For more information on the festival: shadowroad.com/fireside-folktales-fringe
For tickets: Shadow Road Productions event tickets from TicketSource.
I'm absolutely delighted to feature in this article by Maria-Teresa Rivera-Schreiber for Neun Magazine, and extremely grateful for the chance to talk about Shadow Road Productions, all the work we do, and - perhaps most importantly of all - why we choose to do it... 🎭✨💖
If you’re a performer, storyteller, theatre-maker, or creative of any kind who loves myths, legends, folklore, or classic tales, this is your chance to be part of something special. The festival will take place in and around Barnes Pond, SW13, on 23rd & 24th May 2026, with a special launch event the weekend before on Saturday 16th May.
We’re looking for bold, imaginative work that celebrates the power of story - no big budgets or tech wizardry required, just creativity, connection, and heart.
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The pack includes all the details about venues, registration, ticketing, and how to apply. We can’t wait to see what stories you’ll bring to Barnes next spring!
And to all our generous supporters and donors - a huge thank you, once again. 🙏 Your contributions are helping us turn this dream into reality and I'm so very grateful that our fundraising total continues to rise, with another extremely kind donation of £30 this very morning!
If you’d like to take part in the festival – as a performer, a volunteer, a sponsor, or in any other way – please get in touch via shadowroadproductions@gmx.com. We’d love to hear from you!
In the meantime, do stay tuned for more updates, as we continue building the festival and reaching out to performers, partners, and sponsors. This particular story is just beginning…✨
We had a full house for the first of our exclusive author events presented in association with Fairacre Freddie Events: an intimate literary afternoon with acclaimed novelist, broadcaster, photographer, and travel writer Sandra Howard, who discussed her powerful World War II novel Love at War.
Based on a true story, this sweeping tale is set in 1940, and follows Laura’s perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Uganda and beyond in pursuit of love, courage, and survival. It is a moving portrayal of one exceptional young woman’s resilience in the face of war.
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Following all the fabulous feedback we received after this first literary event, we were then delighted to welcome ticketholders to join us for our second one in early October: Tea with Sandra Hempel, who spoke about her own newly-published book Controlling Women: The Untold Story of Britain's First Female Police Force.
Sandra Hempel, a former Times journalist, has also written for The Guardian, the Daily Mail and other national media. Following her award-winning The Medical Detective, and BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, The Inheritor’s Powder, her latest work looks at the fascinating story of the first Women Police Volunteers...
As the First World War began, a group of British campaigners founded the Women Police Volunteers, hoping to protect the vulnerable both from crime and from patriarchal policing and justice. The movement’s pioneers included a militant suffragette who’d spent time behind bars, a moral purity activist, a blue-blooded radical, and a court reporter born in the workhouse to a single mother. Author Sandra Hempel follows their astonishing journey, through all of its troubling twists and turns.
Sandra, too, engaged in an animated conversation with Jeremy, and then answered questions from the audience, before signing books supplied by the fabulous (and independent!) Barnes Bookshop.
Huge thanks to both Sandras, to Jeremy, to Carolyn, to Sarah from Barnes Bookshop, and to my Dad, David King-Farlow, for running the refreshment stall so well! We're already looking forward to the next event...
After two wonderful summers performing at the Edinburgh Fringe, my small but perfectly formed theatre company, Shadow Road, has decided to stay closer to home next year - and create something magical of our own.
Introducing 'The Fireside Folktales Fringe': a brand-new, independent mini festival of storytelling and theatre, taking place in Barnes, South West London, on 23rd & 24th May 2026!
We're aiming for:
It’s inspired by our own 'Fireside Folktales' series: a collection of small but mighty shows that bring powerful myths, legends, and classic tales to life in a wide variety of venues, with no fancy tech - just four actors, live sound and music, simple props and costumes, and a whole lot of imagination.
This time, we’re throwing open the doors and inviting other wonderful artists in too. And that’s where you come in.
We’ve just (this very hour!) launched our Crowdfunder campaign to make the festival a reality and we’d love your help in spreading the word.
Would you like to take part, as a performer or production company? Do you know someone who'd be interested in sponsoring a venue, or an individual show? Whether you donate, share the link, or just loudly cheer us on, you’ll be helping us create something really special from the ground up, and we would be so grateful.
Our campaign is taking part in the 'Built by Her, Backed by Us' initiative - a brilliant programme supporting female-led projects. If we raise a minimum total of £1,000 from at least 25 different backers, by 31st July, we’ll be eligible to enter their competition and be in with the chance of winning extra match funding and other opportunities that could totally transform the future of the festival. Whether you can give £5 or £50, your donation gets us one step closer - and sharing the campaign helps more than you know!
We'd absolutely love you to help us build a festival that puts people and stories first, concentrating on the simple, shared experience. No headsets. No holograms. No horrific overpricing, or awesome, spaceship-worthy technology. Just theatre, the way it began - and the way it still moves us most...
Thank you SO much for any help you feel able to give! 🙏❤️🥰
We had a full house for our very first Shadow Road Writers’ Retreat on May 31st - and what a day it was! As you can see in the photo collage above, the studio was buzzing with creativity - from quiet writing sprints and character-building exercises, to an Inspiration Walk through the beautiful, sunlit churchyard, and some really wonderful shared work and reactions at the end of the day.
Everyone who attended brought something unique to the table, and it was a great joy to spend the day writing, reflecting, and connecting with fellow storytellers. It was, in fact, such a success that we are delighted to announce that the Retreat will now become a regular event, running on the last Saturday of each month (with the exception of July, when it will be on the final Sunday of the month instead), other than August and December! 🥳
There are only 5 places available for each Retreat, and with several participants already planning to return on different dates, you may wish to book soon - tickets for each Retreat until the end of 2025 are now available on our TicketSource page here:
Whether you're working on a novel, a play, a podcast script, children's book, or screenplay - or even if you're just craving some space to reconnect with your creativity - we'd love you to join us! 📚🎭🎬
Are you a writer in need of some time to focus on that script, novel, or idea that’s been nudging at you? Have you always wanted to write, but never quite known where to start - or had the time to do it? If so, why not join me for a gently structured, welcoming Writers’ Retreat Day, hosted at Shadow Road's cosy rehearsal studio in Barnes, South West London!
A traditionally published children's author and theatre professional, with over 15 years of experience writing and directing performances across the UK, I have written numerous plays and adaptations for Shadow Road, as well as short film scripts, fundraising events, and works commissioned by other organisations such as the Barnes Literary Society, the London Wetland Centre, and the National Trust's Morden Hall Park and Ham House. I have also run writing workshops in both Richmond and Surrey, and provided dramaturgical help to playwrights and authors submitting work to the mixed arts mental health awareness festival, UNBROKEN.
Now I am delighted to open up the Shadow Road Studio to writers of all kinds - playwrights, novelists, children's fiction authors, screenwriters, and more 📚🎬🎭 - for a whole day, offering space to develop your project, get words on the page, gain fresh perspective, and connect with fellow writers. The day-long retreat will include:
There are only 6 tickets (£55 each) available for this retreat, so if you'd like one of them, do please book HERE as soon as possible! I'm excited to meet you and help you get that project off the ground!✨
Secret Storytellers: The First Broadcast is now complete, and available to watch online! 🥳
Following a call out for actors in the Shadow Road email newsletter last month, twelve fabulous actors came along on the 18th and 19th March to film with us. It was such fun making this short with them - and lovely to welcome a few new members to the Shadow Road family, along with some old friends and familiar faces! Even more of a delight to then host a screening of the film at the Shadow Road Studio on the 8th April, so that we could raise a glass to all their hard work and enjoy the results together! 🍾🎬👏
This short film was created as part of the Musicbed Challenge 2025 and is part of the larger, cross-platform Secret Storytellers project - the next part of which is a planned test version of a live immersive event, where audience members will have the opportunity to join the resistance for themselves and to make choices and decisions that will not only influence their own personal experiences, but may also even change the outcome of the show itself!
More news coming soon... 😍
This Christmas, our theatre company embarked on a heartwarming tour of London hospitals, cancer centres, and care homes with our production of A Christmas Carol (which I first adapted back in 2019,a few months before the pandemic), thanks to the generous support of a grant from Arts Council England.
It has always been important to Shadow Road to bring theatre to those who might not otherwise have the chance to experience it - and never has that been more important than at Christmas, a time when it’s especially easy to feel left out or forgotten if you’re ill, living alone, or in hospital. Live theatre has a unique ability to create moments of connection and joy - and we were privileged to share that magic with so many incredible people this winter.
At the end of the performance, Peter posed for photos on our set, wearing one of our top hats - and when we returned to the hospital the following week, the staff brought him up to the 8th floor just so that he could watch the show again.
With the tour itself over and all our own match funding now raised, there is only a feedback session with the cast, and a lengthy report for the Arts Council, left to go!
We cannot thank the Arts Council, all our wonderful supporters, and our fabulous cast enough for making this whole tour possible. THIS is why we do what we do. It was very hard work, but couldn't have been more worth it. An utter joy and a privilege.
Here's to doing it all again for Christmas 2025...
On April 23rd, Shakespeare's 460th birthday, I am delighted to share Shadow Road's new trailer for our much-loved production of Macbeth: Sleep No More!
Adapted from the Bard's original by yours truly, this four-woman production (along with both a three-woman version, and a 19-person one!) has been performed at venues ranging from the Turbine Theatre, Southside House in Wimbledon, The Coach & Horses, St Mary's Barnes, and theSpace at Niddry Street in Edinburgh!
As you may be aware, from earlier Shadow Road newsletters or social media, Macbeth: Sleep No More will return to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer (this time at theSpace on the Mile, at 10.35am from the 2nd-10th August) - but, before then, we first have the honour of opening the Mayfield Festival of Music & the Arts in East Sussex, this coming Friday 26th April at 7.30pm!
We'd love you to take the advice kindly given by The Wee Review to Edinburgh theatregoers last year, when speaking of our production of Macbeth - “Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once!”, whether in Mayfield or in Edinburgh - but in the meantime, we hope you enjoy the new trailer!
As you can see from these photos - and as many of you saw in person at one or more of our shows and events - we at Shadow Road had a very busy and brilliant year in 2023! We are so grateful for your ongoing support and your fabulous feedback after each one.
Now a new and even busier year beckons - and we couldn't be more excited about it!
I've been using the first weeks of 2024 to write (two new plays), to plan (all of the year's upcoming productions, another visit to Edinburgh - along with all the fundraising that requires - and the launch of the next new project), and to learn (more workshops with Theatrical Intimacy Education, Theatre503, and the Society of Authors). Soon, however, we'll be back in the rehearsal room for one thing after another - with more writing squeezed in between times - and performing in a number of different venues, both indoors and outside.
Here are some of the main dates for the diary (both mine and yours, if you'd like to come along and see us!) between now and the summer:
MARCH
APRIL
MAY
JUNE
JULY
At the end of the month, we'll be travelling up to Edinburgh to settle in and get ready for our nine-day, 18 show, run in August.
AUGUST
As for what will happen after August? Well, some irons are in the fire and things are looking interesting - all available digits are very firmly crossed in the meantime...
I am absolutely delighted that my tiny theatre company, Shadow Road Productions, has just been announced as one of the two winners of this year's #StoryGivesBack initiative from Story Events!
Following the online vote, first by previous visitors to Story's renowned London Christmas Party Show and then by the wider public, we have been named as one of the two boutique suppliers they would most like to meet! As a result, our prize is the offer of a free stand at the 2021 show on the 7th and 8th September, so that they can do just that!
You can read more about the company and the show - and find out how to register to visit yourself - on the #StoryGivesBack page on their website.
As some of you may already be aware, Shadow Road is a small independent theatre company which specialises in bringing exciting pieces of theatre for all ages and occasions to unusual venues and spaces in creative new ways. Our work usually involves a charitable aspect of some kind – raising awareness or funds - or, as with Fireside Folktales in particular, taking live entertainment out to people who might not otherwise have the opportunity to enjoy it.
We are now aiming to branch out into events, corporate entertainment, and private parties – offering something original and exciting to these markets and, in turn, enabling us to fund more of our voluntary and charity work elsewhere. Winning this competition is a wonderful opportunity for us to meet many of the people who could help us take those next steps into the future and we can't wait to show everyone the fantastic entertainment – festive and otherwise – that we have to offer!
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| The cast & crew of 'The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe' 2018 |
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| Edmund (Alice Hope Wilson) & Lucy (Lucy Evans) in the Narnian snow |
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| Maugrim (Carly Borrow) captures Edmund (Alice Hope Wilson) |
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| Mr Tumnus Sr (Martin Parsley) watches Maugrim terrorise small children! |
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| The White Witch (Kat Merrick) |
