Mark Beer launches inclusive theatre company to bring about 'dramatic change'

Actor Mark Beer – one of the UK’s first disabled children’s TV presenters –  is launching a new inclusive theatre company that he hopes will open doors for marginalised performers. 

Beer, who was also one of the first disabled actors to be cast in a mainstream TV role in the BBC Specials, told The Stage he is launching Dramaiocht Productions after missing out on multiple opportunities with established theatre companies. 

He said: "I went to see [Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director emeritus] Gregory Doran before and after the pandemic. He wanted me to be in Richard III but couldn’t find a part for me. I thought: ’Hang on a minute, I’ve been knocking on this door since I was 27-years-old, and I’m now 55.’"

"I thought that if I want to make things happen and I want to make a dramatic change in the industry [...] – I’d have to make it happen myself."

Dramaiocht Productions aims to produce two theatre shows a year, with integrated casts and backstage companies of disabled and non-disabled actors and crew. 

The company’s first production, which has received support from Arts Council England, is Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads at Chelsea Theatre. Running from October 11 to 14, the show stars Beer as Graham in Chip in the Sugar, with Gwendylyn Winter as Lesley in her Big Chance.

Beer aims for the company to give opportunities to those who have been sidelined from mainstream theatre and will produce a combination of classical plays and new writing. 

The company will initially focus on theatre but will be open to other media in the future. 

Beer said: "The company is about ability and being talented enough to play a role – whether you are black or white, gay, straight, disabled or not disabled is irrelevant to me. 

"Because I believe, having had this happen to me my whole career, that on stage you take an audience on a journey and within the first five minutes or so, if you’re not playing a disabled character and if you’re good enough at your job, they forget you have a disability and follow the story line of the character."

Beer is also currently directing and starring in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest in the Cotswolds, which runs from September 1 to 4. He hopes to gain funding to produce a version of the show with Dramaiocht Productions with an integrated cast of disabled and non-disabled performers.

Dramaiocht Productions is also co-producing A Christmas Carol with Black Dog theatre company. The production, which stars Beer as Scrooge, runs from November 22 to 26 at the Actors’ Church in Covent Garden, London.