Celebration – 25th Birthday, Spare Tyre Theatre Company

25th Birthday
Spare Tyre Theatre Company
Established 1979

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How it all began?
A small ad was placed in Time Out that read ?Women interested in putting together a play on eating disorders, get in touch?. The first play, based on the actresses? experiences of feeling uncomfortable in a world obsessed with thinness. It was performed for two weeks to audiences of ecstatic ex-weight watchers in Croydon: Spare Tyre was born.

Pivotal moments
– 1984 ? Our first musical play based on the stories of young unemployed people and performed by them; this technique formed the bedrock of subsequent work
– 1993 ? Our first project with older people at Coppice Wood Lodge for the Elderly
– 1996 ? We worked with young people with learning disabilities for the first time.

The organisation today
Today Spare Tyre has three strands of work.
– Thinking Pink deals with homophobia in schools by offering touring productions for students and training for teachers
– Inc.Theatre is a drama course for people with learning disabilities
– SCAT stands for Seniors Confronting Alienation through Theatre and provides arts workshops in day centres around London.

A big thank you to?
– Ken Livingstone, who in 1982 as head of the GLC, took a big risk with us. We received funding that meant we could stop living off box office splits and had a future
– Phillip Hedley who made us think about where we wanted the company to go. As a result, we stopped performing and started running community drama projects
– Lynn Sutcliffe, the inspiration for our Pink Project ? which has evolved into our current work with gay issues.

Celebration events
We?re holding VIP performances on all our projects throughout the year. Then we?ll be having a Big Do in November, with food, drink and cabaret for friends past and present.