Dear All,

Welcome to the April 2025 edition of Ensemble.

I hope you all had a lovely Easter break and managed to enjoy some time relaxing with family and friends.

First, a very warm welcome and hello to all our new colleagues from Eastbourne Theatres, who maybe reading Ensemble for the very first time. 

We hope you find the newsletter to be a good mix of Trafalgar updates, useful information, and colleagues’ stories. We’d love you to contribute to future editions, and we encourage everyone to submit ideas or news, so please email any content to David Bradbury.

Next week, I’m delighted to be speaking at The Stage’s Future of Theatre 2025 Conference which has the theme of ‘survival’. I’ll be sharing some insights on how Howard and I built Trafalgar Entertainment, following our 25 years building ATG from the ground up.

As with most businesses and industries, we all face tough challenges and major uncertainty at times: rising production costs, energy and wages costs, the urgent need for capital investment. All coming off the back of a global pandemic. Globally, we’ve experienced some of the biggest economic shocks of recent decades.

But the enthusiasm of audiences shows no sign of stopping with attendances outgunning Broadway and the Premier League: last year’s attendance at London theatres held at 17.1m – 11% above pre-pandemic levels. And as far as productions go – it’s been something of a golden time. My bedrock belief in theatre is clearly shared by audiences and by everyone who works in our incredible industry.

There’s something obstinate about arts people – we just keep putting one foot in front of another in the face of what seems like relentless challenge.

If anyone is attending the conference next Wednesday, I look forward to seeing you there.

Finally, we’re all gearing up for next week’s on sale for Bradford Live’s launch season. Huge thanks to all the teams who are working collaboratively on the Bradford project to get the venue up and running in the coming months. Exciting times indeed.

Enjoy reading this month’s Ensemble, and until next time, take care of yourselves.

Best wishes
Rosemary