Founded in 2016, the English Theatre Company is a group of around 50 actors, technical crew and helpers that stage English language plays in and around the Gers, Haute-Garonne and Hautes-Pyrénées départements in south-west France.

Our primary activity is the staging of theatrical productions in English for a paying public. Our home base is in the village of Ste Dode in the south-west of France but our members, who are brought together by a shared interest in and love of the theatre, live scattered within a very wide radius of that centre.

We are a touring company, putting on each production in two or three different venues which in the past have included towns and villages as widely separated as Lectoure in the north of the Gers, Boudrac in the Haute-Garonne and Maubourget in the Hautes-Pyrénées, as well as our home base in Ste Dode.

Since we launched our amateur theatre group we have staged twenty three productions including ‘Allo ‘Allo, Calendar Girls, The Vicar of Dibley, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Under Milk Wood, Ben’s War, Absurd Person Singular, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, Quartet, The 39 Steps, The Perfect Murder, The Farndale Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society Murder Mystery, A Dog’s Life and Alternative Accommodation.

All our members contribute to the staging of our performances according to their interests and availability, whether as actors, set builders, lighting and sound engineers, front-of-house personnel or/and in any of the other roles so essential to the presentation of the play.

Each production involves many hours of hard work by those involved. As well as putting on performances for the general public, ETC organises social events for members, family and friends, including play readings, quizzes, outings, workshops and our ever-popular summer “Party Pieces” in which anybody can give a short performance of any kind for those present.

Membership of ETC costs €10 per year. To become part of the company please contact our membership secretary Annie Dawes at annie.dawes@orange.fr