“One of the main reasons we exist as a theatre company is to try to widen who makes art, who speaks about art and who accesses it.”
“Paul Smith has helped build Middle Child into one of the industry-leading companies in the UK. For years Middle Child have been recognised for their exciting, dynamic performance style. But 6 months into their journey, Paul admits they nearly stopped everything.
Luckily they didn't and lucky for us Paul is here to talk about his experiences with us.
Why didn't they quit? Why didn't they get 'proper jobs'? It's all in this chapter. This feels like one of the most important chapters to date for this reason. We all get to that moment of quitting, this industry is HARD. Some do quit. But what makes others continue...?”
“What I’m proposing here is a rejection of theatre as a rat race. A shift in focus to invest in people, not product. A meaningful kindness and trust – supporting people to fail, learn and grow.”
“Theatre was this weird little secret I didn’t want to talk about,” he says. “I had these two identities as this football-supporting lad who would go to the pub and drink pints and cheer on Man United, and this kid who would act in pantomimes and dance and stuff, and those two worlds never crossed. Even my closest friends wouldn’t come see me in shows. Looking back now, it seems obvious that that experience is why I do what I do now, and why I make the theatre I make.”
“Paul is the most generous person I know in theatre, to artists, to communities, to audiences; and people like Paul go unnoticed and it’s my privilege to nominate him for this award and to see him win it.
I hope he carries on inspiring writers for work for audiences and communities for decades to come and that as many people as possible benefit from knowing him like I have.”
- Luke Barnes
“The winners of this year's Off-West End Awards have been revealed.
The Last Five Years picked up two awards including best director of a musical and musical production. The Canary and the Crow also picked up two awards – for Best Performance Piece and Performance Ensemble.”
"Like all good panto heroes we’re refusing to accept defeat when the odds seem stacked insurmountably against us. We’re trying to find a way up the beanstalk, to the ball, through the enchanted forest. But there are challenges lying in wait and the ending is truly uncertain.
So what we want to do at this point is be honest with you.
Tell you how it really is.
”
“Some time in the future, we’ll welcome you all once again into a new space. It’ll feel different. There’ll be inevitable comparisons. But we will do all we can to make it a space that welcomes you; a home for dreamers who know they can change the world. Today we mourn, but tomorrow we start over again and we’ll dream and we’ll dream and we’ll dream.”
“we can’t give up the fight for a better world and we can’t lose the ground that has been fought for so hard in terms of a more representative and inclusive industry. Yes, let’s do all we can to survive but then we have to immediately get to work on truly representing the world (and the communities) around us.”
“Both organisations and individuals are having to make impossible decisions throughout our sector, treading the line between staying afloat and offering hope. Teetering between crisis and optimism. Imagining how we can change the world while trying to make sure we’re around to be a part of it. In truth, it feels that there are no right or wrong answers to be found, only choices to be made.”
“I recently set up the Middle Child Acting Gym to try and encourage a space where actors in Hull can develop their skills and be part of a support network which addresses the problem of ‘doing it alone’ as an actor. Each week we come together, talk about issues relating to the industry/job and then work on some plays (this month’s focus is ‘doing what scares us’). I’ve learnt lots from doing it and am looking for ways to improve it in future but know that it’s not enough to have a truly positive effect on the mental wellbeing of actors.So my question is a simple one, and one that has definitely been asked many times before: What can we do to make acting a more viable, less damaging career choice?”
“We want to keep pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved through gig theatre.”
“The question we always want to answer with our work is: how do we make people feel as comfortable in theatre as they do at a gig? We want audiences to take ownership of the experience and act like they would if they were going to see their favourite musician or stand-up comedian. Theatre shouldn't be any different to that – it shouldn't put up any more barriers. .”
The British Council : Behind the scenes at Middle Child Theatre (2017)
“Every now and then I force myself to remember that we can run Middle Child however we like. It is all too easy to forget that running your own company means you can decide on how you do everything – from the big picture stuff to the minutia of the day-to-day. It is too easy also to be fooled into thinking that you must manage your company how other people run their companies, or – worse – how other people tell you to run your own. At Middle Child we want to be better in every way; how we work internally, how we collaborate, how we open our doors to people we have never met. We want to be better at equality, at diversity, at working with new artists. We talk about all of this a lot and are becoming more and more considered with every decision we make. However, we must be better..”
Blog post on Values (2016)
