Bolton Octagon offers site-specific bursaries

Bolton’s Octagon Theatre is looking for up-and-coming theatremakers to help develop site-specific plays and musicals as part of a new scheme.

The venue will take on between two and three practitioners later this year for its new Supported Artists and Associated Theatremakers Scheme.

Successful applicants will receive a £1,000 award, and be given access to rehearsal space and the Octagon’s prop, set and costume store.

They will also get technical support, mentoring by the theatre’s artistic team, and training in fields such as marketing, business skills and income generation.

Applicants will have the opportunity to showcase their work as part of the theatre’s Reveal season in June.

Artistic director Elizabeth Newman said she wanted to give budding theatremakers the same opportunities that she had at the start of her career.

She explained: “I was incredibly fortunate at the beginning of my career, as many of my colleagues had organisations or companies that offered a place you could call home, where you could go and make work, and where you were supported and nurtured and given time, space and resources. But also a place that gave you a vital opportunity as an artist to develop in a low-risk setting.”

Newman said she was looking for artists who have “some kind of alchemy” with the Octagon, and particularly those that want to make work in response to Bolton.

She added: “I’m really keen to get to know artists who want to get to know this place and to see localism as a really positive thing, and to make work that’s going to resonate with people we want to reach, who have maybe never been to the theatre before.”

Details of the scheme follow the announcement of the theatre’s site-specific co-production #chipshopthemusical, which will be staged at a local fish and chip restaurant in May.

Practitioners interested in the Supported Artists and Associate Theatremakers Scheme can apply for a place until January 27.