Today I was privileged to be one of the panelists at Theatre Bristol’s What’s Love Got To Do With It? event, which was a series conversations about Producers and their relationship to Artists Nick Sweeting and I were there as a double act and shared the opening slot with Jenny Sealey and Hetty Shand who talked about their collaborations on various Graeae projects and were excellent value.

It was interesting to reflect on this area, not least because there is no stable and consistent model that always works. As each company evolves its needs evolve with it and Stan’s Cafe are no different. We evolved from Graeme & me producing (mostly Graeme); to just me, to mostly Paulette, to mostly me, to mostly Nick, to mostly Charlotte and Nick, to just Charlotte (though she’s far happier with the title General Manager) and my oar has never been far from stuck in.

We are constantly re-appraising. On Friday we meet with DEP Arts. They are doing our tour booking and we’re somewhere near our first anniversary so we need o stare deeply into each other’s eyes and explore where our relationship is going. Just as we’ve got a stack of shows waiting to go on tours that need booking so we’ve go a stack of shows waiting to be made that need producing. Do we do it all that ourselves? Do we sub-contract some of it, all of it? Does some of it need co-producing? Today’s discussion didn’t provide any answers but it provided a fine context in which to think these thoughts and permission to think them for a whole day, which is why I desperately feel as if I need a sit down, unfortunately I am already sat down and lying down is tricky on a train.