Our technical teams are a creative bunch.  They can take us back in time to Victorian London, keep it bang up to date recreating the Prime Minister’s office or lead us into a dystopian rural landscape. But when the play is set on a small fishing boat in shallow water in the Alabama Delta, the set almost becomes a character in its own right.

Director Mattie Frieacre loves the challenge of a small set. Mattie’s previous production for the EAT, Veronica’s Room, was set in a locked attic room – perfectly suited to the theatre’s intimate performance space. For this year’s production, The Gulf: An Elegy by Audrey Cefaly, the space was even smaller – and a very clear brief for the design team:

A Boat.

Luckily enough, our Production Support Manager Lindsay has connections! She managed to find us the perfect fishing boat down at Faversham Creek. Well, almost perfect. It wasn’t the most fragrant addition to the play, with a very authentic “Eau de Creek” aroma that thankfully wasn’t strong enough to reach the audience. But kudos to our wonderful cast for this two-hander, Geraldine Ling and Becky Relf, who threw themselves into the stinky boat without fear or flinching!

Delivered to the theatre by Faversham’s Womble Services, assisted by Dave Turner (thanks guys!), the boat arrived nice and early on in rehearsals, enabling the set and lighting team to build up the atmosphere around it, leading to a simple but visually stunning performance space that perfectly reproduced the atmosphere throughout a day (and into the night) out on the water.

When the sun went down on Kendra and Betty’s fishing trip for the last time, we were left with a clean and tidy stage after the get-out.

And a boat.

Deciding against changing the 2025-26 season to make use of our latest asset (Three Men in a Boat, The Owl and the Pussycat, er … Jaws?), we asked around to see if anybody could make use of it. Enter Jessica Jenner who you may know from Bromley Little Theatre or Sevenoaks Shakespeare. Her Church had plenty of ideas for projects that would give the boat a new lease of life. So, it’s been collected and is now waiting for its next adventure!

We’d always prefer to reuse our sets and props rather than chuck them in a skip, so this is a happy ending for the boat, and for the planet!