The Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal National Theatre and in the West End.
OUR PATRONS
Sylvester McCoy - Actor
Eliza Carthy - Musician
Roger Eno - musician
Brian Eno - musician/producer
‘Our Creative County’: Andrew Clarke talks to Libby Purves
Extract from Suffolk Magazine article, August 2014
Suffolk is steadily gaining a reputation for being a hotbed of creativity. Cultural commentator Libby Purves tells Andrew Clarke how she sees recent developments in her home county
Theatre critic Libby Purves knows talent when she sees it. The Radio Four Midweek broadcaster and theatre critic has spent years watching the best companies, writers and actors perform across the country but she maintains that Suffolk has a special place in the British creative economy...
..."I find that you get some wonderful originality out of town. For example, look at Dick Turpin which Bury did recently or the work by Julian Harries and Pat Whymark, both with Eastern Angles and their own productions. They are both working within a wide theatre ecology but often on a shoe-string budget which forces them to be inventive and creative. This produces a wonderfully wacky way of doing things which is hugely rewarding and displays some terrific originality which you don’t get in a safer production in town."
OTHER RECENT REVIEWS OF HARRIES-WHYMARK PRODUCTIONS
“The spoof to beat all spoofs” (The Observer)
“Blissfull” (The Times)
"Madcap comedy gold" (The Stage)
"A marvellous romp...should delight even the most jaded of viewers" (In Suffolk)