Theatre 

What we do 

We commission, support, develop, produce and present theatre and performance of all kinds including plays, musicals, dance, opera, circus, contemporary performance and comedy.  

We produce theatre in-house and tour it nationally and internationally on the small and midscale, with an emphasis on small scale touring to remote highlands and islands communities.  

We also act as a key receiving house for national and international touring companies, bringing work that excites us to audiences local to our base in Tobermory and wherever possible to communities across Mull, Iona and Ulva. 

We support artists to make work that feels meaningful to our community and the wider world and offer commissioning, co-producing and residency opportunities for performance artists at all stages of their careers. 

What we care about 

We want work that speaks meaningfully to our audiences on Mull and the surrounding Islands and that resonates in the wider culture. Mull is an island full of complexity and contradiction with a rich history and cultural inheritance. Our audiences are smart and engaged with an appetite for challenge and innovation, so we’re not interested in the twee, predictable or safe. We’re the primary cultural hub for the island, and so our programming caters to a broad range of tastes and values and strives to defy expectations. 

How we work with artists and companies 

Programming  

We programme up to 40 different touring productions annually working with Creative Scotland Touring Fund recipients as well as on a mixture of guarantees and splits.  We’re working towards a 12 month programming lead in so the earlier you can contact us about booking your show the better. Because Mull has a small population and our audience is geographically limited, we normally prefer to programme one or two night runs of each touring show. 

Our theatre is a fully reconfigurable black box studio space with full height loading dock,  a truss rig and vinyl dance floor.  

Commissioning and Development  

We prefer to be involved as early as possible in the creation of the work in our programme. We commission and co-produce as many shows as we can with a minimum of three shows produced fully in house each year. We offer commissions and seed commissions at a range of values in line with industry best practice rates and also make cash and in-kind contributions as a co-producer on up to twelve productions a year. 

Our commissions are not just for writers – we're keen to work with artists from a range of disciplines as project leads and we’re open to formally challenging, non-traditional working structures and processes. 

Associate Artists 

Our Associate Artists programme supports five artists from any creative discipline each year. The programme is advertised publicly and artists selected for the process receive two all expenses paid residencies plus a seed commission towards a new piece as well as a budget to engage with new creative experiences and develop their creative practice. We also commit to supporting graduates of the Associate Artists programme with a range of in-kind resources for a minimum of five years and hope that each year’s cohort will form a lasting peer support network that will sustain across a lifetime. 

Residencies 

We have a wealth of creative spaces at An Tobar and Mull Theatre and we want to use them to support as many artists as possible. We support residencies for artists with a clear idea of an artistic question they want to answer during their time with us. All of our staff are practicing artists and Mull has a vibrant artistic community so we encourage artists on residency with us to engage with creative dialogue with them to inspire and interrogate their own practice.  

Creative Friendship 

Our team have a wealth of skills and experience that can support artists in their day to day practice and as a publicly funded charity and Creative Scotland RFO, we believe that we have an obligation to share our resources as freely and widely as possible. We offer free of charge creative friendship, mentoring and advice to artists whose practice intersects with our interests and are always happy to chat on Zoom or in person to share our learning.  

How to get in touch 

If you have an idea or project you want to work with us on, then the best first contact is to send an email to Mark Iles.

Tell us: 

• Who you are 

• What your idea is 

• What you want from us (be specific! Money? Advice? A Co-producer? A touring venue?) 

• How you think the project fits within our artistic policy and how it will resonate for our audiences.  

Keep your email short and clear and relaxed. We want to hear your authentic voice and get a sense of what matters to you. Attach supporting material if you feel it is essential, but bear in mind that we have limited capacity to read through reams of documents.  

What we offer & what we expect. 

We will be open and honest with you about our working processes. 

We will make clear agreements and commitments and stick to them. 

We will pay fairly. 

We will support you to elevate your artistic and professional practice however we can. 

We will give honest, constructive feedback about how we experience you and your work. 

We expect you to be open and honest with us about the project and its development. 

We expect you to honour your commitments to us and, if you can’t, to let us know as soon as possible. 

We expect you to pay your collaborators fairly and treat them ethically. 

We expect you to treat us as creative partners. 

We expect you to give us honest and constructive feedback about our work. 

We are an Equity House using the ITC/Equity Manager ethical agreement as the basis for our contracts.

Click here to see a copy of the Equity/An Tobar and Mull Theatre House Agreement.