About Us

 

The Too Friendly Theatre Company have now been producing plays for over 12 years and the one question we have been asked more than any other over the years is “What’s with the funny company name?”

Many years ago Cliff Gillies and Helen Haygarth, our founders, were members of another theatre group. The company were deep in the last stages of rehearsal for an upcoming play when the director decided to sack the entire cast and crew! The reasons were financial…but on the last day with the company the director complained that the current cast were, in his words, “too bloody friendly” to be actors.

The cast regrouped the following week to drown their sorrows and declaim their bad luck. However rather than get drunk they decided to form their very own theatre company… and then get drunk.

That night, in that public house and in reverse homage to the 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 won multiple awards, plaudits, rave reviews and fans.

Over the years it has diversified into other fields too…

It moved into writing and producing new works for the stage, with great success.

It opened it’s film arms ISOMER and Goodbye Cruel World Films in which they have written and produced several critically acclaimed short films.

The company helped set up the PREMIERE festival, an annual one act play festival set up to promote the new plays.

The cast write, produce and stage Murder Mystery evening for many venues and hotels throughout the year.

 

At the Too Friendly we like to do things just that little bit differently and have a motto which we like to live by:

 

If you do the common things in an uncommon way you will command the attention of the whole world.