A Brief History Of The Company
A short history of the Too Friendly Theatre Company: Helen and Cliff were members of another theatre group. The company had been rehearsing a play and were about two weeks before opening night when the director decided to sack the entire cast and crew! His reason for sacking everyone was that we were, in his words, “too bloody friendly” to be actors. We regrouped the following week to drown our sorrows and rather than get drunk we decided to form our own theatre company and, in reverse homage to our previous director, the Too Friendly Theatre Company was born.
“I absolutely love theatre and I love amateur theatre even more. Amateur theatre has some of the most exciting and powerful actors I’ve seen and some of the most hardworking and inventive. Yet there does seem to be an impression that amateur theatre is somehow second rate or even less talented than professional theatre. This is simply not the case! It is this belief that is at the core of all that the Too Friendly Theatre Company is and does. We want to make excellent, funny, moving, exciting, passionate and professional theatre... whether we pay ourselves for it or not!” Cliff Gillies
The company has grown over the years and has diversified into other fields. Firstly they moved into writing and producing their own work for the stage, with great success. Next they opened their film arms ISOMER and Goodbye Cruel World Films. They have written and produced several critically acclaimed short films, including “Inbox” which was shown recently on the big screen in Liverpool and at the Philharmonic. The company then set up WLP (west lancs playwrights) a writers training organization to teach new writers the skills of writing for the stage and screen. This led on to commissions from Preston FM to write, produce and perform a series of radio plays and dramas. Last year we helped set up the PREMIERE festival, an annual one act play festival set up to promote the new plays written by WLP members. Adding an further string to our bow we recently moved into staging Murder Nights - written with great success by Joanne Wasilew and performed at the Royal Clifton Hotel and now perform two per year for them.