The GSC story: Chapter 1
Co-Founder Matt Pinches embarks on a trip down memory lane to reveal the origins of GSC, 20 years ago…
In 2005 Sarah came to me with an idea. ”I want to put on a play in Guildford’s Castle Gardens. Will you help me?” …two decades later and I am writing this for the start of our 20th Anniversary Year. So how did it all come about?
Sarah and I were two jobbing actors. Though we didn’t train together, we’d both been working professionally for about 7 years at this point, filling in the fallow months between jobs with temping in offices, handing out free samples of crackers at railway stations or giving guided tours of London on double-decker buses.
Our mutual love of Shakespeare came from very different experiences. Sarah had an inspirational out-of-school drama teacher Mrs Barnes. Whilst I had grown up in the shadow of Stratford-upon-Avon in Worcester.
In Spring 2005, and Sarah was auditioning for a number of open-air Shakespeare jobs in various parts of the country. It was at this point that the seed of a thought began to grow in Sarah’s mind. ‘All these other towns and cities have a professional Shakespeare festival, or season, or company… why hasn’t Guildford?’ At this point Sarah was cast in a commercial for a mobile phone company, earning the princely sum of £1000.
She came to me and said ‘OK, I’m either going to go to Africa and volunteer to work with elephants for a month (nellies are a big passion of Sarah’s), or I’m going to put on a play in the Castle Gardens. If I do the second one, will you help me?’
And so we began…
Autumn was spent researching what we thought might be necessary in the form of permissions and creating a budget – which we boiled down to £7000: a sum that frankly made us both feel physically sick, and our parents possibly even worse. By contrast an average show budget is nowadays is around the £100,000 -£150,000 mark.
Christmas was spent reading plays and watching Shakespeare films. It came down to two: The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing. The former had been the play that had transformed my appreciation for Shakespeare back in the 90s, whilst Sarah championed the latter’s effervescence and sunshine. We went with Much Ado.
Now to a name for the company – possibly the biggest decision we have had to make in the past two decades. A name conveys an ethos; it captures the imagination; can spark excitement; it can easily become a household device, readily available on the tips of tongues. I suggested 3 options: Rhubarb & Custard; The Snooty Camel Theatre Company; The Independent Actors Collective.
Cue: tumbleweed… awkward silence…
My idea had been to offer something memorable, something that would stick out and stick in peoples’ minds. They might certainly do that, but possibly not for the reasons we wanted.
Sarah’s suggestion was Guildford Shakespeare Company. We went with Sarah’s (can you sense a theme here?)
In early January 2006 a letter came through the door, dated 10th January. Our application to Guildford Borough Council had been accepted. The Castle Gardens were booked; money had been committed; a statement of intent declared. Now there was no going back.
At this time, I was acting with a rural touring theatre company, so I began trying to glean as much info from their production and admin team as possible. We had been asked for a Risk Assessment – whatever that was – and I remember the company’s director Sean Aita (who would later direct two of our shows) generously sitting me down for a couple of hours and slowly taking me through the requirements. To this day I still find RAs rather enjoyable to do.
At the same time, to bolster Sarah’s £1000 we began trying to raise some finances. Letters of introduction were sent out announcing a new professional theatre company was starting in Guildford looking for support. Trying to convince people to sponsor an enterprise that has no track record or even projections for success was one of the hardest elements of that first year. (though to be fair, 20 years on, with multiple awards and shows in New York and London, it’s still just as tough). However, one finance firm were convinced of our proposition, and Baker Tilly came on board as our first Principal Sponsor.
I was also convinced that there could be a partnership to be forged with a brewery – open-air Shakespeare and ale seemed a perfect match – so we approached Hogs Back Brewery. Founder Tony Stanton loved the idea and came on board straight away; and we’re thrilled that to this day the brewery are still with us, and this year will be hosting our Murder Mystery in the Autumn.
Meanwhile Sarah had been working on South West Trains to convince them be a travel partner providing FREE travel for all our artists between Guildford and Waterloo.
The next question then was how were we going to sell tickets, and, come to think of it, how are we going to tell people that there’s a play to buy tickets for?!
Neither of us had any experience in marketing, though I had been temping at a marketing agency that year. They couldn’t sponsor us but could give us the time and talent of their team. As result we had a professionally designed poster for the show – one that would become GSC’s logo for next 18 years.
One of their web designers also offered, in return for a Beatles DVD box set, to design a webpage for us, which quickly developed into a website. In order to maximise ticket revenue, we decided to look after the Box Office ourselves, so our home telephone number became GSC’s ticket hotline. In that first year, there was no public online sales and the lists for each night’s shows were handwritten.
By April it was finally time to turn our attention to the creative side of the project… oh and the prospect of arranging seating, bar facilities, onsite toilets, press releases, rehearsal rooms, transport, lighting, costume sourcing, hand-delivering 5000 flyers… but more of that in the next chapter… available in your summer 2026 programme!