20 years! its blowing our tiny minds
Want a potted history ?

In 2006 we founded Gideon Reeling.
Site responsive geniuses, Punchdrunk had commercial work coming in the door and needed a sister company to do it, 
...long story, that I’m still not sure about the politics of, but not everyone was happy, it seems.
Kate Harrgreaves - an actor/ director making immersive education at the time as Education Officer at Gunnersbury Park-  and recently aglow from her first Punchdrunk show Firebird Ball, was tasked with incorporating this new venture.
Colin Nightingale, Producer/all round production wizard, trouble- shot, he knew how to open the bank account for starters
and Felix Barrett, Punchdrunk’s visionary Artistic Director was the lead.
Felix borrowed a grand off his Dad to facilitate said bank account being opened.
The three served as Directors unitl 2009
The name was hatched in a pokey pub in London by Kate and Felix and Peter Higgin (Pete went on to set up the truly brilliant Punchdrunk Enrichment having moved to London-starting with a stint delivering character workshops for Kate at Gunnersbury Park Museum- the bread and butter and testing ground for many exceptional Education creatives in our lives)

So Gideon Reeling was founded to keep the Punchdrunk creatives in work between big shows.  Kate Hargreaves has always run the day to day- often blindly- learning on the job! Or not learning! (KH)

We parted company amicably from Punchdrunk in 2009
But so many brilliant creatives still cross-pollinate between the two.  They and PD have our love. 
We are very proud of what we’ve done , but very proud too of where we come from:
We will always be Giddy and Reeling in our bones.

Its been a joyful company for 20 years and we are, frankly, staggered that we’ve managed to keep it going- often against wisdom or odds.
The creatives we work with are world leading talents in the fields of site responsive, interactive and immersive theatre
They are also the best, most loveliest people.

The image on this post is of an article written by Lyn Gardner - before the ink was even dry on the paperwork or the bank account was functioning- she wrote in response to our first show, (which was in IBIZA- honestly we thought we’d won the lottery).
It's fascinating to read the thoughts on the artistic and commercial partnerships emerging in theatre back then, particularly in this current time of uber commercial immersive everything where big IP and big money seem to rule.

We still make commercial work of course- there have been so many extraordinary, creative partnerships and collaborative exploits with brands and businesses over the years that have flexed our muscles and given us bonkers canvases around the world and introduced us to so many gems.
We do not bite the hand that feeds. We do discern. And we love to weave community and connection into everything: always striving to bring a sense of Eudaimonia (commonly translated to happiness and wellbeing) and humanity into the worlds we make.
Have a little shufti at the commercial  pages - see links to the right

But... its a small part of what we do. 
Mostly we pride ourselves on our originality and ability to tell stories and we’re never happier than when we’re doing that.

Our MO is, in a (big) nutshell:
Our commercial work allows us to fulfil our aim to bring free theatre to diverse audiences who may have had low engagement in the arts. 
We strongly believe in learning through play & strive to remain expert in delivering inclusive educational experiences to audiences of all ages.
Based in Hounslow and Stratford we endeavour to forge collaborative relationships with other arts and educational institutions. We work closely with staff and students at University of East London (since 2016) - Kate is now a Creative Industries fellow with them. We’ve made extensive work with National Trust properties since 2010: Education, Training, Performance and Space Design. We are also delighted to say we’ve worked since 2020 with the National Theatre development - creating their pre show shows.
 We’ve also created work as supported artists with our local theatre: Watermans: including Hounslow’s heartwarming Winter Lights Parade alongside parade company, Same Sky.

We’re known for meticulous research, attention to detail and intense enveloping productions with stories that are compelling, culturally relevant,  poignant, often transmedia, always uplifting.
At the heart of what GR do is a sense of inclusive playfulness and a sensitivity to the level that audiences are actually comfortable to be immersed into imaginary worlds, Its a fine balance.
We create from tiny to grand scale experiences.

We are still here, ta daaaaa.

Kate Hargreaves still leads the company as Exec & Artisitc Director, 
and Kathryn McGarr- a creative collaborator since our first show- is the Co Artistic Director.
Harriet Eldridge is Costume Supervisor of our costume collection- working with the staff and students of UEL
Laura Clark keeps the books
and Jacqueline McBeth has recently joined us to kick us up the proverbial to promote what we do.
Female led but the peerless Colin Nightingale is still involved in the background- producer/shareholder without portfolio if you will- we were incredibly proud to get to work with him on a meaty project last year- 7&7is49 for Beggars-  with his new company A Right/Left Project.  Check out the project in OUR SHOWS

Importantly…. we are hatching plans for 2026.
We hope you can come on this next part of our journey with us.
We’d love to keep you informed
Join our mailing via the contact form above
or we’d hugely appreciate if you give us a follow on Instagram
@gideonreelingtheatre
We will keep you posted, this time!
Thank you for your interest and support over these many years 
Love all ways, always

Its Christmas 2020
Its been a bit of a shocker eh?
Don't let that stop you celebrating this most extraordinary year.
Gideon Reeling will be offering an online version of our infamous Xmas Starty for groups and businesses this year.
contact us at info@gideonreeling.co.uk

We've 10 years experience of rolling these comedy cabarets out live: they're participatory, entertaining, quite stupid, laugh out loud feel good fusion evenings that have become a staple of London freelancers' Christmas calendars.
So if you want an alternative office Christmas party for friends, colleagues, neighbours or randoms then shout and we can tailor make your evening or dig in Santa's sack for an off the shelf surprise.
Seen at such venues as Soho Theatre , the Arcola and Shoreditch Town Hall.
 Le Cool said of them: "It's the Christmas Party season. But before you go to your awful evening, you should go to this….. it's critically acclaimed and it's bananas. Brought to you by the brilliant Gideon Reeling”

Through 2020's first lockdown we came together with
     -  Sybil from Flexible Films 
      - our own Jo Dagless- artist and filmaker and longtime collaborator with Gideon Reeling.
      - and Artistic Director Kate Hargreaves.
to have a series of meaningful conversations around the subject of death and dying
You can follow the project  at @gideonreelingtheatre at @magicvideobox and @jo1157 on Instagram and Facebook.

It has so far taken the form of edited films created in collaboration from long form zoom conversations with varied people including artists, musicians, gardeners, dentists, crematoria  managers, software developers and founders of the Death Cafe.
Moving into 2021 we are investigating partnerships, Sybil is continuing extraordinary work with Flexible Film's Magic Video Box, Jo has partnered up to create an online festival - Lifting the Lid
and Kate has partnered with Winkball to develop a plaque project Legacy Is For Everyone  (LIFE) 
Watch this space. Its been an enriching creative process for us.

Penguin and Riot PR asked us to collaborate to make 2019’s Penguin Presents Show.
In its 2nd year as a theatre show at the Palladium they wanted us to come up with a concept and collaborate with them creatively to fuse Immersive and stage performance with presentation of their big authors for the coming year.
But we were to be sure to make it playful and imaginative and unexpected: a cohesive show as opposed to an episodic presentation of authors.

Starting with the title, Penguin Imagines we were immediately drawn to our own childhood imaginations, the start of our own relationship with books and reading. The love of reading develops at such an early age and, we really believe it should be nurtured and cared for.  So, tasked with exploring the true power of publishing, we thought of the kids and we thought of us as kids and  also, of the old adage of 'show me the boy at 7 and I will show you the man' (this works for girls and women too folks!)
We were delighted to devise ways to integrate the childhood memories of staff, authors and external guests and transport our audience back in time to explore their own and others' 7 year old selves and to genuinely contribute to the shape of the event and immerse the audience in this idea of Penguin Imagining.
The Characters they met, the things they read, the sets we designed and the props they came across were all devised from the memories we garnered from the audience.
Kate Hargreaves, Lucy Hall and Adam Neville made up the core team who worked in the most rewarding collaboration with the staff of Penguin Random House.

Meeting, directing and creating for the likes of Ai Wei Wei, Bill Bryson, Stormzy, Malorie Blackman, Cerys Matthews, Kerry Hudson and Darren McGarvey was an enormous treat on top of all of this.

We conceived and devised all aspects of the aesthetic and performance with PRH & their branding agency Riot PR and then we got to work with some truly brilliant companies and individuals that we commissioned to bring certain elements to fruition.
Holotronica (who we've been desperate to work with) made an incredible 3D Holographic finale to accompany a touching poem by Cecilia Knapp from the Poems Out Loud book. We worked with two fantastic young readers from London Primary schools to bring the reading and stage presentation to life.
Limbic Cinema created all the video content for projections on stage and worked so patiently with us as we made the (extensive) necessary changes as the author list coalesced. What they made was visually stunning and so in tune with what we'd imagined.
John Colville lit the whole show beautifully and we got to work with the splendid Ed Borgnis as Production Manager. 
Some of our favourite immersive performers devised the stage transitions and front of house performance to immerse the audience from the moment they arrived to the moment they left the theatre.(Kathryn McGarr, Matt Costain, Adam Redmore, Syvia Mercuriali, Aoi Nakamura,  Kate Ashcroft and Nicola Jallim (who we met in our work with students at the University of East London)
Our fantastic musician friend, Sarah Anderson composed a specially commissioned piece to accompany the Big Books section.
Alice Lessing and Elisa Nader created the costumes and Anna Inglis Hall and Paul Rogers were on Hair and Make Up.
And our friends Get Lost and Found entertained the audience in their seats with a giant word game.
Then Speedwagon and Chris Lopez recorded it all on film and in photographs for us.

Thanks to all who were involved and collaborated (thats the whole audience too). 
We were immensely proud of what we all made together.