Founded in 2016, the English Theatre Company is a group of around 50 actors and technical crew 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’re a touring company, putting on each production in two or three different venues which in the past have included towns as widely separated as Lectoure in the north of the Gers, Boudrac in the Haute-Garonne and Maubourguet in the Hautes-Pyrénées, as well as our home base Ste Dode.
Since we launched our amateur theatre group we have staged twenty 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 and The 39 steps.
In 2024, we staged two comedies: the whimsical drama Quartet by Ronald Harwood about aging opera singers, and the the Olivier-Award-winning play The 39 Steps, an improbably comedic adaptation by Patrick Barlow of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic spy thriller of the same name.
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 in any of the other roles so essential to the presentation of a play.
Each production involves many hours of hard work by those involved. As well as putting on performances for the general public, ETC organises regular social events for members, family and friends, including play readings, quizzes, outings, workshops and our ever-popular summer “Party Pieces” in which anyone who wishes can give a short performance of any kind for those present.
Membership of ETC costs 10€ per year. To become a part of the company, please contact our membership secretary Annie Dawes at annie.dawes@orange.fr