The Company
That Theatre Company has been providing excellent English language theatre in Copenhagen since 1997 – with energy, passion, skill and no small amount of love.
We help to meet the demand for a truly professional international theatre here in the Øresund region that each year attracts large numbers of residents, curious to see English language theatre, tourists in North Zealand and beyond.
50% of our audience are students from gymnasiums, Universities or adults studying English at evening classes, and this is something we are particularly proud of.
This side of our operation works very well. English teachers from Ordrup Gymnasium write our educational material. We pay them, but the material is free for teachers and students to download and use if they choose to do so. We can tell if an audience has read and studied the play in advance because they come to the theatre knowing roughly, what to expect. They might disagree with our staging or portrayals of the character, but they have prepared themselves.
Over the years English teachers have begun to trust our choices of material and know that the stories will at least be well-written and hopefully relevant.
And over the years many teachers give me a heads-up as to what genre they will be studying so that we can plan our productions with that in mind. For example, when I found out that Gothic literature was on the horizon, we presented one of the best ghost stories ever written for the stage, THE WOMAN IN BLACK.
This is a play that relies purely on good acting, good lighting, good sound effects AND most importantly the audience being pulled into that scary universe. In fact, this play ticks all the boxes that for me are what theatre is all about.
We present at least 2 productions a year and work with other resident British and Scandinavian actors, directors and technicians. Occasionally, we are able to bring artists from the U.S. and Great Britain to Copenhagen.
We have been delighted to welcome Irish writer, Fergal O’Byrne as our resident writer and will present the 3rd part of his trilogy of new plays, Martian Toothache Same Shit, Different Planet, next January & February.
We have already presented the 1st two parts of his trilogy; Extremophiles and Rub-a-Dub-Dub and are excited to see where this connection leads us.
That Theatre Company is fortunate to have some hard-working people behind the scenes without whom productions would be impossible. Many of these unsung heroes have been with the company since its creation in 1997. Notably: Julian Simpson; my partner in crime, & lighting designer, and Mark Jones our Company Manager and sound designer. Søren B. Petersen keeps our website up to date. Special thanks go to Hanne Mørup for helping each production to look good with her keen eye for detail with the costumes.
The ensemble has enjoyed success with both thought-provoking drama and entertainment of a lighter nature. Since the beginning, That Theatre Company has attempted to appeal to all age groups, to Danes, resident English-speakers and tourists. The legend that is Charles Marowitz came to see one of our productions.
We met him after a production of The Collection by Harold Pinter. He came backstage to introduce himself. He was deeply involved as a director in England in the 60’s & 70’s, working with Sir Peter Hall at Stratford and who had himself directed Harold Pinter and Viviene Merchant in London’s West End.
REVIEW: The Coronation Of Harold Pinter
by Charles Marowitz
Swans – December 4, 2006
“The Collection,” recently performed in English by “That Theatre Company”
in Copenhagen should be sought out if for no other reason than because it possesses a perfectly balanced central performance by a mysterious and beguiling Danish/British actress named Sira Stampe, which is redolent of the kind of work Vivien Merchant used to turn out in the early Pinter plays. (Merchant was the first Mrs. Harold Pinter.) Stampe, a recent graduate of the Webber-Douglas Academy in London, casts a palpable aura over “The Collection” producing precisely that kind of enigmatic allure that deeply-rooted Pinterian female characters must have if their ambiguity is to be both spellbinding and perplexing.
The play itself concerns a one-night stand that may or may not have taken place between a wife and a rough-hewn, bisexual lover who cohabits with an overprotective male dress- designer. After all its slithery permutations, it ends on a deceptive cadence with the husband believing that no assignation actually took place while Sira Stampe’s Mona Lisa smile nudges us to determine whether she is lying or not. A typical Pinterian shadow play in which everything is implied but nothing concrete supplied. The audience leaves with a disquieting suspicion that, in personal relationships, nothing is ever conclusively knowable. That Theatre Company is a breath of fresh air!” Praise indeed.
Our main aim is to establish a highly professional and entertaining international theatre that appeals to minds and hearts.
Good theatre provides a platform where almost anything can happen, where the actors are free to play out our hopes and fears. The most precious gift an actor possesses is his/her ability to communicate. It’s this connection between the actor and the audience, between imagination and reality and between cultures that we want to encourage through our productions.
Polly Stenham. Writer once said:
“The audience, the crowd is what gives theatre its impact. Its temporal reality relies entirely on us deciding to believe in it together. In the silent deal we make sat together in the dark as strangers. Isn’t that amazing? That fragile contract. Theatre has always provided a laboratory in which to examine and hopefully understand the human condition.”
We couldn’t agree more.
