It is a Huddersfield-based company with a national reputation.
And the name Dark Horse is gaining an ever higher profile thanks to its skilled actors and a string of impressive, innovative productions.
Last year, the company which is based at the Lawrence Batley Theatre, premiered Sing Something Simple, written and directed by the company’s artistic director Vanessa Brooks.
Now a quartet of actors from the company is about to get out on the road again with a new updated version of the show.
This time, they will tour through March into April taking in eight venues.
Rehearsals started this week at the company’s LBT base with the first performances being staged at Cast, the new £22m venue in Doncaster.
The Dark Horse team then goes to venues in Goole, Lincoln, Lancaster, Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury and Derby, signing off at the Lowry in Salford.
Dark Horse is one of the UK’s leading theatre companies working with actors with learning disabilities, producing new national touring theatre productions for mainstream audiences.
The company also delivers formal actor training for people with learning disabilities.
“The concept of the new is fundamental to Dark Horse,” said Vanessa.
“ We don’t look to copy or seek a precedent for anything that we do. We go out on a limb and try new ways of doing things.
“New writing, new actors being developed through our drama school training, new venues and new audiences. We don’t want to follow known models. We make new ones.
“Our actor training and silent exercise is entirely our own creation and everyone who comes into contact with it is inspired by its clarity and effectiveness as a new way of training actors with learning disabilities to work on equal terms with everyone else,” she said.
“Actor Joe Sproulle and I delivered a workshop around Sing Something Simple in Rotherham to a mixed group of learning disabled people, arts practitioners and other interested parties.
“The response in this mixed group of people was astonishing. Because our exercises draw on real human communication - without the need for speech at all - all kinds of people can work together and gain from the process - the essence of integration which is what we’re all about.
“We’re going to areas in the country with this tour which we’ve never been to before because we have confidence in what we have to offer and know that we can make and export work nationally that is of high value and credibility.
“The positive reviews and audience reaction to the work in the past year or so has given us the confidence to look beyond the locale and region - well served with excellent theatre - to areas where the offer is less broad. “We’re saying to other parts of the country ‘look at what can be achieved with faith in innovation and excellence and doors are increasingly being opened to us as highly successful and increasingly known artistic export from Kirklees.
“The key to this embrace by nationally renowned venues has been our evident insistence on quality and excellence.
“We don’t sell our work on the basis of it being from a diversity angle and that it therefore should be considered as a display of worthiness - this stance is anathema to us and to our actors who are trained and have enormous aptitude and capability for the job of acting.”
“The work is everything at Dark Horse and it needs to be good - we want to be judged solely on it, on our professionalism and our efficiency. We’re at a point where we increasingly are.”
