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Cotton Grass Theatre has been producing professional theatre based in the Peak District since 1995. Local rural touring has been our core role, but in recent years the company has begun to visit arts centres and theatres throughout the country.

The company’s first productions, Dennis Potter’s Blue Remembered Hills, was staged in the grounds of Birchfield Hall, against the spectacular backdrop of Mam Tor. Next, Bazaar and Rummage by Sue Townsend was set in a converted barn near Bakewell; The Hollow Country, a new play for young people was set in the underworld of caverns and mines that lie below the Peak landscape. In the summer of 2000 Gardens of Delight, an adaptation of Boccaccio’s Decameron, was staged in a picturesque farmyard in Youlgreave.

In May 2001 Cotton Grass Theatre produced La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler at the Buxton Opera House Studio. The production then completed a short run at the Crucible Studio in Sheffield.  In 2003 Cotton Grass toured the Peak District with The Unreturning Army, readings about Derbyshire Dales and the Great War, incorporating the poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.

In autumn 2004 we toured a double bill of two plays by Derbyshire writers.  Louise Page, nationally-known for her plays at the RSC and the Royal Court, dramatised Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler and Chris Hawes’ Hauntedwas an adaptation of the ghost stories of M R James. 

In 2006 Cotton Grass toured Derbyshire schools with Corvus Corax: The Crow in the Know by Susan Daniel, a play for children about creation myths from around the world. This was followed by Sherlock Holmes and The Final Problem by Justin Webb which toured nationally from Berwick-on-Tweed to the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford. 

This year Cotton Grass Theatre has just completed a village hall tour of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, including Ashbourne Arts Festival, Tideswell Wakes Week, and Matlock Live.