CHARLES HUTCHINSON says goodbye to Brighton-bound play-makers who have

enlivened York stages for the last eight years

ACTORS Of Dionysus are leaving for pastures southern after eight years in York, for both professional and romantic reasons. Company founders and co-artistic directors David Stuttard and Tamsin Shasha have moved to Brighton, where they hope the funding opportunities may be greener on the other side, and their respective partners already live in the south coast town.

Formed in early 1993 and based in York since July 1994, the company has carved a niche in theatres, educational establishments and publishing houses with its specialist work in the field of classical Greek drama, touring Stuttard's adaptations nationwide from its attic headquarters in Charlton Street.

Now AOD is setting up in Old Steine, Brighton, in a suite of units with an artistic bent, and already an application has been made to Southern and South East Arts for organisational development funding from the regional arts lottery programme. Adverts have been placed for a new general manager/administrator, a post that has been vacant since Eileen Dale's departure last October.

"From a structural point of view, the company has three aims - productions, education and publication - and we would like to consolidate and strengthen all three," says David, who had set up AOD while head of classics at Queen Margaret's School, Escrick, York.

"What we're hoping with the move to Brighton is that it'll be more financially lucrative for us as we've not been able to attract funding while in York, where the Arts Council funded us only once, for Bacchae, while we were there."

In York, the company operated from David and Tamsin's house and rehearsed at York College and latterly at York Theatre Royal's Walmgate studios. "In Brighton, our office will be part of a dynamic, creative office space, as there are six creative and media companies in the premises, and it'll be good for us to separate our office from our personal lives and have a dedicated workspace," says David, who plans to hold rehearsals at Eastbourne College.

Far from disengaging from York, AOD will maintain their links with the city, the company's umbilical cord for eight years. "We aim to come up to York each spring and autumn to perform in the Theatre Royal Studio, and next spring we'll be visiting with our tenth anniversary production of Agamemnon - when, by the way, our Agamemnon text will be introduced as Open University set text on Western thought," David says.

"We've enjoyed using the Theatre Royal's rehearsal facilities and we're very happy to have started a performing relationship with the theatre through chief executive Ludo Keston. So, rather than in Brighton, we'll be premiering our autumn show, Electra, in the Theatre Royal Studio from September 24 to 28."

Fellow artistic director and AOD leading actress Tamsin Shasha looks back on the company's York years with fond memories. "We're not leaving York behind, we're very much leaving part of ourselves here," she says. "We're leaving for personal as well as business reasons but we'd like to emphasise that York has been a very good place to be for us. We've had some fantastic people helping us, without whom it wouldn't have been possible to continue, be it putting actors up to stay or giving us general advice; be it Thea Nerissa Barnes, who used to be with Phoenix Dance Company, doing the choreography and movement for us; or Hannah Quinn, from York, composing for us.

"People who have worked with us and helped us in York will still be pulling for us. We hope that Susan Stern, who has been our voice coach, will still work with us and we're looking to continue working with Duncan Woodward-Hay, our set designer from Scarborough, so we'll still be building our sets in the north."

Reflecting on AOD's achievements while in York, David recalls the early days. "After our first couple of years I had to make a choice: to continue teaching at Queen Margaret's or leave that post to focus full time on AOD. I chose AOD," he says.

"We ran it single-handedly at first," adds Tamsin. "David was doing the text translations and directing, I was doing the administration on an old computer."

The company's facilities improved and so did the productions, bringing a vigorous physicality, sexual frisson and concentrated drama to a raft of word-heavy Greek tragedies.

"I think the important thing is that we've started to do stage adaptations rather than just translations," says David. "That has allowed us to put more creativity into them and make them more physical."

"We've also been able to work with leading practitioners in their field, such as Susan Stern and Thea Barnes and movement coach Marcello Magni, from Theatre de Complicit," says Tamsin.

David has settled upon shorter running times for the plays. "We've come to realise that about an hour and eight minutes is the best time span for a tragedy: it allows you to really focus when the audience is bombarded with so much information. Anything over that time, and the concentration begins to go.

"Besides, Dionysus is not only the god of theatre but also the god of wine and transformation, and just as wine can addle your brain so can Greek drama because it's high-octane, neat theatre!"

Like Ibsen and Chekhov's plays, Greek drama has a misinformed reputation for being earnest, dour, even dreary, and AOD will continue to confront that stigma.

"We are challenging the stereotype of Greek tragedy and hopefully breathing new life into an ancient artform," says David. "Now we're hoping our migration south will bring us closer to the land of the Greeks, bit by bit!".

Definitely it brings David and Tamsin, the artistic directors, closer to their partners, ending their north-south divide.

Romance has blossomed latterly for 43-year-old David and 'E J' Birtwell, front-of-house manager at the Komedia Theatre in Brighton, while Tamsin, 35, has been "living in two places" for five years while going out with Brighton-based actor Mark Katz.

No longer will there be the need for long journeys, although Tamsin is off to Greece for six weeks in July and August to direct three of David's adaptations at a summer school.

Friday Night Fever wishes AOD well in their bright future in Brighton and thanks them for giving the dusty old dramas of Sophocles and Euripedes the short, sharp shock treatment in York.

Updated: 10:08 Friday, June 07, 2002