How a roomful of pub junk became Bristol’s smallest performance space: Mike White talks to Wardrobe Theatre’s Chris Collier.

The Wardrobe Theatre was born from a party. There are three main people behind it – me, a chap called Jesse Jones and a girl called Jesse Meadows. Jesse Jones is really good friends with Jules, who runs the White Bear pub on St Michael’s Hill. There was an upstairs room, floor to ceiling with junk, and one New Year’s Eve he cleared it out and had a New Year’s Eve party in there. Jesse was a bit drunk, and said to Jules: “There’s so much potential in this room, I could turn it into a theatre if you want.” Jules was like, “Yeah right, whatever.” But when Jesse sobered up, he remembered what he’d said and thought, “I’m actually totally up for this.”

So we cleared the whole space out again and redecorated it. The pub paid for materials. We got a big gang of friends to help out. There was Harriet de Winton – who’s designed for the Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory shows – she came and made the place look beautiful. My illustrator friend Ben Goodman did all the design for us. And there was this great team of people who were all happy to chip in a few hours to make something special.

The important thing is to provide a space where new work can be put on without cost to the company doing it. We have a complete box office split, so it works in everyone’s favour to get people in, so the company can cover their own costs, we can pay our minimal rental on the space, and the pub can cover their running costs. We’re all working on a voluntary basis – the focus is on supporting new work being made.

It’s not as small as an actual wardrobe, more the size of an open-plan kitchen. That’s still pretty small as theatres go – our capacity’s 50 at a push, 35-40 in comfort. We initially opened in May for a six-week trial, to see whether we could actually run a theatre ourselves, and from the pub’s point of view whether it brought in punters. We were approached by the comedy promoter Mark Olver, who’s associated with a lot of big-name comedians – he wanted to put on three weeks of pre-Edinburgh comedy in the Wardrobe. That was an absolute godsend, because he got us full houses every night.

Low points? April was a real last-minute rush – realising just how much work we had to do to get it all ready. We’d decided to strip out the carpets and sand the floor, and that was possibly the worst thing I’ve ever done with a couple of days of my life. It got emotional.

Highlights? During Mark Olver’s brilliant run there were secret Russell Howard gigs, two nights in a row. It was leaked on Twitter and hundreds of people flocked to the pub. It was ridiculous, but incredibly good for us in terms of people knowing about the place. And of course our opening night when we first launched in May: the place was absolutely rammed, we had a full evening of music and performance. It all worked. That was quite emotional too, but in a much better way.

We want a cult following – especially for our improvised soap opera ‘Closer Each Day’. There’s nothing like it in Bristol. It’s genuinely hilarious, this storyline that evolves every week as the characters develop in completely unpredictable ways. It’s so much fun.

We want to do more events that take over the whole pub, working in lots of performance things around the space. Jules is keen on getting Howard Marks in to do a talk in mid-December. We’re also planning a Christmas show, something different from all the family-friendly things that go on. It’ll be an adult adaptation of ‘Home Alone’. The film’s 25 years old now, so most people who saw it first time around are now in their late 20s and 30s. Hopefully they’re ready for a darker retelling of the story... We’re also going to do a big New Year’s Eve night – the anniversary of when it all began – taking over the whole pub and filling it with performance, all with an unexpected theme. But we’re keeping it secret for now.

Looking to the future, we just need to make sure we get people in. We’re not worrying about getting paid, despite the long hours. It’s just about doing something different. We’ve planned our autumn programme so that we have slots for regular things – every other Tuesday is the improvised soap opera, every other Wednesday is poetry night, every other Thursday is comedy. We want it to seep into people’s consciousness, so that we can build a following. People will say to their mates: “I went to this funny/brilliant/weird new thing the other day, and it’s every other week – come along to the next one, and – pass it on, pass it on!”

WARDROBE THEATRE ABOVE THE WHITE BEAR, ST MICHAELS HILL, BRISTOL, BS2 8BS. FFI: WWW.THEWARDROBETHEATRE.COM

Copyright Mike White 2011