Bucket Club

I lead Bucket Club, a multi award-winning produced company at Farnham Maltings. Bucket Club make adventurous theatre for audiences of all ages. Our work is playful and collaborative, placing its audience at its core. It’s often very funny, usually very beautiful and it always involves live music and sound design.

Bucket Club are the first recipients of the Farnham Maltings Fellowship.

Five Children and It

If you could have one wish what would IT be?

Sent away to live in the countryside with their reclusive Uncle, five children discover a secret that’s been hidden away for centuries: a magical, mischievous and extremely grumpy Sand Fairy called It with the power to grant spectacular wishes. There’s just one catch… As the children set off on a series of fantastic adventures, they soon learn that wishes can get you into a whole heap of trouble. Perhaps a wish granted isn’t always the dream come true you might expect!

Five Children and It is a new adaptation of the E. Nesbit classic by Marietta Kirkbride in a co-production between Bucket Club and The Egg, Theatre Royal Bath.

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Photos: Paul Blakemore

‘An inventive, carefully constructed show… maintains The Egg’s proud tradition of delivering beautiful Christmas treats.’ ★★★★ The Stage

‘Hooray, hooray for this utter triumph of a show… proper family theatre of the highest quality’ Bristol24/7

‘We’ve enjoyed so many family productions at The Egg and without fail enjoyed every one. However, Bucket Club’s production of Five Children and It just about trumps the lot… a children’s theatrical masterclass’ The Bath and Wiltshire Parent

Written by Marietta Kirkbride | Design by Rebecca Jane Wood | Music by David Ridley | Lighting by Joe Price | Movement Director Jennifer Jackson | Puppet Direction Aya Nakamura | Puppet Design by Cat Rock | 2021 Cast: Patrick Bridgman, Hannah Bristow, Doxah Dzidzor, Craig Edwards, Hanora Kamen, Luke Murphy | Understudies: Peta Maurice and Dixie Newman | 2022 Cast: Patrick Bridgman, Kezrena James, Tika Mu’Tamir, Ellie Showering, Joseph Tweedale, Rose Wardlaw

Catch That Beast!

The Royal Society of Beastologists are a group with one mission: to track down and capture Mythical Beasts. They’re holding their meeting here today in hopes of finding the Brutal Beast of Bristol. They’re hoping all you new members might be able to help them out.

Catch That Beast! is a magical, deliciously silly show for outdoor performance exploring how we interact with wild things and how we can make change happen. Full of offbeat humour, live music, inventive puppetry and audience participation, it is suitable for everybody aged 5+.

Catch That Beast! toured in summer 2022 with the house venue network, and undertook a schools tour with Birmingham Hippodrome in Autumn 2022.

fifty foot (R&D)

In Autumn 2019, supported by the RSC and the Almeida’s Resident Directors Programme, we undertook R&D on a new show. It’s about the vertigo of adulthood, the way we shape our lives’ stories and our destructive need to feel big in a bewildering world. It will be performed by three women with bewitching live electronic music and a mountain of recycled clothes.

Directed by Nel Crouch | Design: Rebecca Jane Wood | Sound and music: David Ridley | Dramaturg: Marietta Kirkbride | Cast: Holly Beasley-Garrigan, Sandy Foster, Chioma Uma

Fossils

Vanessa’s life is science. Fact based, evidence led, no nonsense, no monsters. But when a photograph surfaces showing something in Loch Ness, she must embark on a very personal research project.

An extinct fish, a missing father and breath-taking live electronic sound in a new play by Bucket Club that played at the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe. In 2017 it has played in New York for Brits Off Broadway and toured to the New Diorama Theatre, the Wardrobe Theatre and Bath Spa University.

★★★★
The Scotsman, Fest, The List, A Younger Theatre, Broadway Baby, The Wee Review

'Fossils is a beautifully hewn story about how we connect to the past, and how our lives are shaped by the no-longer living things we carry with us. The emotion creeps up on you, gently and without fanfare: the tricks, wit and japes of the initial theatrical frivolity dissolving into a granite-hard nub of sadness. A gem of a piece by Bucket Club, a company taking its own very solid place in the world.' - Total Theatre

Bucket Club’s style mixes story theater and toy theater with both whimsy and rigor... Under Nel Crouch’s direction, the performers manipulate stegosaurus figurines and act, score and narrate with scientific precision and obvious warmth. - New York Times

Shortlisted for the Brighton Fringe Award for Excellence.
Supported by Tobacco Factory Theatres and Arts Council England

Launch Party

Martha and Vi are twins. They grew up side by side, watching the stars, but recently they've drifted. While Martha has stayed in their hometown, laying down roots, Vi's been across the globe training as an astronaut, preparing to launch herself into the unknown. On the night before Vi blasts off, Martha has organised a party to send her off in style.

Launch Party is a play for village halls with live music about ambition, and what makes a person successful. It's about home, and how, whether we leave or stay, we carry a piece of it with us.

Launch Party is a co-production with Farnham Maltings and Bucket Club. It undertook five weeks of rural touring in Autumn 2016.

Lorraine & Alan

Alan. 23. Recent graduate in Marine Biology. (High 2:2.) Son of Blakeney, Norfolk. Bedroom dweller and seal tour guide extraordinaire. One August, Alan discovers a young woman lying amongst the seals and their lives become irreversibly entwined. But who is Lorraine? Where does she come from? And why does she take so long in the bath?

Lorraine & Alan was Bucket Club's first show. It was the 10th recipient of the Charlie Hartill Fund for Theatre. It premiered at The Pleasance Edinburgh as part of the Escalator East to Edinburgh programme of work in 2014 and toured nationally in Spring 2015, including runs at Battersea Arts Centre and Tobacco Factory Theatres.

★★★★★
Broadway Baby, EntertainmentWise
★★★★
The Scotsman, Fest, The Stage

Winner of the Brighton Fringe Award for Excellence and a Musical Theatre Network Award for Innovation. Shortlisted for an Arches Brick Award and a Peter Brook Empty Space Award.

Written by Nel Crouch, Becky Ripley and the company | Produced by Matt Lister for Bucket Club | Design: Rebecca Jane Wood | Lighting/ Stage Management: Cassie Harrison | Sound and music: David Ridley and Becky Ripley | Cast: Adam Farrell, David Ridley, Becky Ripley and Katie Sherrard | Developed with Aaron May and Rose Wardlaw | Photos by Paul Blakemore

The Beasts

There’s a fearsome, never-before-seen beast out there and the Royal Society of Beastologists are going to hunt it down. They’ve already photographed the Loch Ness Monster, the Beast of Bodmin and the elusive Essex Lion. But will this final mystery prove too much?

The Beasts was an outdoor show that toured festivals throughout Spring/Summer 2014. It was a co-production between Bucket Club, the Lyric Hammersmith, Greenwich + Docklands International Festival, Watford Palace Theatre and Latitude Festival.

Devised by the company. Directed by Nel Crouch | Design: Rebecca Jane Wood | Music: Marietta Kirkbride, Aaron May and David Ridley | Cast: Matt Lister, Becky Ripley, Emily Tate and Letty Thomas.

BUCKET CLUB