Company Three turns 15 years old!
Photography by Zbigniew Kotkiewicz
‘I can’t believe Company Three has turned 15 even though I’ve only seen the magic of the last six years. The 15th Birthday party transcended me all the way back to the giddiness I used to feel when I stepped into sessions and reminded me of why I joined in the first place. I know that the future is looking bright and they have a great vision, can’t wait to see it be brought to life.’
- Allegresse Kabuya, a 17 year old member of Company Three and cast-member of When This is Over.
We’re celebrating 15 years of award-winning, transformative theatre, created through long-term collaborations between thousands of young people and professional theatre-makers.
As you might have seen, we had a 15th Birthday reunion party in late November, where we brought together over a hundred past company members and announced our new Artistic Director and Joint-CEO, Nuna Sandy, who will take over from current AD and founder Ned Glasier in January 2024.
In the past 15 years, we’ve performed plays at the National Theatre, Battersea Arts Centre, the Royal Exchange Theatre, Pleasance Theatre and the Yard Theatre, as well as a collaboration with the BBC on our most ambitious theatre project the broadcaster had ever attempted.
Rufus Norris, the Artistic Director of the National Theatre, says:
Over 15 years Company Three has pioneered a new standard of theatre with young people, combining agency with imagination and rigour. The NT is so proud of our collaborations together - from our early work helping develop Connections plays to bringing Brainstorm to the Temporary Theatre, which blew me away. They are a beacon in our industry and we are so excited to see where their next chapter takes them.’
We’ve co-created and produced over 40 plays, and worked with artists including Alice Birch, Inua Ellams, Emily Lim and Alexandra Wood. Previous company members have included Kwami Odoom, a successful theatre maker; Sama Aunallah, a lawyer; Samia Amao, a fundraising assistant at charity Redress, and many more.
We’ve collaborated with the United Nations, Wellcome Trust, Anna Freud Centre, Kings College London, Sussex University, Central School of Speech and Drama and many other organisations in the UK and across the world, including a recently established steering group of England’s Youth Theatre National Portfolio Organisations, as we became an NPO in 2023.
Across our history, we’ve given teenagers the power to tell their own stories and create their own change; to be listened to, understood and celebrated. The company’s unique model has had major national and international impact, with their blueprints for practice used by more than 500 groups in more than 30 countries, by an estimated 4000 young people. We’ve trained thousands of artists and supported arts organisations across the country to develop their own work with young people.
Angie Pena-Arenas, who joined Company Three in 2010 as a young person, and now is the full time Producer (Core Company and Projects), says:
‘I don't think I would be the person I am today without Company Three and the staff and young people who are and have been in the company in the past fifteen years. It's a pleasure seeing how C3 has grown throughout the years, but the core value of young people being at the centre of the work has not changed.’
From the five-star hit Brainstorm, the first piece of theatre made by young people to be included in the National Theatre’s main programme, to The Coronavirus Time Capsule, a record of the pandemic involving more than 3,000 young people in 17 different countries, all of our work is led by the ideas of our members.
Photography by Zbigniew Kotkiewicz