I returned home to Cornwall over 25 years ago to make theatre. It was a place where you could make things happen. Kneehigh started as a company making work for children and their families, but we soon found ourselves creating challenging, accessible and anarchic theatre for a diverse local and national audience.
We are based in a collection of barns on the south Cornish coast, they are at the top of a hill where the road ends and a vast horizon stretches far beyond Dodman Point. By their very nature the barns let the weather in and out again. A large multi-fuel burner needs to be stoked and fed for rehearsals; there is no mobile phone reception and nowhere to pop out for a cappuccino or a snack.
Kneehigh builds a team for each project. The isolation of the barns, and the need to cook and keep warm provides a real and natural focus for our flights of imagination. This is not a conceit; it is a radical choice that informs all aspects of our work. Although much of our work is now co-produced with larger theatres, we always try to start the creative process at these barns, to be inspired by our environment and where we work. Tristan & Yseult started its life as an outdoor show, playing in epic but intimate spaces: Restormel Castle, The Minack, The Eden Project and Rufford Abbey. These elemental and charged spaces add a physical and vocal robustness to our performance style, which becomes further distilled when we work ‘indoors’.
Kneehigh are an ever-changing ensemble, a kind of strange family, many of whom come from, or have chosen to live in, Cornwall: the extreme South West tip of the British Isles – outsiders, left-handers – engaging with the world with a sense of community and identity. As King Mark says in Tristan & Yseult, “We don’t look inland there’s not much point. No, outward, outward lies the way! Inland there’s little to write home about and much less to say!”.
The company changes for each project, there are those who have worked together for a long time and those who have just arrived. We look to surprise each other, to take leaps in the dark but there is no given formula for making the work. If we were to have a manifesto it might include words like generosity, passion, bravery, humility, ambition, instinct and irreverence. These words have become the secret principles that guide our work.
Kneehigh is 25 years old this year. I could never have planned this; I certainly could never have foreseen it. There has been no great plan. Kneehigh has survived because it has actively evolved. We have committed to our home, our craft, to each other and to change. It’s a privilege to still be part of that journey.
© Mike Shepherd, Founder Member and King Mark in Tristan & Yseult
