In May 2022 we launched a season of new writing at Totnes’s Barrel House Ballroom, a brilliant grassroots music venue which supports local musicians alongside internationally renowned artists.

Inspired by the Glaswegian theatre institution ‘A Play, a Pie and a Pint’, we began producing new lunchtime plays every month under the format of ‘A Play, a Pint and a Pasty’. Each new play is developed and professionally debuted for a lunchtime audience. Productions are stripped-back and intimate, showcasing never-before-produced plays — including plays shortlisted for the Papatango and Theatre503 new writing prizes. Check out our upcoming shows and find out about what we’ve already produced and staged here.

We continue to produce regular new plays at the Barrel House Ballroom, Totnes, offering regular new theatre for local audiences, and providing a launchpad for work that can continue to tour or evolve into larger productions. One of the pieces is continuing its development with support from Dartington Trust and will tour in the South West in 2023.

Moveable Type Theatre Company evolved from this opening season, with a growing collective of practitioners and audiences interested in watching and making new theatre. There is always a range of creative talent in a community, both overt and latent; it is important to recognize this potential exists in people who make theatre and in people who go to see it. We want to galvanize and nurture the theatre ecology in the Totnes area, growing our theatre company with both artists and audiences at the heart of what we do and what we produce.

Alongside our professional work, we have launched a programme of workshops — providing creative opportunities for people of all ages in the South Devon community, and developing new talent to write for, direct and perform in our professional programme.

For nearly two decades Danielle has directed, taught and facilitated theatre throughout the UK and internationally.

Danielle received a BA in History from UCL and an MFA in Theatre Directing from Birkbeck College, spending a year as the resident assistant director at the Citizen’s Theatre, Glasgow. Since completing her training she has directed a range of new writing pieces throughout the UK and was an associate director at the Space art centre in London.

Danielle has extensive experience teaching, facilitating and managing theatre projects with young people. This has included work in schools and PRUs; for youth theatres; a wide range of community groups including young travellers and refugees; facilitating creative projects for museums and galleries. She spent three years teaching theatre to 16-19 years in Bosnia; as well as teaching and directing projects in Kolkata and Beijing. She has successfully applied for funding, project managed and produced several creative projects.

Danielle grew up in Totnes and returned to live here two years ago. Alongside her work with Moveable Type, she is an associate lecturer at the University of Plymouth.

Rosie is an actor, lecturer, theatre-maker and writer based in the South West of England. She trained in choreography at Dartington College of Arts before graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 2019.

She has recently been made Associate Artist at Theatre Royal Plymouth where her show  ‘Us Against The World’ will be produced and will premiere in July 2023 before touring the UK. She is currently Associate Artist of Documental Theatre, and has been selected for the SohoTheatre writers program where she is developing her second play.

Rosie is an associate lecturer at University of Plymouth, has been a visiting lecturer on the MA program at RADA and in Physical Performance at Arts University Bournemouth, where she has begun to develop a movement methodology for actors.

Rosie specialises in Improvisation, embodied actor training, physical performance and devising. Her methods draw on her wide scope of experience and training from somatic movement to clown and Stanislavski to Laboratory theatre.

Rosie has been embedded in the Totnes community for many years, facilitating performance projects with local people and providing creative and therapeutic opportunities for those who may ordinarily find it difficult to access the arts as well as providing improvisation and actor training in her much-loved weekly workshops.

Rosie has always been passionate about bringing theatre and live performance to Totnes town, most notably as the artistic director of a pop-up theatre in Totnes industrial estate which provided a space for 10 touring companies from across the UK to perform for local people at low cost.

After training as a Psychiatric nurse in Bristol Juliana worked in A&E, an inner city young persons unit and established a community care project in a caravan on a city farm serving over 450 people per week. She returned to her roots in Devon and went on to complete a BA (Hons )in Theatre at Dartington, working with many young people through facilitating drama groups in Totnes. She continued her training as a psychodrama practitioner.

After travelling throughout Russia and China she trained as a theatre director at Bristol Old Vic theatre school. She has directed work at Theatre Royal Plymouth, the Barbican and the Bristol Old Vic. Her theatre work – as a performer and director – has always sat alongside her work in social care. She has trained and worked as an addiction counsellor, within a forensic psychiatry unit and most recently caring for people with complex dementia in the community. Juliana also worked for the King’s Fund in developing and designing a Dementia care assessment unit at Franklyn Hospital in Exeter, where patients could feel safe and stimulated. She is also a volunteer panel member for the Youth offending teams in Devon.

James Harker is a playwright from the South West. His plays include Voices From The Moon (Hidden Door Festival, 2018) and A History Of Violence (The Dukes Theatre Lancaster, 2016). He trained through the Liverpool Everyman young playwright’s programme and spent some years as a creative writing lecturer at Edge Hill University

James is the writer of three Moveable Type shows: Anybody Can Jump, Future Days and Lands End (all 2022). Outside of Moveable Type, James has worked with Danielle on Gary: A Love Story, winner of Manchester Equity’s ‘Vickey Allen Award, Best Play, 2015,’ and Borderland, which toured the UK with ACE funding in 2017.