10 highlights for 10 years: The Lord Chamberlain's Men

Campaigning, storytelling and an awful lot of touring. They've been rained on, rained off, flooded and still they've powered through, performing and touring some of the world's most beautiful open air venues. There's no doubt it's been a hectic, but successful ten years for The Lord Chamberlain's Men. To mark the occasion, their artistic director, Mark Puddle gives us ten highlights…

Year 1 – Our inaugural production of Macbeth kick-starts The Lord Chamberlain’s Men reputation for bold, clear and dynamic storytelling, touring to 35 venues over a 10 week period and playing to just over 6,000 people.

Year 2 – The hottest summer on record draws huge audience numbers for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men experience just two wet nights and some amazing sunsets.

Year 3 – Following the beautiful sunshine of the previous year, year three could only be followed by the year of the floods! For that year’s production of Romeo and Juliet, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men went through nine Gazebos (here’s one still standing!) and we only had 17 dry nights out of 55.

Year 4 – For Much Ado About Nothing we invested in a new set, constructed in just an hour and deconstructed in 40 minutes. Open air touring just got a whole lot easier!

Year 5 – The Lord Chamberlain’s Men’s fifth birthday! To celebrate we toured Twelfth Night to 50 different venues playing to just over 20,000 people as well as making our London debut at Soho Green.

Year 6 – This year we made our first trip abroad with The Tempest visiting Holland, Cyprus and Greece at the end of our 18-week UK tour.

Year 7 – Modern technology reaches A Midsummer Night’s Dream with our first ever audience selfie!

Year 8 – After years of campaigning by The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Equity introduce their Outdoor Touring Guidelines. We were extremely proud to be at the forefront of this campaign, working together with Equity to ensure all employees of the outdoor theatre sector are treated fairly.

Year 9 – This was our biggest tour so far, performing As You Like It over 100 performances in seven different countries to over a staggering 40,000 people.

Year 10 – The Lord Chamberlain’s Men turns 10 years old and to celebrate we had a party at The Oriental Club in London for all past and present company members – thank you to everyone for your support over the last ten years, we couldn’t have done it without you!

For more on The Lord Chamberlain's Men, visit tlcm.co.uk