SCRUM Theatre

SCRUM Theatre is a one year-old CIO committed to pioneering better standards for making theatre at a time of crisis in the industry, as well as providing free-to-access arts training for under-served communities.

We’re a group of 9 interdisciplinary artists, trained at leading theatre schools all over the world, including the Yale School of Drama, Ecole Jacques Lecoq, and Bristol Old Vic, with experience in theatre, film and television. We’re championed by an expert team of the country’s leading theatre-makers, including Adrian Lester, Nicholas Hytner, Lyndsey Turner, Declan Donnellan, and Nick Ormerod.

SCRUM’s founding ethos is that how we make is as important as what we make. We established ourselves as a charity in November 2022 during a moment of crisis in the industry, as audiences were dwindling and emerging makers were being forced to leave the industry altogether. We have spent our first year building an organisation that provides comprehensive support to artists, both financially and in terms of their wellbeing, and aimed at creating high-quality work to be performed exclusively in regions with limited access to theatre. We believe art-making should be valued for the labour that it is, and that all artists deserve equitable pay, robust safeguarding procedures and accessibility accommodations to collaborate effectively. This also means every member of the company gets paid the same day rate, in an attempt to level the creative hierarchy.

As we develop the company, we will share everything we do through live labs and digital resources to empower other emerging makers to write their own script for their best creative practice, as we move forward into a better future for UK theatre.

Our 2024 projects include:

• Transforming an empty building in London into a pop-up theatre training hub for developing artists, with a 50-session programme across the year
• Touring Twelfth Night to community venues in postcodes identified by DCMS and ACE as under-funded for the arts
• Delivering our workshops for young artists in each of the communities we visit
• Delivering live and digital resources to schools in these target postcodes

We're currently recruiting for a Producer, a Development Officer and a Schools Officer. If you'd like to join our team, we'd love to hear from you!